Terrible Master HD performance after installing a new HD

[Heifetz]

I have a Maxtor DiamondMax ata66 30gig drive as my Master on IDE1 with a IBM 30 gig hd as the slave. I had another 8 gig maxtor running on IDE2 for a while, but yesterday, upgraded it to a Seagate Baracuda 80gig.

When I first initially installed the Seagate, I had a a lot of problems with my computer, and in the end it wouldn't even post. I'm not sure what caused it, but I eventually had to take out every component and reinstall them to post.

Now my computer is working again, the Seagate seems to be running fine, but I notice a massive dropoff in performance in my Master MAXTOR HD. I confirmed it with HD Tach. The Random Access is 22msecs!!! This is almost double what its suppose to be. I have no idea what is causing the performance decrease. Anyone have any ideas on what might be causing this problem?

Heifetz

PS. I'm running a KT7 with a 600mhz duron

 

[Mer]

Do all your drives support the ata66 and above speeds. Combining an ata66 and a ata33 drive on the same cable will cause the speed to drop to ata33... and might even cause problems.

I would try and put you master drive on IDE1 all by itself... do not connect a cd,dvd,cdrw drive to it as this will really slow it down.

So try running your master drive all by itself.

BTW...

On the primary IDE controller

IDE0 = First drive (Your master should be on IDE0)
IDE1 = Second drive.

 

[Heifetz]

Yeah, here is my setup so far.


IDE0
Maxtor ata66
IBM ata66

IDE1
Seagate ATA100?

the thing is, I only have 2 cables, one is ata66 cable, the other is ata33. I'm using the ata33 on my maxtor and my IBM, while the ata66 is on the Seagate. In addition, the KT7 only supports up to ata66.

I'm not sure why the maxtor is so slow. I even diabled IDE1, so that the Seagate isn't detected, and still HD tach gives about 17msec seek for it. Is this normal for a Maxtor DiamondMax 7200 drive?

 

[Mer]

OK, first things first... forget about your benchmarking program... there are too many other factors to consider!!
Go with what your hard drive specs are. Maxtor, IBM or seagate are not going to lie to you!!

Secondly... and ATA66 cable is basically the same as an ATA100 cable.

Now... put the ATA66 cable on your Main drive... where windows is installed... on the primary IDE channel.

Then connect the 80GB and the other drive on the ATA33 cable on the secondary IDE channel.

That should make your windows and PC run faster.

Mer.
PS: Your ata100 drive is backward compatible to ata66 and ata33 speeds so that's not a problem.
PSS: Disabling an IDE channel is not going to speed up your hard drive transfers... Also do a windows update... get the latest drivers for you motherboard IDE controller.