Hard Drive is SLOW

[Lithium381]

I was having some major slow downs when doing HD intensive processing, like making a Divx for example....it goes slugglishly slow....i installed nero(even though i dont' have a burner) to check my drive speed, all thee drives are going at 4mb/s. I have a Maxtor 1.2gb, a Quantum 3gb, and a Quantum 30gb.......the last one is the one i'm concerned about...since that's where i do most of my stuff from. My brother has the same line of HD, only a 40gb, and he acheives 33mb/s on his, and i'm thinking this would help me TREMENDOUSLY if i could get this speed up. I'm using a Soyo k7-vta-b mobo with a duron 800@850. I don't know if i installed the HD support or whatever for my motherboard...but i bleive so......what can i do to speed myself up? Thanks

 

[Colt45]

its sounds like your drives are using PIO instead of DMA
go into the bios and check to make sure DMA is enabled.

 

[Evadman]

Also make sure you are using a ATA 66/100 cable. It should have 80 wires instead of 40.

<edit>
Here is a quick picture I just snapped. You will have to look carefully, as my camera kind of, how shall we say... blows 🙂
REgular cable on left, ATA 66/100 on right WArning, this is on my own Server on a DSL, so it will be slow to download.
</edit>

 

[Lithium381]

<< Also make sure you are using a ATA 66/100 cable. It should have 80 wires instead of 40.

<edit>
Here is a quick picture I just snapped. You will have to look carefully, as my camera kind of, how shall we say... blows 🙂
REgular cable on left, ATA 66/100 on right WArning, this is on my own Server on a DSL, so it will be slow to download.
</edit> >>



Okay, i'm going to go reboot and check my BIOS, see what that shows up, and then i'll have to do surgury to make sure i'm using a 66/100 cable.....i think i am though, i've got one with fat wires, and then one with lots of thinner ones...i'm assuming that's the one i SHOULD be using on my faster drive......so be back, if i don't come back, .......well lets not think like that....wish me luck

PS you're right, it is slow 😉

 

[Lithium381]

<< its sounds like your drives are using PIO instead of DMA
go into the bios and check to make sure DMA is enabled. >>



Well, both the PIO and the UDMA options are set to "auto" I can either disable UDMA, or select a mode for my PIO
I looked as it was booting up, and heres' what we've got:
Primary Master: 1.2gb is set to PIO4 Drive C
Primary Slave: 3.0gb is set to ATA 33 Drive E
Secondary Master: 30gb is set to ATA 66 Drive D
Secondary Slave: DVD is set to ATA 33 as Drive F

All drives read at 4mb/s.....

Motherboard specs

 

[Lithium381]

any programs or anything i can use to see my settings and what i can do to speed it up? I dont' think it's my cable....

 

[Ciber]

how are you benchmarking your hard drives with nero? i dont see an option for that anywhere....im also curious since my hd seems to be going kinda slow also....need something to benchmark it under xp...

 

[Lithium381]

<< how are you benchmarking your hard drives with nero? i dont see an option for that anywhere....im also curious since my hd seems to be going kinda slow also....need something to benchmark it under xp... >>




Under the copy CD option in the wizard, go to the image tab, and click the button for "test drive speed" or something similar to that.....

 

[Lithium381]

Sweeet, solved my problem, I went back and installed the DMA drivers that came with my mobo....stpuid me.....that solved the speed problem, i now get 4mb/s, 12, and 34, for my drives...BIG difference.....that caused a problem with my DVD drive, for which i had to uncheck DMA in the system > device manager > cdrom drives > settings > DMA....
Now i'm rocking ;-) Thanks all for your help