Another Slow Hard Drive Issue

[jim]

Ack, I am having a problem.

Access to my hard drive is a tad slow.

I am running win 2K sp4, on a 1gig hz machine 768meg ram. I have a
Maxtor 200gig hard drive on the second IDE channel. It is plugged into a
removable tray.

I recently went to device manager, disabled the drive, then removed it.
Then stuck in another drive, enabled, copied files, disabled, and then
removed it. Then I stuck the Maxtor back in and enabled it. All fine.

Problem is that now the access time is about six times slower. It
reads/writes correctly, never any errors, just takes longer to do the
access. Also, the machine is very slow when doing large file copying, ie
the mouse cursor drags and is slow. Before, everything was zippy copied
large files many times faster than now, and the machine didnt suffer in
performance when doing this copying. It takes about 12 mins now to copy
700 meg of data to or from another hard drive on a different ide channel.


It is the master drive on the ide cable, w/a CDRW. Device Manager says
for "Device 0": "Transfer Mode" is "DMA if available", and "Current
Transfer Mode" is "Not Available".

I tried another posters suggestion of forcing it to "PIO Only" rebooting,
changing back, etc. No help. Everything is "Auto Detect", checked BIOS,
etc.

I dont know what is causing the problem, nothing has changed except that
swap, any ideas?


Thanks,

-jim

 

[Leonard Severt [MSFT]]

Ack, I am having a problem.

Access to my hard drive is a tad slow.

I am running win 2K sp4, on a 1gig hz machine 768meg ram. I have a
Maxtor 200gig hard drive on the second IDE channel. It is plugged into
a removable tray.

I recently went to device manager, disabled the drive, then removed
it. Then stuck in another drive, enabled, copied files, disabled, and
then removed it. Then I stuck the Maxtor back in and enabled it. All
fine.

Problem is that now the access time is about six times slower. It
reads/writes correctly, never any errors, just takes longer to do the
access. Also, the machine is very slow when doing large file copying,
ie the mouse cursor drags and is slow. Before, everything was zippy
copied large files many times faster than now, and the machine didnt
suffer in performance when doing this copying. It takes about 12 mins
now to copy 700 meg of data to or from another hard drive on a
different ide channel.


It is the master drive on the ide cable, w/a CDRW. Device Manager
says for "Device 0": "Transfer Mode" is "DMA if available", and
"Current Transfer Mode" is "Not Available".

I tried another posters suggestion of forcing it to "PIO Only"
rebooting, changing back, etc. No help. Everything is "Auto Detect",
checked BIOS, etc.

I dont know what is causing the problem, nothing has changed except
that swap, any ideas?


Thanks,

-jim

Strange problem. Seems that Windows doesn't know what transfere mode the
drive can handle. So I wouldn't be surprised if actually using PIO mode 0
and thats why it is slow. I would reconnect the cable and disconnect the
CDROM. Then rescan the drive in BIOS. It should also tell you the transfer
mode in BIOS, what does it say.

Leonard Severt

Windows 2000 Server Setup Team

 

[jim]

Leonard,

Thanks for your help.

the drive can handle. So I wouldn't be surprised if actually using PIO

I am sure that is exactly what it is doing. It seems like 100% of CPU
cycles are being used for disk reads & writes.

disconnect the CDROM.

Ok, cd disconnected.

Then rescan the drive in BIOS. It should also

Uh not sure how to do this, looked around. Told it to redect the drive.
Not sure if that is what you are looking for. I think it is the Award
Bios.

tell you the transfer mode in BIOS, what does it say.

Not sure where to look for the answer.

BTW: Where it says: "Device: Autodetection" that combo box is disabled.

No changes in that dialog after cable disconnect and reboot.

-jim