Slow Data Transfer rate

[hop5uk]

I have recently upgraded from XP to Win 7.I have 2 disks in my PC which allows me to transfer data rom the operating system Disk which is SATA to the Backup Disk which is IDE.I tried to do this with 130 Gb of data and it gave me a transfer time of 12 hours!.It therefore displayed a transfer time of 3 mB/sec.I googled the transfer rate of IDE as it will be the slowest rate and i think i should be expecting around 40 mB/sec.Why is it so slow?

 

[Mimoso]

Most likely DMA is not enabled.

To enable DMA in Windows 7:
Click the Start button, right click on 'Computer', select 'Manage', click on 'Device manager', uncollapse 'IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers', double-click on each 'ATA Channel' entry, go to 'Advanced settings' and make sure 'Enable DMA' is checked for each device.

 

[hop5uk]

I have 2 channel 0 and then 2 as channel 1.The 2 channel 0 have the tick box checked and the first of the channel 1 have the tickbox checked.However the last at channel 1 does not have anything listed and there is no tickbox.Has this got anything to do with it?

 

[Mimoso]

If nothing is listed nothing is connected so that's not a problem.

I would verify the transfer speed with a program like HD Tune. If it shows normal values then the copying may just be slow because you're copying many small files. The remaining time/speed indication of Windows is not a reliable way to measure the performance.

 

[sminlal]

Use Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up Task Manager and click the "Performance" tab to see the CPU utilization. If the CPU utilization goes way up when you do a copy (and while there's nothing else going on), then it's a DMA issue as Mimoso suggested.

You can also click the "Resource Monitor..." button on the Task Manager "Performance" tab to bring up the Resource Monitor, then click it's "Disk" tab to get a closer look at the disk I/O going on in your system. It includes a table that shows the I/O rate (in bytes/sec) for each process - that will give you a pretty accurate idea of the real disk throughput, one that's independent of Explorer's "time remaining" estimate.