Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

Register Log in
  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

SUPER slow HDD access

Status
Not open for further replies.
ade099

ade099

Technical User
Dec 11, 2003
37
US
hey all.
any of you come across this before?
i'm formatting a WD800JB (80G) hd and it's taking FOREVER. it's been sitting here for over half an hour and it's only at 5%?! i cant say that everything's hunky dory on the innards and in the BIOS cuz it's a gateway POJ.
the HD is set to CSEL (it's the only HD), using an 80conductor UDMA cable (in the master slot) and the cable is plugged into the IDE1 connector on a promise card. with this setup, am i supposed to see the drive in the BIOS? cuz i dont see it anywhere. if i plug it directly into the mobo's pri IDE, the BIOS detects it, but the HDsize is seen as 65535MB (which i know is some magic hex number). this is the first time i'm messing around with a UDMA drive so i'm not quite sure if everything's a go. i just know that it's HELLLLA slow. formatting used to be fun cuz i'd get a clean slate to work with in a relatively short amount of time, but this is just not right. any help would be much appreciated.

tia!

specs:
no OS yet, but slowly formatting with XP
P3 600Mhz
256RAM
the lame HD
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
oh, i have no documentation cuz i'm doing this for a friend ;) and i'm formatting NTFS..i dont even have an option to do it as FAT32. weird.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Sounds like you're using the Windows XP CD. Use a Win98 floppy, fdisk, and format with the floppy. When you try to install Win XP, Pro will give you the options of Fat or NTFS (XP Home only NTFS).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
actually, i dug up an old windows95 floppy and tried to format with that..to no avail. it's still plodding along at a snail's pace. i tried everything i could think of (aside from spending a pretty penny) to get this blasted HD to be read at a reasonable speed..but nada. well, doing a quick format (ntfs) is the only thing that seems to work..although it still took about half an hour. but at least xp is on. the load time (where the little blue bar cylons across from left to right) takes even longer than normal now..and having norton antivirus just keeps adding to the wait. but..here's a tip for those who hate the loading time wait..instead of shutting down, do hibernate. if you've enabled hibernation and still dont see it as one of the three shutdown options, just hit "h" at the shutdown menu. it'll start up a lot quicker.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ade099,

It sounds like your drive might be stuck in either PIO Mode or ATA/33, both of which are too slow for large drives. Hence, the formatting issue.

Go to this site:

Read the FAQ section for your Promise card model. If needed, also review the manual for it. It does state in many places on the Promise site that Western Digital drives have a tendency to require you to run a utility that enables ATA/100 on the drive. This utility can be found on WD's website.


Bottom line is you should be familiar from the manual how to get into the Promise card's setup utility to see what speed your WD drive is running at.


~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Win 98 and Win 95 have different fdisk and format programs. If you fdisk with 98, and try to format with 95, (or reverse) you will get an error "not supported with this version". You should definitely use a 98 disk.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
arggg. i was looking over all the responses (thanks btw) and now that i'm checking further into what hardware i have, it's SO weird..i have an ultraATA/100 HD that came along with an ultra66 controller card?! what in the world?? would you say that mismatch of HD/controller is the cause of the crawling speed?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
or better yet..since the HD is an ultra100, does plugging it into an ultra66 force it to go at the 66 speed? or are the two utterly incompatible?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
They SHOULD be compatible but, to be sure, download the tool from WD that allows you to change the transfer rate settings; check it is set to run at max. performance too, not max quietness...

Andy.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Another thing to check:
You're using an 80-conductor cable with the proper ends plugged into the motherboard and drives, aren't you?

Regarding 80-conductor IDE cables.
These cables will have three connectors for drives. From the center connector picture this: the center connector is slightly off center. There is a "long end" and a "short end" to each of the end connectors.

The long end must be connected to the motherboard. The short end must be connected to the master or single drive. The center connector must be connected to the slave drive (if it exists).

The cables may or may not work if they aren't connected this way, but your drives will be slowed down to ATA 33 speed, even if you have a faster ATA 66, ATA 100, or ATA 133 drive connected to the cable.

AckNack
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
haha..funny thing about that dlgudma10 tool. i got it and ran it, but the lame drive wouldnt even pass the quick self test. arg. stupid thing. (error code 210 which is just some uninformative "self test not passed" as explained in the txt file). sound like the drive is heading towards the great unknown?
yeah, i have the drive hooked up properly..it's jumpered to CS..plugged into the "master" connector on the cable and the "system board" connector is plugged into IDE1 on the ultra66 card (they even label their own cables!). the BIOS for the primary IDE is disabled and the cdrom is jumpered as master and sitting innocently in the secondary IDE on the mobo.. i found a "wdata66.exe" file floating around on the internet..tried that but apparently it says the drive doesnt support ultra66. i checked the specs of the drive on WD's site and it lists ultra100 all the way down to 16.6 in the transfer rate area under "performance specs"


oh..i have these same problems if this wasn't the only HDD on the comp?

thanks for all your help guys ;)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Perhaps XP does not have the correct driver for your Promise card integrated into it. There should be a driver floppy that came with the card. While XP is booting from floppy, you should se a message at the bottom of your screen that says press F6 to load extra drivers. Press F6 at this time and eventually you should get a screen asking for the floppy and follow instructions from there. If you don't have a driver disk you can download the driver from Promise or Western Digital.

It sounds like your motherboard only supports up to a 60GB hard drive which is why it comes up as 65535MB when connected directly to the motherboard. There may be a bios update from the manufacturer of the motherboard to fix that, in which case you might be able to forget about the promise card.

Also you might try switching slots to see if the speed picks up. In any case regardless of whether the drive is on a 33, 66, 100, or 133 IDE bus, the speed should be quite fast. The drive will detect what the ide is capable of and act accordingly. You'll get better performance at a higher ide speed, but not significantly in operations such as formatting. In a lot of cases the difference between ata66, ata100, and ata133 is so marginal that you'll only see it when you benchmark the drive. During regular use you hardly ever notice any difference. The spin rate of the drive, ie 7200 will be much more significant. You can certainly see the difference between a 5400rpm drive and a 7200rpm drive.

The ata66, ata100 and ata133 are all backwards compatible. I have installed plently of ata100/133 drives in machines that only support ata33 and they work just fine.

There is also the possibility that the drive is goofy (technical term :) ). Just because it is new, doesn't mean it can't be defective. I have seen many drives that were bad right out of the box. IF you have another machine you can try it in, maybe test it there and see what happens and let us know.

Les Gray
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Try this:

Take the jumper off and retest. With newer WD drives, Master/Slave/Cable Select assumes there's another device connected to the cable. If your promise controller still doesn't see it, it's junk.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
bleh. that HD's a nogo. i've fiddled with it long enough to realize it's got issues. i've replaced with a smaller HD, but at least that one works. hahah score one: humans! thanks for all your help guys. even the drive is now a paperweight, i've learned a lot from all your feedback. props to yall!

-a
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

gamer87
  • Question
Doubt hdd impact
Replies
5
Views
646
Rick998
Rick998
gamer87
  • Question
doubt quicktest hdd
Replies
1
Views
3K
Rick998
Rick998
gamer87
  • Locked
  • Question
doubt sponge enclosure case hdd
Replies
8
Views
540
gamer87
gamer87
gamer87
  • Locked
  • Question
firmware bios and smart hdd
Replies
0
Views
1K
gamer87
gamer87
gamer87
  • Locked
  • Question
Doubt test hdds
Replies
0
Views
266
gamer87
gamer87

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top