Slow SATA Drive Performance

Hi,
I recently installed a WD 200GB SATA drive as my boot drive. Partition 80GB as C: (85% free space) and balance space as D:
I notice that its much slower in starting up my XP as compare to my earlier WD40Gb IDE drive. Any ideals what could be the reason for that?
Thanks

Your new drive may just be 'slower' than the old one. If they are both 7200RPM disks, it is likely that the older/smaller drive has a faster access time and/or transfer rate. This is not alwayst the case but it is possible.
Also, ensure that you have the latest nVidia nForce2 drivers installed. If you know the new drive should be 'as fast as' or 'faster than' the old drive, then check the settings that JeanGuy suggested, and if they are all set correctly, look into reverting your nVidia IDE driver to an earlier version.

Similar Messages

Using slower SATA drives for FRA and archivelogs

1. I am looking for some advice on storage tiering on a SAN for my oracle database. I currently have a SAN with all 15K SAS drives and I am looking to expand on the SAN and add a bank of SATA 7.2 K drives. I would like to locate our FRA including our oracle “disk to disk” backups and our archive logs to these 7.2 SATA drives and I was wondering what if any effect this would have on our production database?
2. Also I was also considering placing a development instance entirely on the 7.2K drives and was wondering what to expect for performance regarding this?
Thanks

Thanks for the link. And on page 30: "The weakest link determines the IO throughput."
Of course, this ballpark back of the envelope rough approximation can be blown apart by a couple of plan changes in the sql. And the sql is the most common reason for performance problems.
Speed of slower disks can make a difference, which difference can vary based on how close to saturation the I/O is. In a lightly loaded system, reports and such may simply take twice as long. As either cpu run queue lengths or i/o wait times increase, things can go south fast. If a development system is not a very close copy of a production system, it may be difficult to replicate performance problems. Of course any little thing can do that too. It's kind of rare in my experience to have a close hardware copy, YMMV.
Craig Shallahamer and Cary MIllsap have written some books you may be interested in if you haven't seen them. Find Cary's "Thinking clearly about performance" paper.

Filesystem and SATA drive performance

Hi you all,
I'm in the process of installing ArchLinux for the third time on my system and I'm in need for some suggestions. The previous installations went without problems but I have realized that the system was not really tuned for some video stuff I'm working with i.e that I need support for large files on my system. Did a google and found references on xfs system that should do the trick. All went ok and I could work without problems on dv files 10-13 GB in size but suddenly I've realized the abismal low performance of my harddrive when copying files e.g: 20 min for a folder of 512 MB (indeed with multiple folders and small files)!!!. The hardware I'm using is:
AMD Athlon 2500
Gigabyte GA-7VM400AMF (VIA 8237 -sata controller)
Seagate 160 GB SATA harddrive
512 MB ram
-the "hdparm -tT /dev/sda" command gives me:
/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 1260 MB in 2.00 seconds = 629.77 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 152 MB in 3.01 seconds = 50.43 MB/sec
-the "sdparm /dev/sda" output is:
/dev/sda: ATA ST3160827AS 3.42
Read write error recovery mode page:
AWRE 1
ARRE 1
PER 0
Caching (SBC) mode page:
WCE 1
RCD 0
Control mode page:
SWP 0
-the "sdparm -i --verbose /dev/sda" command output is:
/dev/sda: ATA ST3160827AS 3.42
PQual=0 Device_type=0x0 RMB=0 version=0x05 [SPC-3]
[AERC=0] [TrmTsk=0] NormACA=0 HiSUP=0 Resp_data_format=2
SCCS=0 ACC=0 TGPS=0 3PC=0 Protect=0 BQue=0
EncServ=0 MultiP=0 MChngr=0 [ACKREQQ=0] Addr16=0
[RelAdr=0] WBus16=0 Sync=0 Linked=0 [TranDis=0] CmdQue=0
Device identification VPD page:
Addressed logical unit:
desig_type: vendor specific [0x0], code_set: ASCII
00 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 34 4d 54 30 4MT0
10 30 47 4b 48 0GKH
desig_type: T10 vendor identification, code_set: ASCII
vendor id: ATA
vendor specific: ST3160827AS 4MT00 GKH
-I have the following partitons:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3918 31471303+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 3919 3930 96390 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 3931 4055 1004062+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 4056 19457 123716565 83 Linux
sda1 partition is with winXP (still using win bootloader)
sda2 is /boot formatted as ReiserFs
sda3 is swap
sda4 is XFS formatted mounted as /
Now I'm preparing to reformat the whole drive, partitioning in the same manner but using JFS on the "/" partiton ....and this is what I would ask you guys:
1. Are the hdparm readings "normal" for my system? Please reply with some of yours if you have sata drives.
2. Please comment the sdparm readings (have no idea what could these be used for..)
3. The reallife test of copying files tells me that there should be a problem on my system -I mean that my vaio laptop with a PATA drive @4200rpm does better. If this is the case what could it be - hardware? sata_via drive (I would be willing to test a proprietary drive if it exists)? filesystem?
Thank you.

