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Question

HDD speeds/delays

Jan 8, 2015 12:28AM PST

First post here. My question is sort of complicated, so i will try to make this as short as possible. So i have a media/main computer i built for my house. it serves as the a media hub for all the computers,tv's,notepads ect. throughout the house. The computer has more than it needs for its purposes. 4.0ghz hexacore 16gb ddr3 1800 ram exc.exc. I have several hdd in this computer. a ssd vertex 3 for the os and progs. and several 1tb, 2tb, and 1.5tb HDD to hold all the media. I have shyed away from the green hdd over the years because of the read time delay. just to open a 2 tb green hdd filled takes sometimes over a minute of read time. I do notice on my other hdd's. weather its a 2tb WD black sata6, or a segate 7200rpm hdd there is still a lag in read time. Now its not anything huge but the more thats on a hdd the longer it takes to open, in my experiences. Now please can we not start a argument over who has better hdd? I have a crate here filled equally with seagate,wD, and hitachi hdds all garbage from customers computers. Ive been out of building for about a year now. and in computer life thats like 10 years lol. So my question is. (Finally) I need more storage. Has this "delay" been fixed with newer hdd's? Are the 3 TB and 4TB hdd's even worse? is there anything out there besides ssd that is faster in read time than others? I see there is so many new hdd's out there just read there is a wd red now for high demand usage. I would love to hear from peoples personal experiences. not reviews.

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
Tell what this opening involves.
Jan 8, 2015 1:07AM PST

For example Windows Explorer doesn't just read the file folder but creates icons for files which will take time.

To prove this use the old command line DIR (hey, it's been here since the 80's) and see how fast it will open a list a folder.

Maybe your app needs changing?
Bob

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Answer
opening?
Jan 8, 2015 1:28AM PST

for example just clicking on say (fHappy drive from my computer it sits and takes a good 20-30 seconds before it has loaded all the folders. once all the folders has loaded the read time is fine. These folders all contain media. Movies primarily. I am a impatient person i guess .lol im sorry but i didnt understand some of your response. Can you dummy it down it a bit?

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That's Windows Explorer for you.
Jan 8, 2015 1:36AM PST

Windows Explorer in its default setting does a lot more than list files. It's going to open files in those folders and create icons. This takes a lot of time.

If you want to speed it up, use another file browser or change Explorer's settings to be more plain. Example:
"Always show icons, rather than thumbnail previews of files. Use this setting if thumbnail previews are slowing down your computer." is noted at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/change-folder-options

Sorry but Windows Explorer is doing a lot of work to show you those thumbnails.
Bob

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Answer
understand now
Jan 8, 2015 2:06AM PST

Ok yes i understand the icon thing and no, the main folders do not display icons. But this subject is not about my OP. My question is have they improved these things on newer big hdd. a 1tb HDD has almost no delay in read time. my 1.5 tb has a tiny one, my 2tb is long. the more info the longer it takes to read. I could not imagine what a 6tb hdd full of movies would take to load. I ran a single 3tb hdd when they first came out. and the read time was horrifying. i switched back to smaller drives to fix this. But as time goes on im running outta room and and finding i would rather have everything condensed onto a single drive. hdd bays clutter my desk my tower is full and i see no other option but to go too a 4tb or higher drive.

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If Explorer is delaying, there are reasons.
Jan 8, 2015 2:36AM PST

To test if it's some other issue, the DIR test will be slow too.

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your not getting my question.
Jan 8, 2015 2:55AM PST

Yes explorer is delaying. it will delay the same on every computer clean install and all. it has to load 3tb of data from a secondary drive. I have seen this lag over and over on every computer with larger drives. Its not a software issue. its a hardware issue. explorer is not going to read 3tb of data as fast as it will 1 tb of data. So a 1tb hdd of course will load faster than a 3tb hdd. a 3tb hdd has 3 spools inside it, i presume set up like something similar to raid so they all operate together. But explorer still has to go threw all 3 spools and load what info is on them. But yet again all of your responses have nothing to do with my original question. With advances in technology everyday, has this been addressed in new larger hdd's? If i take a 3tb hdd i purchased 5 years ago and compare it to one i buy right now. Will there be a speed improvement? Have the HDD manufactures improved the read /write times :IE load time with the larger multiple spool hdd's? Is the WD red 4tb hdd faster than a wd black? Has anyone out there seen with there own 2 eyes these improvements? What im looking for here is something like this. from Joe Schmo: Yes Sparky, there has been! I recently added a new WD red 4tb hdd to my system adding to a 5 year old 3tb wd black. The new HDD is much faster! load times are 2 times as fast transfer speeds are much improved!

Or no it still the same your better off still with multiple smaller drives.

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Newer drives can be faster, but Explorer is a bottleneck.
Jan 8, 2015 3:26AM PST

Newer drives use more cache ram in the HDD, may spin at different speeds and there's seek time.

These areas are well discussed and "transfer rate" is less a factor than the seek time. Tomshardware did all this testing for well over a decade.

Here, I read your top post and it sounds like Explorer is doing what it usually does. The DIR test would nail it.
Bob