Fast Computer drops to its knees while extracting large files

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PiNPOiNT

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Sep 19, 2002
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I have a pretty fast computer (Athlon X2 3800+ over clocked to a 4200+)
and a 300gig SATA 2 Hard drive (running on a SATA 2 mobo)
and 1 gig of performance ram
and whenever i extract a large set of rar files my computer basically drops to its knees.

The taskmanager shows both cores only running about 25%, so im guessing its my hard drive that is dying while trying to do this extraction.
My drive is partitioned into 2 parts (small one for windows - large for everything else)
Is it because my hard drive isnt fast enough?

Should i get a seperate drive just for windows?
or should i get one of those super fast drives like a raptor, will that help alleviate the problems?

If i try and surf the web or anything while extracting a large file, it will take like 20 seconds to load up a page, or switch to another open window etc.

thanks for the help
 
For extracting files what you really need is 2 drives. A drive with low seek times & a high spindle speed for the target drive will help if you're extracting a bunch of small files. When extracting large files it's all about CPU & transfer rates. With a single drive it's jumping around between writing the journal (assuming you're using NTFS), writing directory info, writing the file, and reading the archive. The last two are most of the work. On a machine with 2+ drives I often find it faster to put the archive one one drive, extract to the another, then copy the resulting files back to the drive w/ the archive on it. O course, it's better to put the archive on a disk other than the target and just extract to the target location.

edit: As for what to get, that depends on your space needs & budget. If you've got pleny of cash, don't need a lot of space, and don't mind reinstalling I'd get a 74GB Raptor or better yet, a 15k SCSI + controller. Otherwise just get another 7200rpm P/SATA drive. Just having a second drive gets you most of the benefit. Oh, and don't RAID them. You need two seperate physical volumes to speed up archive extractions & creations.
 
Awesome, thanks for the info,

So yeah the money doesnt matter, but the space and extraction times (and being able to still use my computer while extracting) are the most important.

So i want something big AND fast.

Just to make sure im on the same page. I should get a 15K SCSI or a raptor, and install windows on part of that partition,and then....

1 - Use the remainder of the raptor to download and extract FROM to a larger SATA then burn?

2 - Download to a large SATA drive and extract TO a smaller Faster Raptor to burn from?

Thanks again for the help
 
PiNPOiNT said:
Awesome, thanks for the info,

So yeah the money doesnt matter, but the space and extraction times (and being able to still use my computer while extracting) are the most important.

So i want something big AND fast.

Just to make sure im on the same page. I should get a 15K SCSI or a raptor, and install windows on part of that partition,and then....

1 - Use the remainder of the raptor to download and extract FROM to a larger SATA then burn?

2 - Download to a large SATA drive and extract TO a smaller Faster Raptor to burn from?

Thanks again for the help
Click to expand...

SCSI is a waste in a desktop machine. It has already been proven that a modern SATA 7200rpm can keep up with a 15K SCSI drive in MOST tasks. I personally think a Raptor is not worth the price vs performance. You can look at my sig for the HDDs I have installed. I extract files from the same HDD that I have downloaded the RAR files to and I have no slowdown at all. If you keep your OS drive seperate from your DATA drive you will see a nice performance gain. An SATA drive with NCQ and a MOBO with a NCQ capable controller will be about equal to a SCSI controller + SCSI drive. The only thing you will really sacrifice is spindle speed going with SATA (unless you get the Raptor). I personally like to have large HDDs so I never have to worry about space issues.
 
This is the perfect example of why I always recommend 2 drives ..os+app on one and data on another
 
PiNPOiNT said:
Awesome, thanks for the info,

So yeah the money doesnt matter, but the space and extraction times (and being able to still use my computer while extracting) are the most important.

So i want something big AND fast.

Just to make sure im on the same page. I should get a 15K SCSI or a raptor, and install windows on part of that partition,and then....
Click to expand...