Your new drive may just be 'slower' than the old one. If they are both 7200RPM disks, it is likely that the older/smaller drive has a faster access time and/or transfer rate. This is not alwayst the case but it is possible.
Also, ensure that you have the latest nVidia nForce2 drivers installed. If you know the new drive should be 'as fast as' or 'faster than' the old drive, then check the settings that JeanGuy suggested, and if they are all set correctly, look into reverting your nVidia IDE driver to an earlier version.

[875P Neo Series] Sata Drives performance?!

Hi... Ive installed a Western DIgital Raptor Sata 10.000rpm 74G drive for audio files only, and a Maxtor Sata 160Gb for system (80G partition) and other 80gb partition for backup purposes...
Ive set the bios for native mode i think (this was some months ago) and now how can i know if my Sata drives are running ok, and not limited to 100mbs like the old IDE...
I ask this because, working in audio editor programs, when im running 32 audio tracks at the same time, the HD usage meter goes to 15%-20% every 2 seconds... it doesnt affect the sound, but it should be easier for the 10.000rpm HD...
Can i run some tests to see the performance of the HD?
Is there any other configurations to make besides Bios setup?
Thanks!

thanks!
With the HD Tach i got these values
Western Digital raptor 74Gb 10.000rpm
Random acess: 8ms
CPU Utilization : 5%
average read : 58.4MB/s
In the graphs i see the scsi Ultra 320 bar, a sata 150 bar, a Ata ultraDMA 6 bar, and a bar with 119.2MB/s bar in red...
I didnt like the average read value... is it normal?

Slow SATA Drives

Current setup
K8N Neo (V1)
AMD 4600+ Dual Core
2 X 1G Apacer DDR2 800
IDE Master DVD RAM Drive
IDE Slave DVD ROM
SATA1 Seagate 160 Gig - Setup for 3Gig/sec transfer - Boot drive with Windows XP (SP2)
SATA2 Seagate 160 Gig - Setup for 3Gig/sec transfer
SATA3 IBM 120Gig IDE drive connected via IDE to SATA2 adaptor - used as storage only
Bios setup as Optimium
Using Sandra, all components are functioning according to spec.
However when tesing the transfer speeds from the SATA2 drives, transer speeds of 75Mps arte shown.
Is this the best one can expect or is there a way of setting up the bios to improve these transfer speeds????

Hi!
I understand that you use the twe seagates as stand-alone drives, you did not set them up in a RAID, right? Then, the speeds you see are normal. Try with HD Tach as well to see what that program reports.
If you want some better performance, you can setup both seagates as a RAID-0.

Slow USB/drive performance with new (Oct 2011 release) MacBookPro

I am a Final Cut editor, and began using FCP X about three months ago. I was using my wife's 13" MacBook Pro (previous revision 2.7GHZ i7 dual core, 4GB RAM, OS X 10.6.8) to play with it, and I was able to edit a few projects from a USB 2 drive.
However, on my new (2.4GHZ i7 Quad core, 4GB RAM, OS 10.7.2 part: MD322LL/A) the same video project is choppy, and there's a spinning beach ball when quitting Final Cut that lasts about 25 seconds.
Any ideas why the newer MBP with better graphics and quad cores would be having more trouble with video playback than the (slightly) older dual core machine? The only other difference between them is my computer came pre-loaded with Lion, and the 13" has snow leopard. I don't think I can install Snow Leopard on the new computer to eliminate that variable.
I suspect there might be something going on with the USB port speeds, but beyond running the hardware test (doing it now) I don't know how to test this and know whether it's a "good" speed or not.
Thanks,
~Ryan

