Secondary Hard Drive Runs Slow. Why?

[Guest]

Here is the issue: ever since I bought the new HD, it has been running
considerably slower than my original HD. For example, when I want to copy
anything to or from the second HD, it would take forever, and all other
programs, including mouse movement, would become choppy, like mouse movement.
This is also true when I copy one file from one partition of the second hard
drive to another partition on the same hard drive. However, this only happens
to my second hard drive. My original drive works fine.
Is there anything I can do to fix the slowness of my new hard drive? My
roomates and I have tried various methods, from changing cables to changing
jumpers, to no avail. Any suggestions?

If you need more info, please tell me. This has been bothering me for quite
some time.

 

[Gerry]

I would try HD Tune (freeware).
Download and run it and see what it turns up.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on the drive under Drive
letter and then double click the two page icon ( copy to Clipboard )
and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy
to Clipboard ) and copy into a further message. Also do a full surface
scan with HD Tune.



--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Here is the issue: ever since I bought the new HD, it has been running
considerably slower than my original HD. For example, when I want to copy
anything to or from the second HD, it would take forever, and all other
programs, including mouse movement, would become choppy, like mouse movement.
This is also true when I copy one file from one partition of the second hard
drive to another partition on the same hard drive. However, this only happens
to my second hard drive. My original drive works fine.
Is there anything I can do to fix the slowness of my new hard drive? My
roomates and I have tried various methods, from changing cables to changing
jumpers, to no avail. Any suggestions?

If you need more info, please tell me. This has been bothering me for quite
some time.

Two points:

1. Hard drives are not all the same as regards speed. They vary in
rpm, average access speed, etc. Their size also affects their speed.
What are the specs of the old and new drives?

2. Is the new drive IDE? What other kind of drive does it share an IDE
cable with?

 

[Jim]

Two points:

1. Hard drives are not all the same as regards speed. They vary in
rpm, average access speed, etc. Their size also affects their speed.
What are the specs of the old and new drives?

2. Is the new drive IDE? What other kind of drive does it share an IDE
cable with?

You must also ensure that DMA mode is enabled on the suspect drive. I found
on mine that when I installed the second drive,
I had failed to enable it in the BIOS. Alas, XP in such a case falls back
to PIO mode, and XP did not send any kind of notice.
PIO mode is much slower than DMA.

Another item that makes quite a bit of difference is the size of the buffer
on the drive. You will see a significant improvement in
throughput for no other reason than that a new drive has a 16 MB buffer
whereas the old one only had a 4 MB buffer.

Jim

 

[Guest]

Thank you I will try the suggestions. And get those specs up

 

[Guest]

HD Tune: WDC WD4000KD-00NAB0 Information

Firmware version : 01.0
Serial number :
Capacity : 372.6 GB (~400.1 GB)
Buffer size : 0 KB
Standard :
Supported mode :
Current mode :

S.M.A.R.T : no
48-bit Address : no
Read Look-Ahead : no
Write Cache : no
Host Protected Area : no
Device Configuration Overlay : no
Automatic Acoustic Management: no
Power Management : no
Advanced Power Management : no
Power-up in Standby : no
Security Mode : no
Firmware Upgradable : no

Partition : 1
Drive letter : Z:\
Label : Zander
Capacity : 381543 MB
Usage : 2.96%
Type : NTFS
Bootable : No

 

[Guest]

HD Tune: WDC WD4000KD-00NAB0 Health

ID Current Worst ThresholdData Status

Power On Time : n/a
Health Status : n/a

 

[Lil' Dave]

Here is the issue: ever since I bought the new HD, it has been running
considerably slower than my original HD. For example, when I want to copy
anything to or from the second HD, it would take forever, and all other
programs, including mouse movement, would become choppy, like mouse
movement.
This is also true when I copy one file from one partition of the second
hard
drive to another partition on the same hard drive. However, this only
happens
to my second hard drive. My original drive works fine.
Is there anything I can do to fix the slowness of my new hard drive? My
roomates and I have tried various methods, from changing cables to
changing
jumpers, to no avail. Any suggestions?

If you need more info, please tell me. This has been bothering me for
quite
some time.

Okay, you have a Western Digital of unknown bus system connection as 2nd
drive.
What is the bus system? IDE, SATA, or what?
What is the original hard drive manufacture, size, bus system?
Cable, what type for the bus?
Dave

 

[Jim]

Thank you I will try the suggestions. And get those specs up

Sorry, I didn't save them anywhere. The slow drive is no longer installed.
I got the numbers using a previous version of EasyCD Creator (v5 perhaps).
Hence, they can not longer be obtained.

Jim

 

[smlunatick]

Here is the issue: ever since I bought the new HD, it has been running
considerably slower than my original HD. For example, when I want to copy
anything to or from the second HD, it would take forever, and all other
programs, including mouse movement, would become choppy, like mouse movement.
This is also true when I copy one file from one partition of the second hard
drive to another partition on the same hard drive. However, this only happens
to my second hard drive. My original drive works fine.
Is there anything I can do to fix the slowness of my new hard drive? My
roomates and I have tried various methods, from changing cables to changing
jumpers, to no avail. Any suggestions?

If you need more info, please tell me. This has been bothering me for quite
some time.

It looks like you have set up both drives onto the same data cable, is
this right? This would mean that you are using an IDE cable with two
drive connector (SATA only allows one drive per cable, SCSI has no
speed issues and is expensive for general home usage.) If you are
trying to speed up transfers between the two drives, while they are
set up as Master/Slave on the same IDE cable, you can not really speed
these up. IDE signals only work in a one way path. Whenever a read
request is issued, all writes are stopped. Likewise occurs when a
write request is issued, all reads are stopped.

The only true hardware way of speeding up the copies between the two
hard drives is to physically separate them from the same IDE cable.
Place the two hard drive on separate IDE cables/channels, with each
set as a Master drive.