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 Post Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 6:58 pm 
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Since I dropped and destroyed my 1TB 3.5 inch 7200 RPM data drive I'm using the original 640GB 5400 RPM drive that came with my laptop before I upgraded to a 1TB drive until I get around to buying a new drive. LOL! No, nothing was lost as I also believe in backups. ;)

This seems weird but it would seem that the 5400 RPM drive is just too slow for my desktop system in some cases. For instance I tried making an ISO image of a full DVD and kept getting an out of memory error when I'd try to write to this 5400 RPM drive. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the drive.

If I set the destination for the ISO file to either my SSD or media drives there is no issue at all.

Here is the difference; the buffer for the data making the ISO is around 45MB used if sending to my media drive. I didn't pay attention to the buffer size when sending to the SSD. When sending to the 5400 RPM drive the buffer, before failure, shows over 700MB.

The only reason that I can figure is that the data drive is just too slow. Kind of weird in a way but is the only thing that makes sense to me. Actually another difference may be that I believe that the 5400 RPM drive is only SATA 1, possibly SATA 2 but I doubt.

Just an interesting thing that I thought some might find interesting. Not looking for any solution as it is already solved by writing to a different drive.

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 Post Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 10:00 am 
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I can't imagine speed would cause an out of memory error. It should work with a slow drive but just be slower. Oh, wait are we talking about computers ... :mrgreen:

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 Post Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 11:30 am 
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It is my guess that the drive could not keep up with the processing and the output buffer got too large causing the out of memory. I base that on there being no issue when sending to two different faster drives and the reported output buffer size being over 17 times larger at the time of the error on the slower drive than on the faster.

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 Post Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2015 6:36 pm 
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Just in case anyone is interested this is the actual error code that I get.
Attachment:
memory-error.jpg
memory-error.jpg [ 6.68 KiB | Viewed 6933 times ]

Like I said, no real issue as I just write to a different drive and there is no issue. Actually it is sort of an odd message as it states "Out of memory" then "Not enough storage is available". As to storage the drive in question has 313GB free and I have 8GB RAM.

BTW, chkdisk and S.M.A.R.T. both report the drive as OK.

I will probably copy all the data to my media drive and drop the thing to unallocated space and re-do just to see. Since the drive was previously partitioned and I just killed the second partition and expanded it is possible that something non-fatal happened.

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 Post Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2015 7:50 pm 
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Sort of closing this out unless anyone finds fault with my logic. After all it is not really an issue to me as I just write to another drive.

I did the copy of my data drive to my media drive and wiped the data drive. Took it down to unallocated space and set back up. I tried to create a multi-GB ISO file before even restoring the data and got the exact same error.

1) The software creating the ISO is pretty old. I probably first started using it 10-12 years ago.

2) If I use it to write an ISO to my media drive which is only 5700 RPM but SATA 3, even though only connected to a SATA 2 port, the highest the buffer in RAM shows as ~45MB.

3) I finally 'moved' the error alert box out of the way to see the write state instead of just clicking OK to close. When the failure happens the buffer size is ~1538MB.

4) Considering 2) and 3) I have to accept that the drive is just too slow to keep up and write to the media drive.

What I believe is happening... If I'm not mistaken the drive in question is SATA 1 and only 5400 RPM. It is the original drive out of my 3.5+ year old laptop. I don't believe that it can keep up on writes with the processing capability of my media system. The media system is pretty quick, Processor and RAM score 7.2 and 7.3 respectively in the Win 7 Experience Index under System in the Control Panel. The software is OLD and really not written for today's systems. 10-12 years ago a mechanical drive was not quite as much of a bottleneck as they are on today's systems, especially a slow drive.

My final conclusion is that the it MUST be the low speed of the drive that is causing the issue combined with OLD software that does not "see" that different situations need to be applied between writing directly to a DVD or creating an ISO. 10-12 years ago you could easily use the same parameters whether writing an ISO to a hard drive or burning a DVD. Today you cannot do that.

LOL! I will adjust! I happen to REALLY like the OLD software. :mrgreen:

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 8:41 pm 
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LOL! Another 'final close' on this. I don't care if S.M.A.R.T. and chkdisk say the drive is fine, something is off. It may not be a fatal issue but something is just not right. I don't mean there is something wrong with the drive, just that there is an irritating conflict somewhere.