I am a Final Cut editor, and began using FCP X about three months ago. I was using my wife's 13" MacBook Pro (previous revision 2.7GHZ i7 dual core, 4GB RAM, OS X 10.6.8) to play with it, and I was able to edit a few projects from a USB 2 drive.
However, on my new (2.4GHZ i7 Quad core, 4GB RAM, OS 10.7.2 part: MD322LL/A) the same video project is choppy, and there's a spinning beach ball when quitting Final Cut that lasts about 25 seconds.
Any ideas why the newer MBP with better graphics and quad cores would be having more trouble with video playback than the (slightly) older dual core machine? The only other difference between them is my computer came pre-loaded with Lion, and the 13" has snow leopard. I don't think I can install Snow Leopard on the new computer to eliminate that variable.
I suspect there might be something going on with the USB port speeds, but beyond running the hardware test (doing it now) I don't know how to test this and know whether it's a "good" speed or not.
Thanks,
~Ryan

2008 - How to make the SATA drives run full speed with Bootcamp and XP ?

Has anyone found a way - after all this time - of repairing a 2006 install of Windows XP SP2 - or in someway fixing the rather slow SATA drive problems?
I have not upgraded to 10.5 - but would if the new Bootcamp somehow (via new drivers??) fixed the problem!
My machine is now 2 years old ( 2.66 4 core ) and I finally need XP's full speed for a project - but most of the posts I've seen are fro 2006 and expired.
Help!
-Glen

And again, my objective to is get 'full speed' from the SATA drives while running XP.
-Glen

SATA negotiated speed reduce disk drive performance

All MacBook Pro computers with SATA drives after mid 2010 have their performanced reduced by negotiating down the drive via software. Is there a fix that corrects this? I wanted to upgrade my drive but this limitation seems to make it impractical since you are getting the actual preformance of the drive anyway and the upgrade will most likely result in the drive still performing at a slower speed. e.g. 3.0 negotiated down to 1.5.

Hey Guys,
I'm upgrading my Apple SSD (TS256A, toshiba) to an OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6 Gbps (Sata v3) SSD. I ran ATTO in the bootcamp Win7 and found a limit at 120 MB/s, exactly what one would expect from a Sata 1.5 Negotiated Link Speed. So I went digging and found page after page of people and one good solution, a firmware upgrade to 1.8 from December 2009. I'm about to run it to see if this gives me 3 Gbps on the interface, which should put me at the 240MB/s limit of SATA v2 (3Gbps). I'll ultimately put the drive in a 2011 MBP 13 and get Sata v3 (6Gbps) and 500 or so.
See the third post, by JoeyR
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2780517?start=0&tstart=0
Link to firmware:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3561
http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacBook_Pro_EFI_Firmware_Update_1_7_
Problems: The package says the computer does not need it. I'll keep working on it. If you work it out, please share.
Best,
fellow

Extremely slow accessing folders in explorer (like 1 or 2 minutes) on SATA drive

OK, where to start ... About a year ago I bought this motherboard. I have one 80 GB WD IDE and one SATA WD 160 GB drive on the integrated Promise controller. I loaded the Promise driver that came with the motherboard and everything was working, no problems accessing either drive. I noticed that that there was a newer driver for the Promise controller so I downloaded it and installed it. After that, whenever I tried to expand folders in explorer on the SATA drive, it would sit there from anywhere from 1 to 2 minutes before showing the folders underneath it. So I reverted back to the old driver and everything worked normal again.
This past weekend I decided to wipe my machine before applying Windows SP2. So I formatted the 80 GB WD IDE drive (I didn't touch the SATA drive, I use that primarily for data storage). I installed Win XP Pro with an integrated SP2. After installing I couldn't see the SATA drive because the driver hadn't been loaded yet. So I went to MSI's site and downloaded the Promise driver and installed it and rebooted. I could see the drive but the same access problem occured. It either takes a minute or two to browse the folders on the drive or sometimes it just hangs when trying to access folders. I found my old Promise driver disk that came with the mobo originally but after installing that I still had the same problem. I then re-installed again but this time I used the F6 to load the Promise driver (from the disk that came with the motherboard) during the windows installation. I still had the same problem.
I searched the forums here but the hits I get are people complaining that their SATA drives aren't performing as fast as their IDE's etc. On the net I did find one guy who has the exact same problem as I do but he didn't have a solution to the problem and no one posted a possible solution to his problem. Anyone have any ideas or have experienced a similar issue?
P.S. - I'm not overclocking my PC and I have the latest BIOS revision.

