Freaking slow boot.. not utilizing hard drive speed?

[neffwashere]

Hello. I've been having very slow boot times, and general slow system performance. Deleting, copying, moving files all take a longer time than I would expect. Games work well, but I don't think they're loading as fast as they should. So I think I may not be utilizing my hard drive, and I've been looking into it.
I have a sata2 70gb WD Raptor, because I want things to be faster. Booting up takes a very, very long time (over a minute most probably). In my BIOS settings, the sata mode is set to IDE (As opposed to RAID or AHCI). I think it should be set to AHCI to utilize SATA features right.. so does that mean it needs to be set to AHCI to utilize the full speed? I currently only have the one hard drive, and an IDE dvd drive.
Are there any other possible culprits for such slow boot times and file operations? Thanks!

 

[neffwashere]

I'm not so sure about that.. The long times occur during the Windows XP boot screen with the animating blue bar. After that screen disappears, there will be a black screen with a mouse for another long time, and then my logon screen finally appears. I'll try both anyway. PS. I have a MSI 975X Platinum mobo. Thanks!

 

[cutthroat]

my first instinct is to say that there is a driver not loading properly at startup causing the delay, but you said you are also experiencing slow copying etc. Check your IDE controller in the device manager to make sure that DMA is set to autoselect, and is running UDMA 6.

 

[neffwashere]

Under my IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section in Device Manager, there are two Primary IDE Channel items. One for my hard drive and one for my dvd drive. The hard drive device type is set to auto detect, the transfer mode is set to "DMA if available" (vs PIO mode only), and the current transfer mode is PIO mode, which I'm assuming is bad. I'm going to look in the BIOS settings for any kind of mistakes..

There's also a Secondary IDE Channel item, and all the unused device slots in this and the primary ide channel items are set to "auto detect". Would I see performance gains by selecting "none" in these fields? This seems like something that should be done at BIOS level perhaps. Anyway, that's kind of a side question.

Just in case you wanted to know, the other entries in the device manager are 'Intel ICH7 family Ultra ATA storage controllers', and 'Intel ICH7 family Serial ATA storage controller'.

 

[cutthroat]

It sounds like you found the right controller, and it should not be in PIO mode. You're on the right track, check out your BIOS to see if you have it set wrong there.

The controllers that have no drives installed do not matter.

Do you have your DVD and hard drive on the same channel, HD as master and DVD as slave? You should put them on different channels, both as masters.

 

[neffwashere]

Yeah, they're both on different channels, both masters. The hard drive is connected to the Sata1 slot on the mobo, and the dvd to IDE1. In BIOS it shows the hard drive on IDE3 primary, and the dvd drive on IDE1 primary. So, I'm really not sure where to go from there. Could it be a jumper setting on the hard drive? Maybe a missing driver? I didn't notice anything wrong in the BIOS, wouldn't really be sure what to look for. Everything is on Auto pretty much.. Thanks for your time!

 

[cutthroat]

Could possibly be BIOS settings, or maybe a problem with driver for the IDE controller, you could reinstall the motherboard drivers. You could try to manually set UDMA6 in the BIOS and windows, if it will let you.

 

[neffwashere]

The end is in sight! My mobo has two IDE connectors, and 5 SATA ports (1-4 and a 5th for special raid stuff or something). When I move my hard drive off SATA1, it can run in UDMA mode 5! So, it's blazing fast now. Something slightly puzzling, however, is this: In the BIOS, it shows my DVD drive on the master IDE1, and the hard disk on Master IDE4 (I plugged it into the SATA3 port because: SATA1 port = Master IDE 3, SATA2 = Slave IDE 3, SATA3 = Master IDE 4, etc). You said I wanted it to be a master, and so it's the master on IDE4, and can use UDMA mode (because for some reason SATA1 wouldn't let me..) However, in windows, the hard disk is listed under the Secondary IDE Channel item. There are two primary channels again, the first one for.. nothing.. as far as I can tell.. and the second one for the dvd drive.

So, I'd like to figure out why I can't use my SATA1 port for UDMA mode, and why windows says the hard disk is on the secondary ide channel and if that matters. Thanks for all your time and advice! Windows now boot up and shuts off in just a few seconds!

 

[cutthroat]

well, you've got 90% of your performance back anyway, that's good news for now. I think your HDD is shoing up on the second channel because you have it plugged into that slot, I doubt it matters as long as it's still the master drive.

There may be something wrong with the IDE controller that controls the SATA. Your best bet is to try WHQL motherboard drivers. Hopefully just a driver problem and not a hardware problem, if the controller is actually broken it will be hard to tell for sure and you'll have to try to RMA the motherboard.