MSI K8N Neo2 mobo and ATA speed issues

[MainframeGuy]

I have just built a nice new AMD64 3500 system and there is one problem left that I am pretty sure is hitting performace really hard.

Although I have one SATA drive at present my system is installed on a partition on the Master IDE drive (I have two IDE drives). Anyway when I access the IDE driver from Device Manager and check the speed the master is running UDMA 5 (=100) and the slave is running UDMA2 !!!

Correct me if I am wrong but aren't they all slowed to the lowest speed aren't they? It sure looks like it when I use hibernate mode and come out of hibernate it is slower than my Athlon 3000+!

I have ordered a couple of spare IDE 80 cables to try changing that, but can anyone else help or offer any other advice.....

thanks guys

 

[Cheetah8799]

I was just going to suggest you try replacing the IDE cables, especially if they are crimped or bent a lot.

 

[MainframeGuy]

not crimped or bent - but they came with the MSI mobo and they are the type which I think immitate narrow ones by having heat sink on their lengths and just rolling up standard IDE cable (cannot be good for the signal I guess?) - anyway like I said replacements on order to try - thanks.

 

[MrChad]

What are the models of your two IDE drives?

 

[MainframeGuy]

The newer IDE ATA drive is a Samsung Spinpoint P SP1614N 160GB ATA-133 8MB Cache and the older is a Seagate Barracuda I forget the model, but I know it is 80GB and 7200 rpm with ATA133 (bought a 2 or three years back, same price as spinpoint now).

So, they should both be UDMA6 capable SFAIK

 

[MainframeGuy]

OK not an answer as such, more an update of sorts --- I just took an image of my windows partition and moved it to my SATA single drive.....

A lateral thinking solution to say the least ! Also a shed load of work (I have learnt a few tricks there - like even single drive has to be RAIDed for SATA plus only SATA 3/4 on my mobo seem good for my SATA drive plus you MUST unplug IDE to format and install XP to SATA.....

Aside from that 😱 it was easy as pie... hehe