The hard disk is new, bought it 2 weeks ago. Take a look at my HD Tune results: Notice the downward spikes and the scattered outliers in the access time test? What do they mean?
In all likelihood, it means something is accessing your disk during the test. Is Windows indexing? Any auto updates going on for virus checkers etc? Kill all non-essential processes, and disable virus checkers etc temporarily, and test again. [edit] I also get the scattered access time results, even though I don't get the spikes.
Well, you prompted me to test mine and I have to say mine is also terrible. I killed all background tasks that weren't MSN or a browser and these are the results: Pretty bad imo. This is using a Core I5-750 and a P55-UD2. I'll try changing the SATA cable later though and see if it has an effect on the performance. Out of interest how full is your drive currently? I've got about 500GB of data on mine and wondering if the poor performance is just due to that?
In the very brief time I was using mine before the motherboard got sent back I was getting exactly what you described. I just assumed it was something to do with having a software RAID, to see someone else having its reassuring
Had exactly the same issue with my drive, wiped it and tested with the OS on my old F1 and the F3 empty and the dips were no where near as bad. Your burst looks pretty high though I'm only hitting 164 max.