Hard drives on desktops struggling to keep up

[Jeff Golas]

Maybe its just some of my desktops are getting on the old side, but lately I've been battling an uphill battle with some computers that are just SLOW. They dont have malware, they're not infected with anything, they just seem unbearingly slow. Looking at avg disk queue length while they're working shows 6+ in some cases.

These comps have sata drives, are fairly fast machines processor wise, and honestly in looking at perfmon, its the disk in all cases that can't keep up. I'm talking log in...open something. Nothing complex or taxing.

Anyone know why it seems this way, or maybe drives just physically slow down in age? I'm almost curious to throw a new drive in one just to see if it helps.

[Mark]

I've been experiencing the same thing -- though I haven't done the perfmon thing yet.

Optiplex 760 with 80 GB WD drives.  I'm usually very happy with WD drives....  Well, dry ones that is

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

guess it might be worthwhile finding out if something is generating lots of I/O... if the disk queue is backing up on ya.

[Jeff Zylstra]

A fresh install of Windows seems to make a difference, but then I have no hard data to support that.   I almost wonder if MS updates don't slow these things to a crawl.  I haven't tried running the disk cleanup and choosing to get rid of MS updates, but it's an interesting concept.

[Mark]

Rebuilding profiles seems to make a difference as well.  I haven't done that for a while though.

[Jeff Golas]

Thats my theory...that or additional paging due to increased ram useage due to more security checks and balances...I dunno.

Jeff

A fresh install of Windows seems to make a difference, but then I have no hard data to support that.   I almost wonder if MS updates don't slow these things to a crawl.  I haven't tried running the disk cleanup and choosing to get rid of MS updates, but it's an interesting concept.

[Jeff Zylstra]

I'm convinced that M$ purposely designs their security software updates to bloat your computer so that you need to buy a new computer (with new OS) on a regular basis.    

[Mark]

I'm convinced that M$ purposely designs their security software updates to bloat your computer so that you need to buy a new computer (with new OS) on a regular basis.   

lol, I'm not.  They don't make as much on an OEM license as they do selling it to you in a store ($30/ea. probably or less even vs. what, $400-ish in the store?).  They of course DO have an interest in you running MS OS so that's why OEMs get such a low price.  Used to be a major factor anyway.

[Billy Welsh]

I'm convinced that M$ purposely designs their security software updates to bloat your computer so that you need to buy a new computer (with new OS) on a regular basis.   

Everybody trying to copy Apple's iPhone strategy!

[Jeff Zylstra]

I'm convinced that M$ purposely designs their security software updates to bloat your computer so that you need to buy a new computer (with new OS) on a regular basis.   

lol, I'm not.  They don't make as much on an OEM license as they do selling it to you in a store ($30/ea. probably or less even vs. what, $400-ish in the store?).  They of course DO have an interest in you running MS OS so that's why OEMs get such a low price.  Used to be a major factor anyway.

Is there really that kind of spread?  I thought it was more like $150 compared to $400 for OEM vs retail.  I'm shocked that they only make $30 on an OEM copy.

[Mark]

Is there really that kind of spread?  I thought it was more like $150 compared to $400 for OEM vs retail.  I'm shocked that they only make $30 on an OEM copy.

I don't know what the actual is for sure.  Thought I heard $30 somewhere.  If you opt for a computer with no operating system versus one with Windows OEM license, you only save about $50 or less.

There was also stories not long ago about not accepting the EULA for Windows OEM and the ability to request a refund and I believe it was again around $50.

So, not sure where I pulled $30 from, but it sounds familiar.  One might also take into account the volume an OEM might do with Microsoft.  Say, Dell vs. Gateway or ASUS, or whatever.

I guess, can't take my statement as fact, but more of a "pretty darn sure" or a "I'd put money on it" kind of statement.

Yes, if you as an end user buy an OEM license from your local computer parts store, I believe it's going to be $150-ish. but, you're not buying ANY kind of volume and neither is that little old parts store when compared to an actual OEM manufacturer.

Windows dominates the pre-installed OS market for many, many reasons.  One of those is the mere fact that dominating the pre-installed OS market is going to equal a considerable amount of overall market share.

