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IDE wont boot and SATA too slow

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Ive got a weird problem that falls into 2 parts

First problem is that i have two 8month old identical SATA Western Digital drives, one for storage/backup and one for OS etc, both partitioned.
Western Digital Caviar Green 640GB Advanced Format
Brand new self built PC al 8 month old parts.

I have had a problem where my PC was sluggish and lagged heavily if a program was installing or there was updates from MS etc

After a lot of other hardware checking and swapping(RAM, Graphics Card etc) i was about to buy a new PSU thinking not enough power.

Before i did this i thought id retry my old 6years old IDE drive just in case it was a hdd problem, to my amazement it got rid of the lagging and everything is super fast as it should of been these last 8 months!!

Now i have run Western Digitals diagnostics and different hard drive monitoring software and all have come back with no problems.

So is it a hard drive problem or something other like connections etc a si cant see why an old IDE driver would in fact be faster then the newer SATA drive?

ok now second problem, since i have the IDE drive in place i cant boot directly from it unless the SATA is present, if i try on its own i just get a message at boot saying please insert boot media, but with them both I'm place i get the option of a dual boot and its fine.

i have gone into BIOS and select the IDE as first boot, changed jumper settings etc but still it wont boot on its own?

More about : ide wont boot sata slow

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Storage Expert

I don't know how to answer all of your problem, but if you are using that advanced format drive in XP you need to use WD's formatting utility to properly align the sectors on the drive or use the jumper to change the sector offset.

Hawkeye22 said:
I don't know how to answer all of your problem, but if you are using that advanced format drive in XP you need to use WD's formatting utility to properly align the sectors on the drive or use the jumper to change the sector offset.



Sorry i should of given more details, im using Windows 7 so would i still need to use the Advanced Formatting Utility?
Storage Expert

No, if you used win7 to format that drive, then you're ok. Also, just to be sure, make sure there is no jumper on pins 7 & 8. According to WD's web site those are the pins that should be jumpered when using XP.
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Hawkeye22 said:
No, if you used win7 to format that drive, then you're ok. Also, just to be sure, make sure there is no jumper on pins 7 & 8. According to WD's web site those are the pins that should be jumpered when using XP.



Thanks for the replies i shall check the jumper settings:-

In the mean time i have run o&o hard drive utility and got these results, what i find odd is the hard drive i have my OS on has a different reading bearing in mind they are identcial drives (which ive highlighted) to show, would this be making a difference?



SATA1-Storage


SATA2-OS installed


IDE
Storage Expert

It seems odd that all your drives are reporting 200 remapped sectors. I don't see any current pending sectors, so it might be a fluke. Also your C drive is reporting numerous errors even just seeking. This would definately cause performance problems.

Hawkeye22 said:
It seems odd that all your drives are reporting 200 remapped sectors. I don't see any current pending sectors, so it might be a fluke. Also your C drive is reporting numerous errors even just seeking. This would definitely cause performance problems.



The 'C' drive is actually the current IDE and the one which seems to be working perfectly with no lagging, although the table tells different story which is odd.

The one where i had the other OS installed was the middle table(the one highlighted which i thought was the problem) and is the SATA drive.

I think I may have found your problem. The WD Caviar Green is a 7200 RPM drive that is supposed to drop to 5400 RPM when not under load to conserve power. Thus we have the reason why it is called the Green. However I have found a website that found that the drives they tested never increase over 5400 RPM. No doubt your IDE is running at 7200 RPM as a matter of course demonstrating superior performance. Read all about it here. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/640gb-...

Wamphryi said:
I think I may have found your problem. The WD Caviar Green is a 7200 RPM drive that is supposed to drop to 5400 RPM when not under load to conserve power. Thus we have the reason why it is called the Green. However I have found a website that found that the drives they tested never increase over 5400 RPM. No doubt your IDE is running at 7200 RPM as a matter of course demonstrating superior performance. Read all about it here. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/640gb-...



Hmm very interesting, nice find mate, i shall read it all properly later, so if a a drive is only spinning at 5400RPM all the time would that cause the slugish/lagging problem do you think?

Yes I would think it would be a strong possibility. The WD Green is not a performance drive. They make ideal NAS drives or a RAID 1 Array for storage as their main function is to hold data keeping power and heat to a minimum. This of course means that as a Boot / System drive they will perform rather poorly. A modern PC requires a fast drive to keep up. I have two WD Greens for a RAID 1 Storage Array but I use Velicoraptors for my system drives and in one case an SSD (which does not perform that much better than my Raptors in all honesty). I believe your IDE drive will be a true 7200 RPM drive and this makes a noticable difference even if the drive is IDE. The later IDE drives were capable of 133 MHZ on the pipe while SATA 1 is 150 MHZ. It is difficult for a single drive to flood 133 MHZ so the main point of difference is the spindle speed. The Website indicates the WD Green has "economical electronics" which I assume means that the drive suffers limitations there also. Another way of looking at it is that laptops often have 5400 RPM drives and we all know that average laptops suffer the HDD as a bottleneck.

Wamphryi said:
Yes I would think it would be a strong possibility. The WD Green is not a performance drive. They make ideal NAS drives or a RAID 1 Array for storage as their main function is to hold data keeping power and heat to a minimum. This of course means that as a Boot / System drive they will perform rather poorly. A modern PC requires a fast drive to keep up. I have two WD Greens for a RAID 1 Storage Array but I use Velicoraptors for my system drives and in one case an SSD (which does not perform that much better than my Raptors in all honesty). I believe your IDE drive will be a true 7200 RPM drive and this makes a noticeable difference even if the drive is IDE. The later IDE drives were capable of 133 MHZ on the pipe while SATA 1 is 150 MHZ. It is difficult for a single drive to flood 133 MHZ so the main point of difference is the spindle speed. The Website indicates the WD Green has "economical electronics" which I assume means that the drive suffers limitations there also. Another way of looking at it is that laptops often have 5400 RPM drives and we all know that average laptops suffer the HDD as a bottleneck.


Yep is does seems a very probable cause, Ive been looking for another drive, i will probably go for a Cavier Black 500GB, the thing is the Green drive i have has a 64MB Cache where as the 'Blacks' have only 32MB is this a problem as I'm not really sure?

That isn't a problem. You may want to consider a Seagate Barracuda. We managed to get good speed out of those especially in RAID 0. Also consider the Velicoraptor if your finances can cope.

Just make sure you buy a good standard 7.200 RPM drive and you should be set to go. The onboard cache is not really that big a deal. I suspect the Barracuda will beat the WD but look for some tests and check it out to be sure.
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