Terrible hard disk performance, seems like dma isnt working

[chrisjwray]

Hello everybody, I've been pulling my hair out over this, maybe you guys can help.

I recently built myself a new PC but as a trade off between a 64 bit processor and 32 bit one I decided to keep my old hard disk and go for the 64 bit processor.

The drive in question is a IBM/Hitachi Deskstar 7200rpm 60gb drive which runs at ata100. On my old system this was fine and ran with no problems.
On my new system it runs as if DMA isnt working, whenever the hard disk is accessed, the system grinds to a halt. In the system properties, it reports that it is running in UltraDMA mode5 though. Ive reinstalled from scratch and added the forceudma100 resitry tweak with no effects.
The HD Tach score of the drive is 31 with an access time of 13ms. When I burn a DVD in nero, it seems the drive cant even keep up with my 4x dvd burner as the read buffer always drops right down then refils. This was never a problem on my old system (an athlon 1400!!).

The specs of my system are ASUS K8N, Athlon 64 3200+, 512mb corsair 3200 RAM and Radeon 9600XT Graphics.
Ive installed all the latest chipset drivers and SP2 etc.

Any advice or help would be appreciated, I intend to move to SATA when I can afford it but could really do with getting this to work properly for now.

Also, is there a way to actually prove that DMA is functioning correctly?

Thanks in advance guys

Chris

 

[grez]

Hi Chris,

Go to IBM's site and see if they have a disk diagnostic to download and test the disk. Most venders do. What comes up in scandisk? Asus / Athlon 64 / Crucial 512 is a great combo...this machine should be kicking...

Check the BIOS, try loading default and see what happens too as another alternative. How old is the drive itself?

Hope this helps a bit....good luck!

 

[chrisjwray]

Asus / Athlon 64 / Crucial 512 is a great combo...this machine should be kicking...

Tel me about it, to say Im disappointed is an understatement, something is just not right. I tried to benchmark it but it reports that there isnt enough graphics memory to run 3dmark. pcbench crashes and I can only run medal of honour in 640x480 and that struggles.
I'll have a look at the IBM website today, as Ive reinstalled everything from scratch Im thinking it must be BIOS (Which Ive already flashed to the latest) or hardware (a faulty graphics card may be the cause of the benchmarks failing).
The drive is about four years old. But has been reliable up until now in two different PCs.

 

[chrisjwray]

I forgot to mention. Ive already replaced the IDE cables, I intended to swap them but the cat %-( bit through one of them and I ended up shelling out for a new one.