my dad had a 15gb hdd sent to him from gateway when he thought his computer was "broken." since he had no use for it, i took it and installed it in my pc recently. before doing so, i read up on partitioning with fdisk and formatting and such, but when i booted up after installing it, my computer already recognized it as the F drive and it already had a windows folder and several other files on it. i assumed that it was already formatted by gateway before they shipped it so i just deleted the files on it and made a folder to store my music files. but now my computer runs extremely slow and i dont know why. can anyone please tell me what the problem could be? was i correct in assuming that the drive was already partitioned and formattted? thanks.
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issues installing second hdd 2
- Thread starter farcass31
- Start date
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2
- #2
How did you install it? Master or slave?
It may be running in PIO mode rather than DMA mode. Or worse still in compatibility mode. Go into device manager and look under IDE drives to see what mode it and the boot disk are running in.
Remove the 15G disk temporarily and see what the IDE disk settings are. i.e. is the 15G drive the issue here?
Report back for advice on how to get the disks running in DMA mode if that is the issue. You may need to update the drivers.
It may be running in PIO mode rather than DMA mode. Or worse still in compatibility mode. Go into device manager and look under IDE drives to see what mode it and the boot disk are running in.
Remove the 15G disk temporarily and see what the IDE disk settings are. i.e. is the 15G drive the issue here?
Report back for advice on how to get the disks running in DMA mode if that is the issue. You may need to update the drivers.
- Thread starter
- #4
i am running windows xp. i installed the drive as a slave. i checked the IDE drives in device manager. each ide cable showed pull down choices for two things: drive 0 and drive 1. under the secondary ide cable (for the new hdd), drive 0 was DMA and drive 1 was PIO. i set the PIO to DMA. i also went through files and deleted all the temp files on my computer. it seemed to have a helped somewhat, but im not sure if the problem is solved or not. thank you very much for the suggestions. if you have any more i would be grateful to hear them.
Check it stays on DMA.
How are your disks formatted. FAT or NTFS?
Did you temprarily remove the 15G drive to see what effect that had? i.e. is the 15G stowing the system. Or has it slowed anyway?
One cause of a system slowing with time is if you let windows manage your swap file. Over time it becomes very fragmented. One way to solve this is to remove the swap file by saying you don't want one. Re-boot. Then defrag the drive you want the swap file on (usually C) until the defrag operation doesn't get an faster. Then select your own swap file size to suit and set the max and min to the same size. As a rule of thumb use a size three times your actual RAM size. You will then have a contiguos file that won't get fragmented.
How are your disks formatted. FAT or NTFS?
Did you temprarily remove the 15G drive to see what effect that had? i.e. is the 15G stowing the system. Or has it slowed anyway?
One cause of a system slowing with time is if you let windows manage your swap file. Over time it becomes very fragmented. One way to solve this is to remove the swap file by saying you don't want one. Re-boot. Then defrag the drive you want the swap file on (usually C) until the defrag operation doesn't get an faster. Then select your own swap file size to suit and set the max and min to the same size. As a rule of thumb use a size three times your actual RAM size. You will then have a contiguos file that won't get fragmented.
Put the drive on the secondary controller paired with a CD/DVD device (if you have 2 of these, pair the faster interface one with the master hard drive - as long as its ATA33 (or faster) it will be ok). If the drive insists on running in PIO mode, the other device sharing the IDE cable will run at the same speed. This doesn't matter really for CD/DVDs - but it does for current fast hard drives.
Do you actually need the 15GB drive? (it may be defective.. - I presume it should be running at least ATA33, probably 66).
Do you actually need the 15GB drive? (it may be defective.. - I presume it should be running at least ATA33, probably 66).
- Thread starter
- #7
To check how your disks are formatted, go to ...
Control Panel
Administrative Tools
Computer Management
Disk Management
How each disk is formatted and what state its in is described here.
To reset your swap file, go to ...
Control Panel
System
Advanced tab
Performance
Advanced tab
Under the Virtual memory section press
Change
Click on each drive letter in turn and ensure that 'No Paging file' is selected.
OK your way out, and re-boot.
Defrag at least your C drive (were going to put a new swap file here) several times in a row. Until the time to defrag is as fast as its going to be!
Then ....
Control Panel
System
Advanced tab
Performance
Advanced tab
Under the Virtual memory section press
Change
Select drive C
Select Custom Size
enter a number in the Initial size box = twice the size of your RAM. Do the same for the maximum size. So, if you have 512 MB of RAM in your system, enter 1024.
OK your way out.
There is no need to re-boot. But it wouldn't hurt to do so.
If at some time in the future you find you are running out of memory, you can always increase it. But if you change it, follow the whole procedure of deleteing, defragging and setting it up again. Otherwise you will just get a fragmented swap file. Similarly if you decide its too big. Don't be tempted to just shrink it. It doesn't work like that. When you change the size, windows creates a whole new swap file each time. Always follow this procedure when changing your swapfile size.
Control Panel
Administrative Tools
Computer Management
Disk Management
How each disk is formatted and what state its in is described here.
To reset your swap file, go to ...
Control Panel
System
Advanced tab
Performance
Advanced tab
Under the Virtual memory section press
Change
Click on each drive letter in turn and ensure that 'No Paging file' is selected.
OK your way out, and re-boot.
Defrag at least your C drive (were going to put a new swap file here) several times in a row. Until the time to defrag is as fast as its going to be!
Then ....
Control Panel
System
Advanced tab
Performance
Advanced tab
Under the Virtual memory section press
Change
Select drive C
Select Custom Size
enter a number in the Initial size box = twice the size of your RAM. Do the same for the maximum size. So, if you have 512 MB of RAM in your system, enter 1024.
OK your way out.
There is no need to re-boot. But it wouldn't hurt to do so.
If at some time in the future you find you are running out of memory, you can always increase it. But if you change it, follow the whole procedure of deleteing, defragging and setting it up again. Otherwise you will just get a fragmented swap file. Similarly if you decide its too big. Don't be tempted to just shrink it. It doesn't work like that. When you change the size, windows creates a whole new swap file each time. Always follow this procedure when changing your swapfile size.
- Thread starter
- #10
- Status