That SMART report looks healthy to me.  However, it indicates that you are running firmware CC34 on that drive.  I highly recommend that you update the firmware to CC35.  See this thread for more details.  The older firmware could be the cause of the slow performance you are seeing.

All new drives should be 4k-aligned. Existing non-AF drives can be left non-aligned. There is no reason to change them.

 

Does it matter though if they are 4k aligned?

ONLY the WD EARS drives performed significantly better when the partition was aligned on 4k boundary's, and that is probably only when working with many small files in tests.    Those same EARS drives work just fine even when not-aligned for most users.  It is only when reading and writing lots of small files you'll see any difference.  For large contiguous files (movies, music, etc) I doubt you'll ever notice any difference in performance. 

I have several that are older that have come back refurbished.  How do I tell if they are non-AF drives?

You ONLY need to be concerned with the EARS drives.  They are the ONLY drive with the firmware that works better if aligned on a 4k boundary.  Any other drive will work aligned on a 512 byte boundary or a 4096 byte boundary.

I guess would it do any harm if all future drives that get added to the system are 4k aligned since that's the default setting I have for Pre-Clear?

It will not do any harm to align to a 4k boundary UNLESS it is an WD EARS drive with an added jumper to electrically add one to the requested sector.  That would force a request for sector 64 to actually request sector 65, and the result is the performance of a non-aligned request.  (It would still work just fine, but for the those who are obsessive for max performance, would bother them to lose sleep until re-partitioned)

That SMART report looks healthy to me.  However, it indicates that you are running firmware CC34 on that drive.  I highly recommend that you update the firmware to CC35.  See this thread for more details.  The older firmware could be the cause of the slow performance you are seeing.

 

Thanks for looking and pointing that out.  I was able to update the firmware and am now running the Pre-Clear.  Do you think it's possible a drive just connected via Sata in my system would affect "other" drive Pre-Clear's?  Or would it only affect this one?

 

Also, I have a Seagate ST2000DL003.  Do you know if this one needs a firmware update as well?

All new drives should be 4k-aligned. Existing non-AF drives can be left non-aligned. There is no reason to change them.

 

Does it matter though if they are 4k aligned?

ONLY the WD EARS drives performed significantly better when the partition was aligned on 4k boundary's, and that is probably only when working with many small files in tests.    Those same EARS drives work just fine even when not-aligned for most users.  It is only when reading and writing lots of small files you'll see any difference.  For large contiguous files (movies, music, etc) I doubt you'll ever notice any difference in performance. 

I have several that are older that have come back refurbished.  How do I tell if they are non-AF drives?

You ONLY need to be concerned with the EARS drives.  They are the ONLY drive with the firmware that works better if aligned on a 4k boundary.  Any other drive will work aligned on a 512 byte boundary or a 4096 byte boundary.

I guess would it do any harm if all future drives that get added to the system are 4k aligned since that's the default setting I have for Pre-Clear?

It will not do any harm to align to a 4k boundary UNLESS it is an WD EARS drive with an added jumper to electrically add one to the requested sector.  That would force a request for sector 64 to actually request sector 65, and the result is the performance of a non-aligned request.  (It would still work just fine, but for the those who are obsessive for max performance, would bother them to lose sleep until re-partitioned)

 

Thanks for clarifying Joe.

That SMART report looks healthy to me.  However, it indicates that you are running firmware CC34 on that drive.  I highly recommend that you update the firmware to CC35.  See this thread for more details.  The older firmware could be the cause of the slow performance you are seeing.

 

Thanks for looking and pointing that out.  I was able to update the firmware and am now running the Pre-Clear.  Do you think it's possible a drive just connected via Sata in my system would affect "other" drive Pre-Clear's?  Or would it only affect this one?

 

Also, I have a Seagate ST2000DL003.  Do you know if this one needs a firmware update as well?

 

No, I don't believe your other Seagate drive needs the firmware update.  I also don't believe an idle drive would affect other preclears.