I just got a new Dell a few days ago with Win7. The system has a WD5000AAKS-75V0A0 drive installed. As I was using the system I noticed that it would “lag” or “hang” for a few seconds when I was typing or scrolling windows or doing whatever. A bit of investigation led me to running Microsoft’s Resource Monitor where I could see that the Disk Response time on files would sometimes hit 1500 to 3000ms on a lightly loaded system.
Further troubleshooting led me to run various tests and surface scans including the SMART long self test. All the tests passed with flying colors. What I noticed, however, is that while the drive is doing a self-test the lagging goes away. It’s almost as if the drive is going to sleep under normal usage and taking a second or two to wake up. But when doing a self test (or other surface scan) the access to files is MUCH faster, staying in the tens of milliseconds. When the test is over the lagging returns.
It’s counter-intuitive in a way that loading the drive makes it perform better.
Dell has been no help in solving the problem thus far.
Is there something I can do to further diagnose the problem or some settings to disable the power management on this drive? Having the system frequently pause for 1 to 3 seconds is driving me nutty!
thanks!