I am getting performance lags in several cases that are specific to the drive in question. It is almost like the drive is not totally seen by the system. It works but is somehow just off a bit. I've never seen anything like this before. I keep several 'small games' on my data drive. I have actually experienced launching one of these games and getting a dialog stating that the source was not available. A couple of seconds later it goes ahead and loads just fine.

While it is apparent that there is not an issue with the drive in any physical manner I think there MAY be an issue with the drive controller and my switching to AHCI in my BIOS.

I figure that I'll end up buying another drive but that has to take second seat for the moment. In the interim I figure to pull the drive and replace with a 1TB drive that I am currently using for images. I will then use the weird drive for images as it is also large enough for the purpose. Or, mayhaps, I'll just keep things as they are until I get around to buying a new drive.

Just one of the stranger things I've ever seen with computers... :)

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 10:46 pm 
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Well if it happened date coincident with switching to AHCI in BIOS, then that would certainly indicate a problem with that. Now if that effects, or is affected by the drive controller, then I would go with the controller.

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 Post Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 11:06 pm 
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I'm guessing that it is a controller firmware issue but really can't say for sure. I DO know that there are no issues from previous setups as this is a recent clean install.

In theory AHCI should not even be factor with this drive as AHCI is apparently only supposed to affect the boot drive.

Like I said, not really concerned, just intrigued. :mrgreen:

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 Post Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2015 7:27 pm 
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I switched out the WD 640GB 5400 RPM 2.5 inch laptop drive with a 1TB Hitachi 7200 RPM Deskstar 3.5 inch drive and all issues seem to be resolved.

I tried a few items that I knew were lagging and saw no lags. Performance is where it should be. A real test will be when I launch my Play Station 1 emulator as I was getting lags just like a physical disk was 'stuttering' or 'skipping'. Since I'm running the games via ISO files that cannot be the case. The Hitachi drive used to be partitioned for system and data and I never had such issues and assume I will not now.

I suppose that I never should have mounted the WD 640GB drive as a data drive when I got my SSD for the system drive. I just figured that I didn't need a 1TB drive just for data and went with the 640GB WD drive as I didn't believe that the lower RPM would really matter with a data drive. I still don't think it was the 5400 RPM that caused all the issues but regardless I picked the wrong drive. Since my data at the moment totals only ~215GB I just might partition the Hitachi and schedule incremental imaging. My preference is a single solid image but it might not be a bad idea. The Hitachi has more than enough room to do this and I could then schedule a weekly image to the internal drive partition while possibly doing a monthly to the WD drive.

Originally the WD drive was for images from my media system and I guess it will go back to that job. Previously this had been done via USB so I will have to see if it will handle the external SATA connections I've ran from my motherboard. If there are any issues I will just go back to attaching via USB until I acquire another drive.

Also the issue I was having as to writing a large ISO file is gone. I wrote a 3.97GB ISO in 45 seconds without issue. The buffer never went over 90MB where it was hitting ~1538MB when the error would pop up with the 640GB drive. I have to conclude that the WD drive is just extremely slow and could not keep up with what I was doing causing the buffer to get too large.

I wish that I could determine if switching to AHCI was a contributing factor but cannot as I pretty much did all that at the same time that I was switching drives when I acquired the SSD so I have no base to compare with as to how the drive would perform before going to AHCI. Of course I could switch back to IDE mode in the BIOS but don't feel like messing with the registry hacks to allow that when I intend to stay with AHCI if for no other reason than the fact that I like getting the S.M.A.R.T. status when booting.

I didn't really realize another thing. I can already see that the change to the Hitachi Deskstar has had more impact than just stopping the lags in performance and solving the ISO write issues. My boot time is quicker probably due to the WD drive taking longer to poll. Even my checking for new emails is quicker. Remember that I keep my mail store on my data drive.

As a probable relief to some I now consider this issue solved and closed. :mrgreen:

As a special note to Patty as I know you also like Hitachi Deskstar drives... ;) Through Amazon and other sources you can still get the things new from 1TB to 4TB in size. At a quick look I saw 1TB drives for $62.00 USD. I may buy a few as I really like the drives. I'd have to look at the warranty situation since Hitachi isn't really there any more.

<edit> The Play Station 1 emulator is now also proven without any 'stutter' or 'skipping'.

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 Post Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2015 9:42 am 
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Yes, understood on the warranty. Well, hopefully you wouldn't need it! All of mine are still going strong. I have 5 of them in various places.

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