Poor Disk Performance

[Guest]

Hi:

I use a program call "Performance Test (PT)" to see how dose my disk is
performing. I did a new installation of Win XP SP2 and all the drivers I
need for my system, then I took a ghost image for backup. Everything was
performing excellent. PT gives me around 25-50 MB/s with a little use of CPU.

Suddenly, performance went down. 4-6 MB/s and a lot of CPU.

What I did?, my ghost image... I restored my machine... and I got back my
performance. Now, every week I have to restore my PC, I have looked for many
tools to see what is happening, no good results.


PLEASE HELP...

Regards

Enrique

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I use a program call "Performance Test (PT)" to see how dose my disk
is performing. I did a new installation of Win XP SP2 and all the
drivers I need for my system, then I took a ghost image for backup.
Everything was performing excellent. PT gives me around 25-50 MB/s
with a little use of CPU.

Suddenly, performance went down. 4-6 MB/s and a lot of CPU.

What I did?, my ghost image... I restored my machine... and I got
back my performance. Now, every week I have to restore my PC, I have
looked for many tools to see what is happening, no good results.

What type of changes do you make between applying the image and reapplying
the image? What type of files? Defragmentation done? Spyware/virus scans?
Anything else running in the background?

 

[da_test]

What type of changes do you make between applying the image and reapplying
the image? What type of files? Defragmentation done? Spyware/virus scans?
Anything else running in the background?

sounds like it is no longer using UDMA.
Open device manager and expand hard drive controller.
double click primary/advanced settings/
What is the current transfer mode?

 

[Guest]

Try expanding the disk controller in device mgr,select,update drivers.

 

[Guest]

PIO

sounds like it is no longer using UDMA.
Open device manager and expand hard drive controller.
double click primary/advanced settings/
What is the current transfer mode?

 

[Guest]

Shenan:

The only difference is that Windosw apply some patches.

Thanks

Enrique

 

[da_test]

PIO

That's a problem .. It should say UDMA 5 (or similar)
On the same tab. Make sure "transfer mode" is set to
DMA if available. If it already is, you have a system problem.

If it's not set it, and reboot. Look at it again.
Dave

 

[Guest]

Dave: you are Wright. When is working fine I have DMA mode 6 and when it goes
slow it change to PIO.

How can I force DMA instead of PIO?

Thanks

Enrique

 

[da_test]

Dave: you are Wright. When is working fine I have DMA mode 6 and when it goes
slow it change to PIO.

How can I force DMA instead of PIO?

Thanks

Enrique

It can't be forced. The driver reverts back to PIO when it
gets errors on the drive/controller.
Even if this is KB article doesn't pertain to you
it's safe to try the recommendation:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;327805&Product=winxp

If it's ineffective, I would open the box and change the
harddrive IDE cable to a new 80 pin cable.
Dave