Hard drive stutter

[Tom Scales]

I just purchased two identical Dell Dimension 9200 computers.

They both have SATAII WD 250Gb drives.

I am having a problem that I'll call stutter. Every few seconds, the
throughput drops from about 65Mbps to almost zero, then climbs back up. It
makes the machines absolutely useless for recording TV.

I've tried everything, including:

- All the latest drivers
- Fresh install of XP Pro (without any Dell stuff, not even AV)
- Installing a different drive (Seagate 300GB)
- Trying a different SATA port
- Unplugging and turning off the SATA DVD drive

I'm at wit's end. What's particularly weird is that if I put a second drive
in (either a Seagate 750Gb SATA II, or a Seagate 750Gb IDE with an Adaptec
IDE card), the second drive works flawlessly. Even the IDE drive is faster
than the 250GB SataII

Any thoughts? Dell's response was they want to change the motherboard. If
only one showed this symptom, I'd believe that was the cause, but BOTH
machines?

Thanks,

Tom

 

[Andy]

Try looking at interrupt requests in device manager. Maybe you have
interrupt sharing conflicts.

 

[Tom Scales]

Good suggestion. I'll look into that.

Try looking at interrupt requests in device manager. Maybe you have
interrupt sharing conflicts.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I just purchased two identical Dell Dimension 9200 computers.

They both have SATAII WD 250Gb drives.

I am having a problem that I'll call stutter. Every few seconds, the
throughput drops from about 65Mbps to almost zero, then climbs back up. It
makes the machines absolutely useless for recording TV.

I've tried everything, including:

- All the latest drivers
- Fresh install of XP Pro (without any Dell stuff, not even AV)
- Installing a different drive (Seagate 300GB)
- Trying a different SATA port
- Unplugging and turning off the SATA DVD drive

I'm at wit's end. What's particularly weird is that if I put a second drive
in (either a Seagate 750Gb SATA II, or a Seagate 750Gb IDE with an Adaptec
IDE card), the second drive works flawlessly. Even the IDE drive is faster
than the 250GB SataII

Any thoughts? Dell's response was they want to change the motherboard. If
only one showed this symptom, I'd believe that was the cause, but BOTH
machines?

Well, WD disks are the cheapest you can buy. Maybe they are
doing a lot of recalibrations? The thing that is done right
with the otehr solutions you tried is maybe just not having
"WD" printed on the equipment...

Arno

 

[Tom Scales]

Well, WD disks are the cheapest you can buy. Maybe they are
doing a lot of recalibrations? The thing that is done right
with the otehr solutions you tried is maybe just not having
"WD" printed on the equipment...

Arno

I've had good luck with WD, but the problem occurs with a Seagate drive too.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I've had good luck with WD, but the problem occurs with a Seagate drive too.

Aha, so if you put the seagate as first drive, it has the same
problem? Sorry, misunderstood what you were saying there. Ok,
since this is a serious interruption, it likely is not
a low-level thing like an interrup mix-up. Also it would
need to be something that is not in all the different hardware
you tried. The mainboard would be a good guess, if it is
hardware.

I would suspect it is a software problem. One possibility is that the
system runs out of memory and starts swapping. The way to test for
this is to put the swapfile on the second disk and see whether the
problem moves with it.

It could also be some software accessing the first disk for some
other reason, but I don't have any idea what that could be.

Arno

 

[Tom Scales]

Aha, so if you put the seagate as first drive, it has the same
problem? Sorry, misunderstood what you were saying there. Ok,
since this is a serious interruption, it likely is not
a low-level thing like an interrup mix-up. Also it would
need to be something that is not in all the different hardware
you tried. The mainboard would be a good guess, if it is
hardware.

I would suspect it is a software problem. One possibility is that the
system runs out of memory and starts swapping. The way to test for
this is to put the swapfile on the second disk and see whether the
problem moves with it.

It could also be some software accessing the first disk for some
other reason, but I don't have any idea what that could be.

Arno

Yes, the Seagate as the only drive showed the same problem.

I fixed the problem this morning. Turns out that my machines came with the
latest BIOS, which included "fixes to the optical drive interface".

Guess they were not tested very well.

I flashed back to a much earlier BIOS and the problem went away.

Thanks for your help.

Tom

 

[Rod Speed]

Yes, the Seagate as the only drive showed the same problem.

I fixed the problem this morning. Turns out that my machines came
with the latest BIOS, which included "fixes to the optical drive interface".

Guess they were not tested very well.

And that 'support' is completely ****ed as well if they couldnt even keep track of that either.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Yes, the Seagate as the only drive showed the same problem.

I fixed the problem this morning. Turns out that my machines came with the
latest BIOS, which included "fixes to the optical drive interface".

Guess they were not tested very well.

Aha. Probably generated errors thet then triggered a complete
bus reset. Typica consumer-grade trash....

I flashed back to a much earlier BIOS and the problem went away.

Good. Never change a working system...

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Aha. Probably generated errors thet then triggered a complete
bus reset. Typica consumer-grade trash....

Babblehead still on top of things, I see.