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Abnormal read speeds on BootCamp

Hey. I've been getting extremely slow read and write speeds on some operations while using my iMac running Windows 10.


User uploaded file

Look at that extremely slow read and write speeds when accessing random 4KiB files. It literary takes more than two seconds just to do a refresh on the desktop. Not to mention that it also takes at least one and a half seonds just to list the drives under My computer.


Here's the full report of the speed test:


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

CrystalDiskMark 5.1.0 x64 (C) 2007-2015 hiyohiyo

Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]

* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes



Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 114.952 MB/s

Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 112.264 MB/s

Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.073 MB/s [ 262.0 IOPS]

Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.076 MB/s [ 262.7 IOPS]

Sequential Read (T= 1) : 115.971 MB/s

Sequential Write (T= 1) : 113.034 MB/s

Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.482 MB/s [ 117.7 IOPS]

Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.077 MB/s [ 262.9 IOPS]



Test : 1024 MiB [C: 21.3% (49.8/233.9 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]

Date : 2015/12/25 20:59:07

OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 10586] (x64)

Anyone else having terrible speeds on their late 2015 5k iMacs?


Cheers,
Szabolcs

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1), Boot Camp 6.0

Posted on Dec 25, 2015 12:10 PM

Reply
13 replies

Oct 2, 2016 5:54 PM in response to Loner T

Hi, here it is:


NTFS Volume Serial Number : 0xec1013ae10137f30
NTFS Version : 3.1
LFS Version :2.0
Number Sectors : 0x00000000778537ff
Total Clusters : 0x000000000ef0a6ff
Free Clusters : 0x000000000e203843
Total Reserved : 0x0000000000001834
Bytes Per Sector : 512
Bytes Per Physical Sector : 4096
Bytes Per Cluster : 4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment :1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment :0
Mft Valid Data Length : 0x0000000014440000
Mft Start Lcn : 0x00000000000c0000
Mft2 Start Lcn : 0x0000000000000002
Mft Zone Start : 0x0000000000ae1e20
Mft Zone End : 0x0000000000aee640
Max Device Trim Extent Count :0
Max Device Trim Byte Count : 0x0
Max Volume Trim Extent Count :62
Max Volume Trim Byte Count : 0x40000000
Resource Manager Identifier :0A22C143-88F0-11E6-ABAC-970DD1665829

Oct 3, 2016 3:32 AM in response to Loner T

Here is from the OS X


Device Block Size: 512 Bytes
Allocation Block Size:4096 Bytes


I have looked around, it seems that this combination is for "Advanced Format (also known as 512E)" drive type.

as detailed here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2510009


Would it be required to convert the HDD to 4K native drive type?

P.S. I'm new to OS X (2 weeks), although I work in IT filed for almost 20 years (mostly in software development) 🙂

Oct 3, 2016 5:33 AM in response to darkdragondark

darkdragondark wrote:


So in this case, the iMac came with this wrong sector format (512/4096)?

It is not 'wrong', but to quote Dylan 'The times, they are a-changin...' . Older software did not handle 4K IO, but as IO has evolved along with hardware, tests have included 4K IO testing.


Human nature is to suspect low numbers with such tests as 'failures'. If your workload does not demand large-block IO, this number is not critical. Only large video editing software and similar, benefit on a single-user Mac from 4K IO. If you want to see better numbers, you will need to make necessary changes, otherwise, unless your applications are slower, they are just numbers.


Newer Macs have started using 4K on the SSD/Flash drives parts. On 2015 and later iMacs and Minis, 4K block size is common now.


I suggest you test the changes thoroughly. The numbers may get better, but your normal workload IO performance is dependent on your usage patterns and applications you use.

Oct 3, 2016 7:09 AM in response to Loner T

Well, nothing appeared as unusual to me in win10 Boot Camp, except when I have started to install Visual Sutdio 2015 (full features) and it was painfully slow.

The installation has around 40K files and windows was frozen with the disk activity at 100% (I/O at maximum) (while max writes didn't pass 10MB).


If I'm about to rebuild the Fusion drive, I'm thinking to change the HDD with a SSD, since the Win 10 Boot Camp is deployed only on the HDD part.

Abnormal read speeds on BootCamp

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