I've had this exact problem from time to time too, and am having it again after a fresh install of WinXP (updated to SP2).
I find it occurs when I boot up with a DVD data disc in my Memorex DVD writer. Seems to have some thing to do with the Drag-to-Disc software interacting oddly with the OS. This software is part of the Roxio package for managing DVD writers, and comes with the memorex writer.
If I make sure I don't have a disc in the drive, then everything's fine. If I do have one, and simply wait long enough for something to time out in the boot process before logging in and starting to do anything, the problem doesn't appear either. It only shows up if I reboot with a DVD-ROM in the drive (Actually, to be absolutely accurate what was in the drive was a DVD+RW that I had written ordinary files to), log in as soon as I get the login screen, then try and open an explorer window.
If I boot with the drive empty, or go away for ten minutes or so during boot and come back and log in, no problem.
I've got two removable drives in my system, one a DVD writer, the other a straight DVD reader. Both on secondary IDE channel, writer is master, reader is slave. System disc is a 120GB seagate on the ICH5R SATA-2 channel, Promise is configured with a RAID 0+1 array of 4 200GB WD discs (two SATA, two ATA/100 on IDE 3).
Try pulling your CDROM IDE cable so that there is no CD drive in the system, reboot, and see if the problem goes away. You might be having some sort of interference from the secondary IDE channel, or some driver that talks to the CDROM or DVD drive(s) causing problems like I have been.
Good luck, and let us know what results you get from trying this experiment.

[865PE/G Neo2 Series] Slow SATA Performance

I have this system set up:
MSI Neo-2 Platinum Edition
P4 2.8E
WD 40GB PATA
SG 160GB SATA
512 DDR400
ASUS 9800 XT 256MB
I have my PATA drive as my primary drive and my SATA drive as a secondary one with 4 partitions. I have only one problem. My SATA drive aint performing as fast as used to be. I could copy 5GB of data from one partition on the SATA drive to another in about 5 minutes but now when I try it it takes 30minutes. Now this is a huge slowdown. I soved the problem once when I swicthed the cable from SATA 1 to SATA 2 but after a few weeks the problem started again. I try switching again but it dosent seem to work time time. I updated all the nessesary drivers etc... but still the laggy performance.
I have this set up in the BIOS
Legacy Mode
ATA Configuration - PATA only
SATA Keep enabled - yes
PATA channel selection - both
I hope someone can help me indentify and solve the problem.

I've solved the problem after reformatting my drive and reinstalling Windows XP on it. Now the controller drivers are set to UDMA6 and previously it was PIO which I suspect was the cause of he slowdown. I think Windows Update was the root of the problem as it might have installed some defective controller drivers. I have since turned it off.
Hopefully it wont happen again. Anyhow if it does, any way I can change it back to UDMA6?
Also cheers for all the help provided!

Selecting a boot drive for Hyper-V 2012 server - is a boot drive performance important?

I'm setting up a new Hyper-V 2012 server dedicated to virtualization and I'm trying to determine the best choice for the boot drive.
I have 2x250gb SSD drives i'm considering for storage pools for VM's
I have an old 80GB SATA drive
I'm wondering how important the primary boot drive is in a Win 2012 Hyper-V setup. I can partition one of the SSD's to provide a boot partition, or I can just dedicate the 80GB SATA.
What do you think would be a better choice?
Edit: A more precise question, why not partition the SSD for boot? Is there any benefit for separating the disks for boot vs just the partition?
Thanks,
Deco

