Slaved HD transfer only 8 mbps

[Peter]

I recently swapped my HD for a new one and made the old one the slave.
I'm achieving fast transfer rates with the new, master drive. According to
the PC Pitstop Full Test the old drive is only "delivering" at 8 mbps. I
knew it was slowing down but that seems very slow.
I checked the Device Manager and they are both set at Ultra DMA mode 5.
Do hard drives get slower with age??
Old drive: WD 1600 Caviar
New drive: WD 2500 Caviar SE both IDE.

--
Peter
Toronto, Canada
2 x XP Pro SP2 (1 everyday, 1 for testing)
P4 HT @ 3.0ghz, 2.0gb DDR,160+250+200gb HD
ATI Radeon 9550 AGP Graphics

 

[Bob I]

The drive won't "go faster" than it did when new, but what was it then?
Are you sure the old one didn't drop to PIO, or is the old one chock
full of fragmented files and free space?

 

[Peter]

I since did a test using HD Tune and found out that is varied from 8.6-48.0
mbps...so I think it's just a case of old age.
It was causing other problems too, like unless I disconnected it I couldn't
reinstall my dual boot XP Pro, or Vista for that matter in any other
partitions on my master drive...Lord only knows why that was happening!
I was getting Stop-0X0000006f type errors.
So have taken it out and will stick with my new drive.
Thanks.
--
Peter
Toronto, Canada
2 x XP Pro SP2 (1 everyday, 1 for testing)
P4 HT @ 3.0ghz, 2.0gb DDR,160+250+200gb HD
ATI Radeon 9550 AGP Graphics

 

[Bob I]

Thank you for posting back with the additional information and the
resolution.