I have a 400Gb Seagate and a 400Gb WD...it seems to take much longer than it should for simple stuff (pulling up the start menu in XP, opening program file lists, etc)..installed Windows 7 and ran the performance tool and got this.

I'm thinking about getting one of these. What do you think?

Your 400gb Seagate drive, if it is SATA you might want to check the jumpers. For a while Seagate was shipping their consumer SATA 3.0gb/s drives with the jumper settings forcing it to work at SATA 1.5gb/s standard for better compatibility.

FYI, the 160gb IDE drive in the old P4 Im using to test Win7 on scores 5.5 (for Hard Disk).

Also if your drives are both pretty full that could affect your performance significantly.

I don't have any experience with that particular drive you are looking at, but I have to imagine anything with 32mb cache is going to be fast.

I have over 200Gb free on this drive. I've tested them both in XP and they come out fairly similar in speed..I wonder what the problem is..

that is pretty odd.. you de-frag lately?

Nope. I'll see if I can find it in Windows 7.

Edit: It's 1% fragmented. I'll run it and see what happens.

If you use Vista, it defrags while you're using the computer when you aren't doing anything imparticular.

I don't have Vista.

Windows 7 probably does the same thing.

Maybe that's what the constant HD noise was, then...

I have it running manually now anyway- hopefully it'll speed things up.

Whoa, the Windows Experience Index in Vista only goes to a maximum of 5.9

Almost makes me want to install the Windows 7 beta just to see what my computer would get. Though I bet Microsoft has a standalone version that will scan your computer and tell you your score...

Heh- I just noticed that my aging 9600GT max'd out the Aero score!

I might rebuild this fall..or whenever Diablo 3 comes out.

From a VM, but you get the picture :V This computer is old but still got a great rating (the VM was running off of a couple-years-old USB hard drive).

[Edit: 5.3 on my host copy, for all my drives I guess.]

I wouldn't trust Windows 7's hard drive rating entirely yet... My laptop drive that gets something like a 5.5 in Vista only gets a 2.0 in 7. All of the other scores are similar to their Vista scores.

It is beta after all...

This is on my 2.5 yr old laptop w/ a Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo).

Btw Snipping Tool =

I just sent in some feedback suggesting there be a keyboard shortcut or something for it though.

Snipping Tool is old. It's in Vista, and was actually downloadable for XP Tablet edition.

Okay I just found it in Vista but since it was hidden away in Accessories I NEVER KNEW IT WAS THERE <_< which reinforces my suggestion to make it more accessible >_>

I pulled what appears to be a jumper off of the Seagate drive, but it's tiny...maybe 1/3 the size of a normal jumper. I'm not sure if it was actually jumping the pins or just acting as a spacer for some reason..but I'll run HD Tune and see if it's any faster than it was.

Well, it seems to have helped. My WD drive is the sucky one, and that's where XP is installed!

Maybe I should format and install my OS's on the Seagate and then use the WD for storage..

Since they are both 400 gb drives, perhaps some Disk Cloning software could save you some time. Sadly I dont have any recommendations since its been about 10 years since I last did it.

On the other hand, a fresh install has its own benefits.

Yeah. I dunno. I don't really have anything to do...but my computer is my stereo, and I don't want to lose it for a few hours..heh.

Hey, this HDTune software is nifty. Everyone post your HDTune results!

WTF, your drive makes mine look slow.

Maybe I need one of those 640Gb speed demons..they're rumored to be Raptor-esque in speed..

Your CPU usage is pretty high, though- that's weird.