ATA on Nforce2 slooowwww

[Hooner]

Hello chaps, I must apologise, I feel a bit of a fraud as I'm far from the professional the membership form wanted me to be.

I've searched Google til my eyes bled, posted various "amateur" forums with no success, please help me?

Trying to get my ATA/100 HDD to run at a decent speed off my Nforce2 IDE controller (mobo, not PCI). At the moment it's behaving as if it was in PIO mode, but Xp has the IDE controller listed as ATA, and the BIOS has Ultra DMA set to auto.

So why can't I get a decent speed out of it? it's chugging along like something out of the Flintstones, wouldn't be surprised to open it and find a lizard running on a wheel.

It's all setup correctly, right cable (tried 2), correct jumper settings, this is the only drive on the IDE channel, Nforce2 ATA drivers are the latest from Nvidia.

I used to like computers, more importantly, they used to like me, I feel this is going to test our relationship..............

Many thanks to any who read this.

 

[cdogg]

First, try the drive on the IDE channel by itself if it's not already.

Second if that wasn't it, consider that the problem might be with the OS or perhaps some of the processes that are running in the background. You can try using msconfig (Go to Start -> Run and type msconfig). Choose "Selective Startup", uncheck Load startup group items, hit OK and reboot. The next time XP loads, it will only start critical Windows processes. If the drive runs fine after that, then you know you have a software problem or conflict.


~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein

 

[Hooner]

It is the only drive on the channel, and it's a fresh install of Xp, so that rules out s/ware conflict.

 

[SYAR2003]

Goto
http:\\

http://www.pcpitstop.com

Register
And run a full test
See what kind of measurements and tips you get.

Also turn off all spread spectrum/cpu throttling
in bios.
Turn on IDE prefetch

 

[cdogg]

You said "[blue]Xp has the IDE controller listed as ATA[/blue]".

Well, it should say what mode like "Ultra DMA mode 5" which is equivalent to ATA/100. Make sure you are viewing the Advanced Settings tab of the IDE Controller properties in Device Manager.

 

[Hooner]

Spread spectrums are off, and IDE prefetch is on. And yes, it does say Ultra DMA mode 5.

 

[SYAR2003]

Device mgr - Ide ATA/ATAPI controllers
should look something like this.

This is from my pc.

http://server4.uploadit.org/files/051203-dma-nforce2.GIF

 

[Hooner]

The thing is, it doesn't seem too bad in Windows. But when I load a game up (one that I know the loading times of) it takes the same amount of time as running off my old 6 gig ATA/33, which surely isn't right?

I'll try the Pitstop benchmarks, sigh.

 

[SYAR2003]

Take the pitstop test
Look at cached and uncached drivespeed.

Then compare it with mine.
I use a WD80gb w/8MB cache

http://www.pcpitstop.com/techexpress.asp?id=U4Q6KWYY7FMSVT13

 

[Hooner]

Thanks for the pic. I have 3 IDE controllers listed:

NVIDIA Nforce MCP2 IDE Controller

Primary IDE Channel

Secondary IDE Channel

But that's only because I've been mucking around with drivers. Originally I had what you have, both primary and secondary tabs available in one window, but now I have to click on the Primary or Secondary controllers seperately to adjust modes, either way, the drive was still slow as molasses.

I've tried the drivers from my mobo CD, which reported my drive as SCSI, so I updated to the latest Nforce2 drivers which solved the problem, but didn't solve the speed issue.

 

[Hooner]

Dear oh dear, look at this............

http://www.pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/Disk.asp

 

[Hooner]

We have the same drive, except mine is only 2 meg cache I think...........

 

[SYAR2003]

You should only have one ATA controller .
And under that of course is the two ide channels.

http://server4.uploadit.org/files/051203-devmgr.GIF

 

[Hooner]

I've been at that stage, exactly the same controller, the ONLY controller, no change in speed

But, if you think it might help, I'll uninstall all IDE drivers and reinstall the latest Nforce2 drivers..........

 

[SYAR2003]

If you tried to post your test result i couldn't see it.

This tells how to get an url id.

http://www.pcpitstop.com/techexpress/howto.asp

 

[SYAR2003]

When i loaded the 3.13 drivers .
I did it like this.

Add/remove programs
Uninstalled all nvidia stuff.
Device manager removed all nvidia
ide / sound etc.
Did a reboot.
Clicked cancel on everything of new found hw
xp wanted to install.
Ran the setup exe for 3.13
new reboot , all done .

 

[Hooner]

http://www.pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/Summary.asp?conid=8987219

 

[Hooner]

Soz,

http://www.pcpitstop.com/techexpress.asp?id=CCRQKWV0TSMS8T13

 

[Hooner]

Yeah, your instructions are exactly as I did. I'm now back to the one same controller as you.

 

[Hooner]

Effectively the results seem half of what yours were!