Secondary hard drive reading VERY slow

[holysmokes99]

Lately my computer has been having real trouble playing videos
(extremely jerky), and even scrolling through a long list of files in
a directory in windows explorer (jerky scrolling). I ran some tests
using HD Tune and HD Tach to see if it was a hard drive issue, and low
and behold the read speed is terrible. I am getting a maximum read
rate of about 4MB/Sec. My drive is a 120GB Maxtor 4R120LO. Is there
anything I can do to fix this? I defragged it but no difference. Can
it be saved?

Thanks
Marcus

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Lately my computer has been having real trouble playing videos
(extremely jerky), and even scrolling through a long list of files in
a directory in windows explorer (jerky scrolling). I ran some tests
using HD Tune and HD Tach to see if it was a hard drive issue, and low
and behold the read speed is terrible. I am getting a maximum read
rate of about 4MB/Sec. My drive is a 120GB Maxtor 4R120LO. Is there
anything I can do to fix this? I defragged it but no difference. Can
it be saved?

Thanks
Marcus

Check if DMA is enabled for your disk: Control Panel / System /
Device Manager / Primary IDE Channel / Advanced Settings /
Transfer Mode.

You should also check the Event Viewer (eventvwr.exe) for
relevant events.

 

[Curt Christianson]

Hi Marcus,

In addition to Pegasus' excellent advice, here is some documentation on the
PIO-DMA issue:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

--
HTH,
Curt

Windows Support Center
http://aumha.org/

 

[Paul Randall]

Lately my computer has been having real trouble playing videos
(extremely jerky), and even scrolling through a long list of files in
a directory in windows explorer (jerky scrolling). I ran some tests
using HD Tune and HD Tach to see if it was a hard drive issue, and low
and behold the read speed is terrible. I am getting a maximum read
rate of about 4MB/Sec. My drive is a 120GB Maxtor 4R120LO. Is there
anything I can do to fix this? I defragged it but no difference. Can
it be saved?

Thanks
Marcus

I once had a similar problem. I had set up my PC with two CD drives and two
hard drives. I thought I would get better hard drive access if I put one CD
and one hard drive on eaxh of the IDE cables. With their locations in the
PC case, it seemed best to make the CDs the primary and the hard drives the
secondary devices. Big mistake. It was sooooooo slow. Changing the hard
drives to primary device on both IDE cables solved the problem.

-Paul Randall

 

[Curt Christianson]

Paul,

I've never tried that configuration myself, but I can just imagine the
performance. It would be hard *not* to notice. <g>

--
HTH,
Curt

Windows Support Center
http://aumha.org/

 

[crazy8tz]

Marcus,

I had a similar problem a few months back and what solved the problem for me was switching the jumper on my second HDD from "cable select" to master. I too, had 2 HDDs and 2 Optical Drives and my initial jumper config was (IDE 1) HDD - Master, Optical - Slave (IDE 2) HDD - CS, Optical - CS. Don't ask me why because I still don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, by making my secondary HDD a master and my secondary optical drive a slave, I solved my secondary HDD read-speed issues.

Now I have SATA and those IDE issues are a thing of the past.

Good luck!

 

[Marcus]

Thanks, Curt and Paul, for your comments. I didn't see your posts
until today. For some reason this post was not showing up in my news
reader, so I posted it again at this link:
http://groups.google.ca/group/[email protected]&rnum=2&hl=en#505b4af1cdb2397f.
It was a DMA issue.

Cheers,
Marcus

 

[Curt Christianson]

You're welcome!

--
HTH,
Curt

Windows Support Center
http://aumha.org/