If money isn't a problem I'd get 2 more drives. Then make a setup like this:
OS/Apps/Games
extract source/download target/storage
extract target/burn source/storage

That way unless you're digging through whatever random stuff you've got piled up on your storage drives you probably won't even notice the extract going on since your OS/app/game drive won't be taking on any load.
Unless your extractor is multithreaded (probably not), with an X2 you should probably be able to game w/o any trouble with an extract running.

What to get is pretty much up to you. It's pretty much a trade off of space vs. speed and $.
I wouldn't mess with SCSI unless you've either got PCI-e or PCI-X and $ to burn. A regular PCI slot can be a bit of a bottleneck. 2 15k drives will max out the PCI bus. Since you've got an X2 I know your machine isn't a dual CPU box (as in 2 chips, not 2 cores), so you don't have PCI-X. PCI-e controllers are a bit rare and still seem to cost an arm & a leg.

Raptors aren't much if any faster than the latest and greatest 16MB cache drives unless you're working with a pile of little files that lets that low seek time and higher spindle speed really shine. There have been repeated "is a Raptor worth it vs. a 16MB cache drive" arguments going on lately. Look around the storage forum for more info.

If you're working with piles of little files in those extracts & not storing the extracted files after burning a Raptor would be a good choice as an extract target/burn source drive. They make nice system drives too.

If you're extracting & burning big files or want to store extracted files on the hard drive, I'd go with a bigger 7200 rpm drive. The main advantage of SCSIs and Raptors is access time, and access time doesn't matter on large, sequential IOs.

PiNPOiNT said:
1 - Use the remainder of the raptor to download and extract FROM to a larger SATA then burn?

2 - Download to a large SATA drive and extract TO a smaller Faster Raptor to burn from?
Click to expand...
This really depends on what you're downloading and if you're going to keep it after burning it.
If it's an archive containing a bunch of small files (ie- need lots of seeks to write) and you're just going to delete the extracted files after burning, extracting it to a Raptor/SCSI would help.
If it's an archive full of big files it won't make much difference.
If you're going to keep the extracted files, I'd extract to the drive you want them to end up on.
 
Wow, thanks for all of the responses, i guess the main problem is that i have the OS/app on the same drive (different partition) then the extracting, so its slowing things down, i can understand why it would be better if i had 2 seperate physical drives instead of partitions. I will purchase a second smaller drive for the OS/apps and the main 300 gig sata 2 drive for the downloading/extracting/burning/deleting.

thanks guys!
 
hulksterjoe said:
This is the perfect example of why I always recommend 2 drives ..os+app on one and data on another
Click to expand...

OS and Apps meaning Windows XP, Photoshop, Quake 4, etc...

Data meaning Pictures, Music, Text, Videos, Etc...

Correct?

-J.
 
PiNPOiNT said:
Wow, thanks for all of the responses, i guess the main problem is that i have the OS/app on the same drive (different partition) then the extracting, so its slowing things down, i can understand why it would be better if i had 2 seperate physical drives instead of partitions. I will purchase a second smaller drive for the OS/apps and the main 300 gig sata 2 drive for the downloading/extracting/burning/deleting.

thanks guys!
Click to expand...

That sounds like a solid plan. If you're still not happy with the performance, just add a 3rd drive. Maybe get a cheap 80GB to use as an extraction source drive.

With 2 drives you can pick between degraded system performance and slow extracts. Using the system drive as the source will greatly speed up the extract compared to having the data drive to everything. It'll slow your system a bit, but no where close to as badly as making a single drive do all the work. Using the data drive as both the target and source won't speed up extracts, but it also won't slow down your system unless you're accessing that drive.

If you don't need a lot of space you could also just get 2 small drives for doing the extractions. Say a pair of 80GB SATA drives for ~$60 each. That should be enough to max out one core (or more likely run both at ~50%) if you're extracting large files. Newegg's got 80GB WD800JDs for $54.76 + $1 shipping. Max speed for $111.52.

