Toshiba S70-B very slow SATA access (2MB/sec), permanent HDD LED on

[inflex]

Schem and boardview for this?

Thought this one was going to be just a HDD bad-sector replacement (and the drive did have bad spots on it) but it's turned in to something a lot stranger.

Sometimes when you boot to a linux rescue disk you'll get 100MB/sec from the 2.5" drive (new, old, test, whatever, all the same), and sometimes you'll get 2MB/sec.

The main "quirk" is that the HDD access LED is *always* on.

Have updated BIOS from v1.10 to v1.60 which is the latest.

Have ordered a 2.5" CD/DVD caddy adapter to see if the fault is exclusive to the HDD SATA channel, or if it's all.

Anyone ever encountered something similar?

Trying to decide if I should be looking for a controller chip fault, or perhaps a socket fault... or just the signal pairs, maybe filters/caps along the lines.

[piernov]

Re: Toshiba S70-B very slow SATA access (2MB/sec), permanent HDD LED on

I'm pretty sure you tried with the DVD drive unplugged, but a defective drive can cause that kind of issues.

[Djosla]

Re: Toshiba S70-B very slow SATA access (2MB/sec), permanent HDD LED on

Bad PCH can cause this issue...

[inflex]

Re: Toshiba S70-B very slow SATA access (2MB/sec), permanent HDD LED on

Thanks @piernov, trying that now.

Djosla, oh that's really not the sort of answer I was looking for :-o It does seem intermittent, so quite possibly you're right. I'll try with one of the DVD-bay 2.5" trays and see if there's a difference, if not, then most likely the PCH as you say.

[inflex]

Re: Toshiba S70-B very slow SATA access (2MB/sec), permanent HDD LED on

UPDATE: Am a bit of a blind idiot, the light I thought was the HDD activity is actually the on/off light, my apologies; don't like how they do not have HDD activity lights on the front much any more, perhaps it was too distracting for too many people?

Still doesn't change the problem with the poor performance

[Djosla]

Re: Toshiba S70-B very slow SATA access (2MB/sec), permanent HDD LED on

Thanks @piernov, trying that now.

Djosla, oh that's really not the sort of answer I was looking for :-o It does seem intermittent, so quite possibly you're right. I'll try with one of the DVD-bay 2.5" trays and see if there's a difference, if not, then most likely the PCH as you say.

I had a very same situation last week on a hp probook with hm76 cipset,and it is not first time.No matter which ssd or hdd put in there it was super slow after few minutes of normal using ...If you would replace PCH don`t forget to clean me region...

[inflex]

Re: Toshiba S70-B very slow SATA access (2MB/sec), permanent HDD LED on

I had a very same situation last week on a hp probook with hm76 cipset,and it is not first time.No matter which ssd or hdd put in there it was super slow after few minutes of normal using ...If you would replace PCH don`t forget to clean me region...

That's exactly it... after a minute or two, back to slow speed

I'm not going to bother with replacing the PCH, don't have the toolset to do it here. The laptop is just going to be a writeoff now.