SATA HD Performance
 

I just downloaded HD Tach, which shows your HD read/write speeds.

I have a SATA Barracuda, and the average read speed is 89.5 MB/s.

Is this normal, or a joke.

That's about normal for that drive if not a bit on the low end for it. 93-98MB/s reads are the upper average for the faster SATA-II drives with bursting hitting the 120MB/sec range. These are numbers in a benchmark setting though so yeah you numbers seem good. The SATA-II channels can handle up to 3GB/sec for a reason.

It's pathetic. Get two 1tb spinpoints in raid, you'll get ~250mbyte/s.

Seriously, 90mbyte sounds fine for an everyday average drive. The bigger samsung spinpoints can hit 100+ due to increased data density, the 1tb spinpoint comes close to the 10000rpm WD Raptors (which have much smaller capacity, cost 2x as much, and sound like a vacuum cleaner).

Look at Toms hardware or some other place for HD speed charts. Tom's hardware in particular is mostly bullshit but their charts are not bad for comparisons, or so you know what to expect.