One thing I should warn you about is small drives don't come in the lastest and fastest designs unless you're talking about Raptors or SCSIs. Others will know more details (look around the storage forum), but if I remember right you're looking at at least a 200GB drive if you want a top speed 7200rpm SATA.
 
It's the cost of the 80 GB drive that makes them hard to pay up. Buying a 160 GB HD is much better in terms of costs. Though I can't speak for its speed.

-J.
 
GeForceX said:
It's the cost of the 80 GB drive that makes them hard to pay up. Buying a 160 GB HD is much better in terms of costs. Though I can't speak for its speed.

-J.
Click to expand...
They're no where close to most efficient in terms of $/GB. It's just the cheapest way to optimize the original poster's archive extractions.
That's really just an example anyway. I just had a quick look at the cheapest drives on Newegg. Still, it's hard to argue with 200GB drives for $90 each. That's $30 more for an extra 120GB.
The OP says he's not strapped for cash, so 2 200-250GB 16MB cache drives for $90-100 each is probably a better option.
 
Love my raptors, great for loading times.

Raptor would be a cheaper solution than scsi.

Adding a single raptor as the OS drive would be a nice touch.

Havent noticed any problems with large extractions myself.


how large and what do u extract with? I assume winrar.
 
Alright, i re installed a new windows (onto its own hard drive - Sata 1) and popped in a second drive (sata 2) for downloading to, extracting and burning. Wow, yeah no more system slowdown problems. Everything is nice and fast while im extracting files. I have some older drives kicking around, maybe ill put in a third, and use that as an extraction drive as zandor recommended.

Thanks again for the tips guys.

This will probably clear up my burning problems also (buffer dropping to 0 even if nothing else is going on ) but i havent tried burning anything with this new setup yet.
 
It sounds to be like you have some other system issues of just extracting large rar files slowed it up that much...

I have a somewhat slower machine than you (P4 2.4 no hyperthreading, single core, only 512 MB RAM) and 2 hard disks. I don't have them organized or partitioned in any particular way, both drives hold data, programs, etc, and windows is just open in the main partition with everything else.

Still, even like this I can download something to my system drive (the one with windows) extract it while I'm running opera off of that same drive, and have no big slowdowns during the extration process. Your system being much more powerful should be able to handle that with ease, so it sounds like something is amiss.
 
PiNPOiNT said:
This will probably clear up my burning problems also (buffer dropping to 0 even if nothing else is going on ) but i havent tried burning anything with this new setup yet.
Click to expand...

Buffer dropping to 0? That shouldn't happen on a relatively modern system with nothing else significant going on, even with just one drive. It's probably something else. I've got one thought...

What chipset's on your mobo? I haven't tried this in maybe 6 months, but the NVidia IDE drivers screwed up my burner (Plextor PX-716A) big time. Buffer dropping to 0 with nothing else running is exactly what it did on DVDs. CDs burned ok, but the buffer level would bounce around all over the place. With my previous mobo (MSI K7D Master-L + dual 2600+) the buffer level stayed at 90-100% all the time unless I beat the snot out of the machine.

I just tossed the NV IDE drivers. There's no need for NVidia disk controller drivers unless you're running RAID. The standard MS drivers work just fine. The NV drivers might be faster, but a fubar burner for a little more speed doesn't sound like a good trade-off.

Unfortunately I hear removing them can be a problem. As in, jump through a lot of hoops or reinstall Windows. I didn't have a problem rolling them back, but this machine's HDs are all SCSI so that may have had something to do w/ it.
 
I'm running a Asrock 939dual-sata 2 mobo
it uses the ULI chipset,
i just reinstalled windows MCE onto some a new drive and setup the other ones as we spoke about earlier, but i havent had a chance to try buringing something yet. I will see if it still drops to 0 and bounces around now that things are setup differently.

thx
 
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