Hello,
I hope you are having a great day!
What resources are available to you? If you have hardware RAID, it would be best to configure the SSD drives for RAID 1 (mirrored) and run everything from that. This will provide you fault tolerance in the case of a drive failure.
If hardware RAID is not available to you, then definitely use the 80GB SATA drive as the OS Boot Drive, without a hardware RAID for the OS disks you will have a single point of failure no matter what disks you use. Yes with SATA drive the system will boot
up slower :-( , but that is about the only negative.
This will also enable you to leave the SSD's as RAW un-formatted disks which can then be configured in a Storage Pool with mirroring if you wish and then have the VHD's reside there.
Absolutely, dedicate the SSD's for the placement of the Virtual Machines Config and Vhd/Vhdx Files.
For absolute best performance results use VHDX Fixed disks for maximum performance.
Dynamically expanding VHDX will have a minor almost unnoticeable performance hit (depending on the purpose of the VM) and help ensure that the amount of hard disk space the VHDX file is occupying is kept to a minimum. An example of degradation in performance
would become noticeable if for instance, the VM is being used as a file repository and users are constantly uploading files.
The bottom line is, if you don't have hardware RAID for the OS you always have a single point of failure, so hope for the best and keep great backups.

Please Help: problems with 2nd internal SATA drive on G5

Hello everyone,
I was transferring and deleting very large files from my main drive, a 2nd 250GB SATA internal drive, and an external 250GB FW800 drive recently (about 50GB worth of data transfered), and decided to run disk warrior and repair my permissions/verify disk in disk utilities once completed.
Everything seemed fine until I verified my 2nd internal drive upon which I received the following error: "First Aid Failed" citing "Invalid node structure" and that the volume needs to be repaired. I attempted to Repair disk, though the process stops and I get the same error "Volume could not be repaired because of an error."
This 2nd SATA drive only holds data (I'm a musician so it only holds sample data for streaming in Logic) but it contains allot of information (185GB used of 233GB) which according to my math comes out to about 80% used. This should be acceptable amount, correct? The drive also has Journaling enabled, though I'm not sure if its relevant or not.
What should I do? The drive itself seems to be working fine, but why would disk utility have a problem reading/repairing it if its indeed fine. Should I be worried? The drive is probably no more than 2 years old, so it cant be drive failure yet, can it?
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
Update: I tried to graph the problem drive again in diskwarrior, and this time an error occurred! This obviously did not happen the first time I used diskwarrior to graph and build a new directory, so something must have happened recently. What could have happened? What should I do?
Message was edited by: Jonathan Timpe

This 2nd SATA drive only holds data (I'm a musician
so it only holds sample data for streaming in Logic)
but it contains allot of information (185GB used of
233GB) which according to my math comes out to about
80% used. This should be acceptable amount, correct?
Yes, that's fine.
The drive also has Journaling enabled, though I'm not
sure if its relevant or not.
Hmm, I think I once had a drive with a directory problem that couldn't be fixed with DiskWarrior without journaling being (temporarily) disabled. After disabling journaling, I used DiskWarrior to Rebuild the drive's directory, then I reenabled journaling.
What should I do? The drive itself seems to be
working fine, but why would disk utility have a
problem reading/repairing it if its indeed fine.
Should I be worried? The drive is probably no more
than 2 years old, so it cant be drive failure yet,
can it?
I'm afraid it could be, I've had drives fail at any time between half a year after purchase up to 3 or more years after. Though often one hears the drive "die", or notices very slow performance due to bad blocks being weeded out, and the S.M.A.R.T. status - visible in Disk Utility (only for internal drives) in the bottom right, when you select a drive (not volume) is an indicator of a harddisk's health as well (though not the most complete, see this hint, or S.M.A.R.T. Guard).
Update: I tried to graph the problem drive again in
diskwarrior, and this time an error occurred! This
obviously did not happen the first time I used
diskwarrior to graph and build a new directory, so
something must have happened recently.
Did you try to repair anything with Disk Utility in the meantime?
What could
have happened? What should I do?
So did the Repair with DiskWarrior not finish? What kind of error was it?
In my experience, DiskWarrior mostly fixed any directory trouble. For more serious cases, see this thread.

SATA Drives Recommendations

Does anyone have any recommendations on which SATA drive with 100GB or above to use? I don't mind the 5400rpm speed as long as I can have 100GB of storage. Has anyone had the chance to try Hitachi's Travelstar 5k100 SATA drive for $120 on Newegg? I've heard good reports on the 7k100 but not on the 5k100 yet. Just wondering if anyone's had the chance or thought of trying it out.

