2TB WD Caviar Green write issue on Intel® Desktop Board DX79SI

[idata]

Hello

I'm curently builded a brand new desktop PC. I have trouble with a WD drive.

It takes almost 1 hour until a 1GB is written to the drive. The transfer rate falls below 4MBytes /s (in windows). The SMART feature doesn't report any trouble. When the transfer rate drops, it seems that the drive seek the secors where to write.(Moves the heads back and forth)

At first I thought that can be a driver issue but is not be ,because I have another two drives (500 GB each) on the sane SATA Host and I don't have this issue. I tried on different SATA ports (6 and 3 Gb).

I tried also to lowlevel format the drive with their utility (DLDIAG) in dos and windows, but the time needed was to long (about 80 hrs) to complete. I put the drive into another PC (on Intel DQ45CB board ) and the format process takes only 2 hrs.(2 hrs is normal)

The SATA interface settings in the BIOS is set to AHCI and NCQ is enabled.

My configuration is:

Mainboard: Intel® Desktop Board DX79SI

CPU: Intel Core i7 3930K

RAM: 32GB Geil Veloce (Quad Channel)

HDD: 1 x Intel 240 GB SSD (520 Series)

2 x Seagate ST3500320

1 x WD20EARX-00PASSB0 (firmware 51.0AB51)

OS: Windows 7 SP1 64 bit

Windows SysInfo

Item Value

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Manufacturer INTEL_

System Model DX79SI__

System Type x64-based PC

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz, 3201 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date Intel Corp. SIX7910J.86A.0553.2012.1027.1042, 10/27/2012

SMBIOS Version 2.6

Windows Directory C:\Windows

System Directory C:\Windows\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1

Locale United States

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"

Time Zone GTB Standard Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 32.0 GB

Total Physical Memory 31.9 GB

Available Physical Memory 28.9 GB

Total Virtual Memory 63.8 GB

Available Virtual Memory 60.4 GB

Page File Space 31.9 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

[idata]

I downgraded the BIOS to the prevous version (SIX7910J.86A.0537),but didn't change nothing. Can be a hardware issue or just a driver or BIOS bug. The drive works well on Intel DQ45CB board.

Any other ideea will be helpful. Thank you

[idata]

Board AA# G28808-601

[idata]

Which motherboard SATA data port is the drive attached to?

[idata]

The issue is only with this WD drive.

[Disks]

Item Value

Description Disk drive Manufacturer (Standard disk drives) Model ATA INTEL SSDSC2CW24 SCSI Disk Device Bytes/Sector 512 Media Loaded Yes Media Type Fixed hard disk Partitions 2 SCSI Bus 0 SCSI Logical Unit 0 SCSI Port 0 SCSI Target ID 0 Sectors/Track 19 Size 223.57 GB (240,055,287,808 bytes) Total Cylinders 110,164 Total Sectors 468,857,984 Total Tracks 24,676,736 Tracks/Cylinder 224 Partition Disk # 0, Partition # 0 Partition Size 100.00 MB (104,857,600 bytes) Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes Partition Disk # 0, Partition # 1 Partition Size 223.47 GB (239,949,840,384 bytes) Partition Starting Offset 105,906,176 bytes Description Disk drive Manufacturer (Standard disk drives) Model ATA ST3500320AS SCSI Disk Device Bytes/Sector 512 Media Loaded Yes Media Type Fixed hard disk Partitions 1 SCSI Bus 3 SCSI Logical Unit 0 SCSI Port 0 SCSI Target ID 0 Sectors/Track 63 Size 465.76 GB (500,105,249,280 bytes) Total Cylinders 60,801 Total Sectors 976,768,065 Total Tracks 15,504,255 Tracks/Cylinder 255 Partition Disk # 2, Partition # 0 Partition Size 465.76 GB (500,105,740,288 bytes) Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes Description Disk drive Manufacturer (Standard disk drives) Model ATA ST3500320AS SCSI Disk Device Bytes/Sector 512 Media Loaded Yes Media Type Fixed hard disk Partitions 2 SCSI Bus 5 SCSI Logical Unit 0 SCSI Port 0 SCSI Target ID 0 Sectors/Track 19 Size 465.76 GB (500,105,740,288 bytes) Total Cylinders 229,504 Total Sectors 976,769,024 Total Tracks 51,408,896 Tracks/Cylinder 224 Partition Disk # 3, Partition # 0 Partition Size 100.00 MB (104,857,600 bytes) Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes Partition Disk # 3, Partition # 1 Partition Size 465.66 GB (499,999,834,112 bytes) Partition Starting Offset 105,906,176 bytes Description Disk drive Manufacturer (Standard disk drives) Model ATA WDC WD20EARX-00P SCSI Disk Device Bytes/Sector 512 Media Loaded Yes Media Type Fixed hard disk Partitions 0 SCSI Bus 2 SCSI Logical Unit 0 SCSI Port 0 SCSI Target ID 0 Sectors/Track 63 Size 1.82 TB (2,000,396,321,280 bytes) Total Cylinders 243,201 Total Sectors 3,907,024,065 Total Tracks 62,016,255 Tracks/Cylinder 255[SCSI]

Item Value

Name Intel(R) C600 Series Chipset SATA AHCI Controller Manufacturer Intel Corporation Status OK PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1D02&SUBSYS_49538086&REV_05\3&21436425&0&FA I/O Port 0x00004068-0x0000406F I/O Port 0x00004074-0x00004077 I/O Port 0x00004060-0x00004067 I/O Port 0x00004070-0x00004073 I/O Port 0x00004020-0x0000403F Memory Address 0xEB527000-0xEB5277FF IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967285 Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\iastora.sys (3.5.1.1008, 563.96 KB (577,496 bytes), 12/15/2012 12:30 PM)

Now is connected to 3Gbps. I tried in all SATA ports. I also exhanged the SATA cables, but it's the same issue.

[idata]

SATA PORT 0: INTEL SSDSC2CW24

SATA PORT 1: -

SATA PORT 2: WDC WD20EARX-00P

SATA PORT 3: SEAGATE ST3500320AS

SATA PORT 4: TSS ATAPI CD/DVD

SATA PORT 5: SEAGATE ST3500320AS

SATA MODE AHCI . No RAID array is defined.

[idata]

I put the WD Green Hard Drive into external rack (connected via USB)and I don't have anymore the issue.

It seems that, Intel motherboard DX79SI doesn't like the WD Green drives, which parks his heads in every 8 sec.

It's very sad, that intel didn't come ,with a BIOS update related to this issue. I didn't wanted to send back the board for RMA ,but next time I will choose another manufacturer.