Read/Write Speed REALLY SLOW

[pcman1985]

I recently got a 320GB IDE hard drive up an runniong alongside my old 80GB SATA Hardrrive as my new one is going to be for games. However when rinstalling anything on it the write speed is REALLY SLOW. It took about 5 minutes to install just a 300mb game thewnwhen I run the game it takes ages to load. Could this be due to the fact that they are both different interfaces?

Also I believe the hard drive is set to PIO mode and cant find a way to set it to DMA, not even using the device manager worked.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[pcman1985]

I just tried to drag a 40MB video file from the C (old) to F (new) drive and it took 20secs. This is 2MB/Sec. Something is surely wrong there.

 

[Freestone]

Are you are using an 80-conductor Ultra DMA cable with this drive?

I noticed from your other post that you have this drive slaved to a DVD drive. Try running the drive by itself on the IDE cable.

 

[Glenn9999]

I second Freestone, for troubleshooting, always isolate the hardware. You need that 80-pin EIDE cable. If you have that, run the drive on the cable by itself as a MASTER drive. For what I've seen, CD/DVD drives don't work too well most times as master drives when they have a slave drive on their channel. If that works, then try running the DVD drive as SLAVE if you have to have it on the same channel. Otherwise, put them on separate channels.

 

[pcman1985]

I'm currently in the process of reformattibg the drive so when it is finished I will try that. I have notied by looking at the jumper setting on the DVD drive it is set on cable select and the Hard Drive doesnt need the jumper when set as slave, so i put it somewhere and now cant seem to find it anywhere but yes I will try running the drive by itself after the formatting is done.

Also yes I am using an 80 wire cable as the DVD drive runs by the same cable and that is working in Ultra DMA mode.

 

[Freestone]

IDE devices require both to be set to Cable Select, or one as Master and the other Slave, not mixed as you seem to say you have it, and if so, may be the cause of your problem. When Cable Select is used, the device at the end of the cable assumes the Master role and the device in the middle of the cable assumes the Slave role.

 

[pcman1985]

OK Tried all the above and its still not working. I have tried different cables, both as master and slave, with Jumpers in Cable Select position, and also the jumpers in the Master/Slave position and every time it is still in PIO mode and the DVD drivce is still in Ultra DMA Mode 4. I have also uninstalled the Primary IDE Channel and Reinstalled it numerous times (And for some reason it shoes 2 Primary IDE channels when I only have one, and one Secondary IDE channel for the floppy drive and I dont even have one)

Thanks anyway for your help. Any other ideas before I start using my tower unit as a football?

 

[Glenn9999]

What computer/mainboard is this hard drive in?

 

[pcman1985]

The Computer is an Emachines e4026
The board is an Intel(R) Desktop Board D915GAG (it must be one of the worst boards around!) I Mean. Just TWO PCI Slots, 2 DDR RAM Slots, 1 IDE/2 Sata Connection for Hard Drives and 1 IDE Connection for a floppy drive, a 300W PSU, and a fan that barely ever gets above 1000RPM,

The computer is about two years old. Its strange though as when I run intel desktop utlities it says the active transfer mode is UDMA5 but crappy PIO in desktop manager and by speed (~2MB/Sec) this looks like PIO.

 

[Glenn9999]

Have you enabled LBA48 support within the BIOS? How up-to-date is it?

 

[pcman1985]

Cant find a way to enable it in the bios and I would a site to download the latest version for my motherboard but when I try to install it t wont let me. It says the BIOS I am trying to update is invalid for this system.

 

[Freestone]

I found this Intel page for the D915GAG board:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Fil...XP+Professional&lang=eng&strOSs=44&submit=Go!

You should at least try installing the Chipset: Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility to ensure your Intel chipset is identified correctly to XP.

 

[pcman1985]

Ok I have downloaded and installed the drivers. Guess what. The hard drive is running in.... yes you guessed it - PIO Mode. I am sure my computer hates me. I think Ia m going to have to resign to PIO mode or go out and buy a SATA disk.

 

[Freestone]

Is there anything in BIOS limiting the mode of operation?

Do you have another IDE to try?
Short read here:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

Couple of long reads here:

http://winhlp.com/node/10

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/

 

[Freestone]

meant to ask do you have another IDE drive to try...

 

[pcman1985]

Nope I have no other IDE drives, but i think I put the cable in the wrong way round first time as a pin on the hard drive has been bent (somewhere along the top middle), and out of all the pins to be, they had to put the pin for DMA transfer right there! How stupid of Maxtor and hard drive publishers so I believe there is nothing I can do lol.