I should be receiving my new MacBook and aftermarket Seagate 120GB 5400.2 drive by the end of this week or early next week. I read quite a few reviews and SATA hard drive roundups before I made my choice. Some suggested reading is below, but it seems that the Seagate 120GB 5400rpm drives were not much slower than the hitachi 100GB 7200 drives because the increased density of each platter allows the hard drive's read heads to move less to access more data. Since I rarely perform huge file copies, which is where the 7200rpm drives shine, and even 20GB of extra storage will help me, I went that route. Also, the 5400 drives may be slightly less power-hungry, although I'm not sure if that is a statistically significant difference, from reading multiple reviews.
Unfortunately, according to this review, the new SATA toshiba drives aren't faster than the old IDE ones, so it might be a good idea to stay away from those until they are updated again.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/17/newtoshiba_sata_drives_lack_performanceincrease/
Here's a review on the same website that talks about the drive I bought.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/08/22/speedynotebook_storage_withseagate/
There was another very in-depth review on another website that I consulted before making my purchase, but I can't seem to locate it with google again.

Upgrading SATA drives & putting old drives into firewire enclosure

I just ran out of space on my two 250GB internal drives on my G5. These were the BTO units, Maxtor 6Y250M0 and I understand they have a 8MB buffer and 9.3ms seek time.
I am planning on purchasing two 500GB drives to replace them. I have a few performance questions and would like to solicit some opinions on some drives.
First, I understand jumping to 500GB would really slow things down, is this true? What about 750GB?
Second, what brand/model would be recommended? I store music, videos, and lots of pictures plus I play heavy processor load games.
Third, SATA 300? My machine is only 150 but I do plan on upgrading one day to a Mac Pro... Will the slowdown be worse than just buying a 150?
Forth, I am planning on purchasing a firewire enclosure for the two older drives, preferably a dual unit, any recommendations there. (For aesthetic purposes I would like something that looks great). I thought about USB but my machine is only USB 1.0 and I just can't bring myself to that slowdown.
Any recommendations and responses are greatly appreciated. I used to sell this stuff for years but have been out of the loop for sometime now...
5 2.0DP w/ 4.5GB, 23", 6800 Ultra Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Thank you japamac, The hatter and tobszanski for your ideas and help. Here is what I ended up doing.
I purchased the OWC Mercury Elite-AL FireWire 800/400 + USB2 Pro Dual SATA drive enclosure to hold both of the Maxtor drives that came with my machine:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW924AL2K/
This enclosure is great, looks like the G5 and has all the connectivity I was looking for. I then purchased two Maxtor MaXLine Pro 500 SATA II drives:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Maxtor/7H500F0/
I used SuperDuper! to copy on the new 500GB and now I am in business, with plenty of space to spare. SuperDuper is a great app: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13803
I was going to use Carbon Copy Cloner but I was reading somewhere that they haven't updated it to run with 10.4 but I am more than satisfied using SuperDuper.
Thank you all for your help....
5 2.0DP w/ 4.5GB, 23", 6800 Ultra Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Old SATA Drives in new MacPro

Hello,
I just bought a new MacPro desktop and had an old Dual G5 with two internal SATA drives. (Western Digital factory drives). When I got the new MacPro I took the old hard drives out of the G5 and put them into the MacPro. Now whenever I click on the secondary drive (the old one), I can hear the computer start up the drive, but it takes two to three minutes before the Finder window appears. This occurs any time a program or Finder tries to look inside the old hard drive. A lot of the content on the drive is old Adobe projects (which I know slows the machine already). Is it the hard drive or is it the content on the drive that slows it down?
MacPro 2x3 GHz Dual-Core Mac OS X (10.4.7) 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM

Is it the hard drive or is it the content on the drive that slows it down?
Probably both.
Firstly, as hatter suggests, having a drive filled by more than 80% does lead to performance slowdowns for the drive. Additionally he gives good advice in thinking a repartitioning of the drive along with a zero of the entire drive would probably help.
Secondly, check your Energy Saver preferences. If you are sleeping your drives whenever possible try turning that off. It's a common complaint where if a drive is not used within 10 minutes it spins down causing delays, typically 10-15 seconds, when you do want to access the drive.

Slow SATA Drive Performance

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