Slow Hard Drive Fix?

[zaphod]

My Western Digital 7200rpm, 200gb hard drive (on Device Manager the
model number reads "WDC WD2000JB-00GVA0"), which I use as a slave,
copies files to my USB2 devices, the master drive, or different
partitions on the drive more slowly than the 160gb Maxtor that it is
replacing, I would guess by about 30%, and slower than the master by
the same amount. The icon for a transfer-in-process-papers flying
from one folder to another-proceeds in a slightly jerky and hesitant
fashion, as if system is straining a little to do the transfer. (Ram =
640mb. Processor is Pentium IV at 2.2GHZ. I've upped the virtual
memory to 2gb.) The operating system is XP; the problem persists after
having installed SP2.

Other operations, like playing music stored on the hard drive, work
just fine.

1. Does my having formatted this as a storage disk rather than as an
operating system disk have anything to do with this slowness?
2. Is there some other cause that I am not thinking of?
3. Is there anything I can do about this issue?
4. Will Western Digital recognize this issue as a problem and exchange
or repair the drive?
Thanks for the help.
Dave

 

[Frank]

My Western Digital 7200rpm, 200gb hard drive (on Device Manager the
model number reads "WDC WD2000JB-00GVA0"), which I use as a slave,
copies files to my USB2 devices, the master drive, or different
partitions on the drive more slowly than the 160gb Maxtor that it is
replacing, I would guess by about 30%, and slower than the master by
the same amount. The icon for a transfer-in-process-papers flying
from one folder to another-proceeds in a slightly jerky and hesitant
fashion, as if system is straining a little to do the transfer. (Ram =
640mb. Processor is Pentium IV at 2.2GHZ. I've upped the virtual
memory to 2gb.) The operating system is XP; the problem persists after
having installed SP2.

Other operations, like playing music stored on the hard drive, work
just fine.

1. Does my having formatted this as a storage disk rather than as an
operating system disk have anything to do with this slowness?
2. Is there some other cause that I am not thinking of?
3. Is there anything I can do about this issue?
4. Will Western Digital recognize this issue as a problem and exchange
or repair the drive?
Thanks for the help.
Dave

I have two WD caviars that just won't work as a master with slave or as
a slave....The three that do work _somewhat_ show up with DLG diagnostic
as having bad cables. They check good as individuals. I just _think_ that
the drives have bad firmware.....I am really regretting going to WD from
IBM.
I have never had a problem with IBM drives. I had one ATA 66 die under
warranty and they replaced it with an ATA 100 and it is still working....