Hard Disk Monitoring

Hi all,
i have 4 different external box USB3 connected to 2 different PC with pci-express card usb3.0 and usb 3.1.
i test speed for reinilialize disk (surface test desctructive).

When a disk is connected on a sata connector on the system board, speed for read, write and initialize surface are respectively +/- 80mb, 80mb, 46mb.
When this disk ins put into one of the USB3 external box, speed become respectivally 80mb/ 80mb/ 26mb.

In all the test i have done, i can perform the initialed surface test at 46mb in a external usb3 box where smartinfo was not available, when i upgrade the firmware of the box to get the smartinfo available then speed for init go down to 26mb/S.

Generally the Reinitialize disk surface (as it performs 3 x overwrite passes and then a complete delete and then read back to verify the results) should be much more slower than a simple write test.

Rough estimates:

- if a READ test takes 1 hour
- the WRITE test is also approx. same (1 hour)
- the REINIT DISK SURFACE test should be about 3-4 hours

It is completely normal and expected.

If you see FASTER (on eSATA) then the controller uses cache to reduce the amount of "real" overwrite passes (reaching the disk drive), reducing the efficiency of the test. Hard Disk Sentinel attempts to prevent caching to ensure that all overwrite passes should be done. It seems your eSATA controller has some caching mechanism which may make it faster - but less effective.

The normal and expected is that the Reinit. disk surface should be much slower than the simple write test.