mavafamusic
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DPC Latency Checker
Greetings,
Can an old hard drive (Seagate 80 Gig) cause bad latency to be seen in DPC Latency checker?
Mine starts to go into the red just after the harddrive makes a noise.
Last night I played back a project with no audio glitches at all.
I then closed the project and came back to it about 20 minutes later. I opened it and it would not play.
I mean it does but with audible artifacts till it stops and the dropout light turns on. I hit the space bar and it plays again with more artifacts. I repeat this till I get annoyed and shut down the blasted pc.
What gets me is that nothing has changed in my DAW for more than 3 years yet it has become very fickle in its workings.
Hence why I think the hard drive could be on its way out.
Cheers
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CJaysMusic
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/22 23:40:33
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Of course.. Peaks in the DPC latency checker can be caused by mal performing hard drives
Cj
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Chappel
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/22 23:51:25
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If you plan on keeping that HD you might want to routinely check it for errors.
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bitflipper
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/23 06:06:46
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☄ Helpful
That noise you hear is the drive performing an RTZ, basically parking the heads so it can recalculate where they're supposed to be. This is what happens when the drive gets "lost" and doesn't know where it is on the disk, and it's caused by bad spots on the surface, a bad head, a pending mechanical failure or a damaged armature or stepper motor. RTZ's normally only occur when you first spin up the drive and are rarely needed after that unless the drive has problems. An RTZ takes several milliseconds to perform, so you bet that would show up as a big red spike on the DPC latency checker.
You should replace that drive.
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mavafamusic
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/23 06:07:09
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Thanks. I thought so much.
I did use seagate tools and I think there was a
firmware update to one or the other of my hdd.
I will look into it again.
Cheers.
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reader1
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/23 09:21:15
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you may check hdd by chkdsk, you can find some problem. or format.
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wormser
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/23 10:16:23
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mavafamusic
Thanks. I thought so much.
I did use seagate tools and I think there was a
firmware update to one or the other of my hdd.
I will look into it again.
Cheers.
Go on the Seagate site and plug in your serial number. It will tell you if there is a firmware update. Also, Seagate had a bad batch of the 1.0tb drives early on. You can check on the site for that as well.
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lfm
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/25 01:53:16
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I have seens some suggestion of settings and harddrives, regarding using DMA transfer or not etc.
This may also create longer DPC's.
If it's relevant for your drive and interface SATA, IDE etc I cannot recall.
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slartabartfast
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/25 15:22:04
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Depending on how old your hard drive is, the Seatools for DOS tests should be able to determine if the drive itself is flaky. If as bit says the noise is repeated RTZ, a full test of the drive under dos should fail. On a newer drive with SMART (Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) an error is detected by the drive firmware itself, that will be available through the Seatools software if it is not being communicated to your OS. On the other hand a new 80 gig HD will probably cost about $40.00, so a swap-out is an inexpensive test.
post edited by slartabartfast - 2010/07/25 15:23:19
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Guest
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/25 15:41:14
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That drive sounds like it is about to take a dump. Back it up now!
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...wicked
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/26 00:48:56
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Srsly. I'd run some deep tests but really I wouldn't put anything valuable on it. Make it your pr0n drive.
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Jim Roseberry
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/26 09:57:10
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You might also check to see if the HD controller is in PIO mode (instead of DMA) If this controller channel is in PIO mode (not DMA) , that will absoluely kill performance. PIO mode will consume much of the CPU just for disk transfer. If you've got a HD benchmark utility... you can verify this. Check all the HD controller channels in Device Manager to make sure they're running in DMA mode
post edited by Jim Roseberry - 2010/07/26 10:09:38
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Guest
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/26 10:03:16
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Jim Roseberry You might also check to see if the HD controller is in PIO mode (instead of DMA) If this controller channel is in DMA mode, that will absoluely kill performance. I believe that is the opposite. DMA is hardware, PIO is software and slower.
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Jim Roseberry
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Re:DPC Latency Checker
2010/07/26 10:07:49
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Yes... that's what I meant  PIO mode will absolutely kill performance Post fixed
post edited by Jim Roseberry - 2010/07/26 10:10:09
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