Newer HD slowing me down

[twertyto]

Would buying a faster, larger hard drive ever require me to increase the amount of RAM in my system?

I went from a 20 GB, 2 MB buffer, 7200 RPM, IDE ATA 66 (Maxtor 52049U4) hard drive to a 250 GB, 16 MB buffer, 7200 RPM, IDE ATA 133 (Maxtor 6B250R0) hard drive and I've noticed a decrease in certain performance. Video is choppy at times with the new one and never before with the old one. I sense that my system is a bit more sluggish. Load times are appear to be faster. I have 512 MB of RAM on WinXP. Would the larger buffer and transfer rates require more RAM?

More info
Processor: P4 2.4 GHz; Video Card: Geforce 6200 256 MB

I thought that since both hard drives have the Average Seek Time (9Ms) the larger could be slower since it is seeking over roughly 10 times the space. Does that make any sense?

Additional info: My motherboard (ASUS P4VP-MX) does support UltraDMA 133 and both the BIOS and WinXP recognize it as such.

 

[Codesmith]

Hard drive space has no effect on RAM usage, and adding additional hard drives will not slow down your computer. (two drives on the same cable will slow each other down if both are working at once, but thats it)

First run HDTach (long test) and see if you get the results you expect.

If the hard drive tests slow, check to see if its in PIO mode, also run a extended drive test with the manufaturer's utility and check the drives SMART STATUS.

Check the event viewer for hard drive related error messages.

 

[twertyto]

Ok I ran HD Tach and found that my 'burst speed' is 43.8 MB/s which is much slower than it should be since my drive is UltraDMA 133 (133 Mb/s) right?

I guess this is the problem. In both BIOS (as shown from the boot up screen) and WinXP (looking at Primary IDE channel in device manager) the drive is recognized as being in Ultra DMA Mode 6. There is an option to switch it to PIO mode only. Do I want that or is that bad?

Also according to the boot up screen the S.M.A.R.T is capable and ready (I think it said that)

What are other good utilities to use? You mentioned also to look at event viewer for error messages. What is that?

What am I missing?

 

[1Tanker]

NO.......You don't want PIO...UDMA. I bet that DMA isn't enabled.

Right-click My Computer, left-click properties. Click Hardware tab then

Device Manager. Expand IDE/ATA/ATAPI Controllers. Right-click on

Primary IDE Channel, click Properties. Click Advanced Settings tab.

Under Device 0 in Transfer Mode drop-down tab, make sure to select "DMA

if available"...Not PIO Only. Do this for device 1 also, then do it on secondary

drives also. You'll probably have to reboot next.. Should make a World of

difference. GL.

Sorry twertyto, didn't see that you had already said that.