Hard Disk REALLY slow when it shouldn't be

[Neo_Reloaded]

My hard is a Western Digital 120GB 7200 rpm w/8MB cache. I've noticed real long loading times during games and REALLY long defrag times and scan times with Norton Antivirus 2002. It takes me a full hour, give or take 5 minutes, to scan the 70,000 files on my hard drive.

So I ran PCMark2002 and got a 765, and an 840 for hard drive scores (obviously I ran the benchmark twice). The 4567 for CPU and 3105 for the memory were both in the right range for what I have, but the hard drive is pathetic. I have arguably the best IDE hard drive out there, I shouldn't be getting such pathetic scores. And this is IMMEDIATELY after a defrag...

Also, I've seen other IDE related problems. I'm getting some framerate issues in some DVDs. And it seems to take a good long time to get files from a CD. Does 5 minutes to get a full 700 MB from a CD-R to the hard drive sound right? Of course, these two problems could both just be symptoms of the hard drive being slow.

The hard drive has no jumper on it and is the only thing on the primary IDE chain. It's on the farthest connector on the cable, not the middle one.

The CD-RW is set to master and is on the farthest connector on the secondary IDE. The DVD-ROM is the slave on the middle connector on the secondary IDE.

How can I further check this? This is a serious problem, so I need to figure out what's wrong.

My specs:
Asus A7V333, Athlon XP 1800+, MSI GF4 Ti4400

 

[Neo_Reloaded]

I'm using the IDE cables that came with my A7V333. I'm nto sure if they are the right ones, I think they said ATA/66 on them. Could that be the problem? Should I get new ATA/100 cables for both hard drive and optical drive chains, or just the hard drive? What kind for the optical chain?

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Neo_Reloaded on 07/08/02 07:02 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[lhgpoobaa]

LoL no.
there are only 2 types of cables.
40wire ATA33 cables and the newer finer 80wire cables that are compatible with all speeds up to ata133.

tell me, have you checked to see if UDMA has been enabled in windows and the BIOS?

having UDMA disabled for some reason is the most common cauz of poor performance. it makes drives CRAWL.

to check click:
start -> settings -> control pannel -> system -> devices. then in the list of devices check BOTH the hard drives themselves AND the primany and secondary IDE controllers/channels.


So I fixed my BIG PC problem by pressing the reset button. I'm not a moron am i? :lol:

 

[rnance]

I am having the same problem. I have a WD800BB 80 gig, non 8 meg buffer. I scored an abyssmal 614 with cpumark2002. My CPU was 5038 and memory was 3154. I have an Athlon XP 2100+, and one 512 meg PC2700 Mushkin DIMM, in a Soyo Dragon Ultra KT333 motherboard.

I checked and write caching has been enabled, and so has UDMA mode (shows UDMA mode 5 is current setting in the IDE channel settings). I am using an 80 pin cable, and no other drives on the channel with the hard drive. HDD block mode is enabled in my BIOS, etc, all the good stuff is enabled.

I have never ever been able to get a hard drive to benchmark properly it seems like (in 13 years of building PCs). I have a 10 gig partition for C:, a 30 gig for D:, and 40 gig for E: . I am running NTFS with WinXP, and keep my partitions very tidy. I only keep stuff I use installed, and just defragged two days ago. I have about 40 gigs free between the various partitions.

I am hoping someone has some ideas as to how to solve this problem, it's really bothering me! My system seems to run fine, but if there is untapped performance I want to know about it.

Rob Nance
Austin, TX

 

[lhgpoobaa]

hmmm.
thats UDMA 5 in the bios right?
and write cacheing in windows config...
but what about UDMA for the primary and secondary IDE channels? is that set and enabled too?

if yes then hmmm. only other things i can suggest are try replacing the IDE cable and/or reinstalling your chipset drivers.

<b>Before visiting THG i was a clueless noob. Now im still clueless, but look at my nice title!<b>

 

[rnance]

It is set to auto in my BIOS, the UDMA 5 is in Windows XP, under the device manager, you do the properties for the primary IDE controller, and it says that IDE0 is currently running in UDMA 5.

I haven't installed any drivers for my new motherboard, so maybe that will do something, although I kind of doubt it. The native Xp drivers seem to be more than adequate, and appropriate.

Oh of note, in Sisoft Sandra, I get like 6,800 throughput, when they have a WD1000BB as 28,000, which my drive should be close to in comparison... Something is really wrong here.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

yes... thats very wrong.
and yes, i STRONGLY advise you install chipset specific drivers. you install special graphics card drivers dont you? whynot chipset ones?
dont rely on windows for anything LOL



<b>Before visiting THG i was a clueless noob. Now im still clueless, but look at my nice title!<b>

 

[camieabz]

Just checking...

Your IDE cable has a blue connector, a black connector and a grey one?

You've plugged the blue end into the motherboard?

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