[Gene Foraker]

My experience is that OEM Windows is usually around $99 on Newegg or Amazon and full license versions (if you can find them) are double that.   All I ever use are OEM versions.   

MS had an upgrade sale of 3 packs of Win 7 over a year ago for $150.    You really didn't need to use them for upgrades only.


Oh, as far as excess HD activity that usually is a sign of too little ram in the machine as it uses the swap file on the disk for memory.   RAM is now cheap.

[Mark]

Yep, I agree Gene.  I was stating that Original Equipment Mfgs probably only pay around $30-$50 for the MS OEM license (some maybe even less).  They definitely buy more bulk than any store (NewEgg included) that is selling OEM licenses for $99.

[Jeff Zylstra]

I just had a similar issue with my old XP machine at home.  It ended up that the PageDefrag program that I thought was installed, was not installed.  After installing that, it took about 20 minutes to run at boot up the first time but I noticed an immediate increase in speed and decrease in disk activity.   I did double the paging file size as well, but I'm guessing that the defrag of paging file made a difference.   

Unfortunately, the PageDefrag program does not work with operating systems later than XP.  You can also defrag XP by setting the paging file size to "zero" and rebooting (do this in Computer-Properties-System Properties-Advanced-Performance- and hit the "change" button under "virtual memory".  Those instruction are from a Windows 7 machine, but XP is fairly similar.  You'll need to reboot to make the changes effective, and then just do a simple disk defrag.  I recommend running this over night since it will take a while to run and you the system will be very slow without a paging file.   Hopefully you should notice some improvement in performance.

[Jim Jensen]

Dell does have a solid state HD option now. When I ordered my last Precision, I had the option for a solid state HD for "only" $875 more. 

[Mark]

Just for kicks, I am trying the old (which I used to consider annoying) Disk Cleanup utility.  Apparently, I'll free 15GB!  I did notice a Local Settings folder that was 2.5 GB so, I will report back after I run this and sleep through a few reboots.  I think the "slow" complaint is only during first boot & reboot (but not log off & logon) which also has me thinking about wiping cobwebs off some group policies.

Can't remember if I mentioned this already, but I did defrag all of the workstations a few weekends ago.

[Jeff Zylstra]

Just for kicks, I am trying the old (which I used to consider annoying) Disk Cleanup utility.  Apparently, I'll free 15GB!  I did notice a Local Settings folder that was 2.5 GB so, I will report back after I run this and sleep through a few reboots.  I think the "slow" complaint is only during first boot & reboot (but not log off & logon) which also has me thinking about wiping cobwebs off some group policies.

Can't remember if I mentioned this already, but I did defrag all of the workstations a few weekends ago.

I still set my workstations to defrag at least every other month.  I wrote a batch file the uses the cleanmgr program in windows, then runs the defrag program in sequence. 

I highly recommend that you use the sageset and sagerun commands with cleanmgr so that you can bypass the file compression routines for "seldom used" files.  That routine seems to take the biggest problem with the windows disk cleanup program.

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

My WD Black drive was recently acting up - very slow.  this was on a Win7 system - turns out one of the Windows "recommended" updates did something.  I pulled off 3-4 updates and it was pretty much back to normal.

[Mark]

Interesting.

[Bloody Jack Kidd]

I suspect it was this one precisely...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018

[Mark]

I suspect it was this one precisely...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018

That's interesting and makes perfect sense to me why it may cause issues.  I'm bookmarking this one in case I run into it.

Thanks!

[Jeff Golas]

Things I've tried:

Run Defrag but only after turning off the page file and rebooting first

Cleaning out or just flat out replacing the users's profile - mad amounts of cached installer files in addition to Java, Flash caches, etc. Those can number in the thousands and while they may be 20mb, 4000 files copying takes time no matter what.

Re-imaging. This works 50-50..its seems something with the patches does weigh down the PC but overall in most cases it does buy back some performance.

Laptops - checking event logs, some of the built-in laptop software often conflicts with updates. In some cases stopping/disabling a service will REALLY wake up a laptop.

Increasing ram to 3+ gigs - this definitely helps but again, sometimes only so much.

[Gene Foraker]

How large is your pagefile?

It sounds like it is doing a a lot of caching on the HD.

http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm