Slow HDD issue

[overdozt]

Hi,
I have a possible HDD problem. When I am listening to music and HDD is working, sound crackles/pops. Especially when I copy a file to another partition on the same hard disk, sound crackles like hell and transfer rate is high. When I am using ASIO as output driver and copying a file to another partition, sound does not crackle that much but copying is much slower like 1-2 MB/sec. My HDD is 2.5' Seagate Momentus (SATA and my sound card is conexant.
BTW, my OS is Windows 7 x64 but I have been experiencing this problem for a year with Vista x64.

Thanks for your time.

 

[photonboy]

Sounds like two different issues.

1) Slow hard drive. Copy a file and time it. Now, go into your Device Manager and REMOVE all the hard drive controllers (or just your SATA one) by right-clicking... Now reboot your system and retest. There is an odd issue in all Windows Operating Systems that causes this all too frequently and I've done this on five different computers. You can also ensure it's running in DMA mode (not PIO) but removing the controller in this method should solve this. If it was in PIO mode your CPU would be very very high when transferring.

2) Sound crackle. This is a hard issue to solve as a number of things seem to cause this. People have solved it by moving the PCI card from one slot to another.

You can try support from your card manufacturer if that or Googling more doesn't help.

You might wish to consider adding a sound card. The best one for you would be the Auzentech Forte if you have a spare PCIe slot (it comes on sale for about $100 every so often at NCIX). There are less expensive sound cards which may solve your problem.

I think the issue is the electrical current is not properly isolated between the hardware and the sound card and it's inducing an unwanted signal that is being amplified. The Forte while expensive is one of the best cards for isolating unwanted noise.

 

[overdozt]

First of all, thanks for your answer, photonboy.
I tried to assess hdd performance after removing the controller, however restarting makes Windows 7 reinstall it again. Anyway I did not see any noticable difference between transfer rates and also CPU usage. As I observed from BIOS, transfer mode is FPIO 4/DMA 2 and Ultra DMA is 5.
Since I am using a notebook, it is not possible for me to replace the slot or installing a new sound card unfortunately.
Dunno, it may be a sound driver problem since I am facing less crackles with ASIO.

 

[overdozt]

Strange. After uninstalling sata controller and Intel Matrix Storage (for Vista x64) then installing chipset driver and newly released Intel Matrix Storage for Windows 7, it seems my problem is solved. I am not sure what solved the problem, it may be chipset drivers since I was using default drivers the Windows 7 installed. I, now, can use foobar with both default sound driver and ASIO without crackles.
I hope this may help anyone who suffers from the same problem.

 

[overdozt]

I behaved a bit hastily. At first it seemed to be fixed but my problem continues actually.