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2nd hard drive decreases performance

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I have a Dell Dimension 8100 system running Windows XP Pro at 1.67 GHz. I bought two identical Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB hard drives. My goal was to use one as primary storage and other for backup. They are both connected to the same IDE cable (it was the easiest way to get things going).

However, there is a noticible performance drop when I plugged in the second (backup) drive, when compared to running with just the single drive. Even though the second drive is inactive except at night when backups are scheduled. I notice the performanc drop when opening and closing applications.

Can anyone give me insight as to what is happening?

Thanks - Jim Reisert
<A HREF="http://www.ad1c.com" target="_new">http://www.ad1c.com&lt;/A>

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I went into the Windows XP device manager. I could find no way to tell whether I was running in UDMA mode or not.

I am running the Active SMART Monitor from PANTERASoft. It says I'm running in UDMA-1 mode on both drives.

I'm also running the Intel Application Accelerator 2.3beta. It says I'm running in UDMA-5 mode on both drives.

I have not had a chance to see what is reported when only one drive is in the system.

Any other ideas?

Thanks - Jim

ad1c, with Win XP you have to look at the IDE/ATAPI controllers section and look at the properties for both channels. On the settings tab there are options for each drive, it should be on "DMA if available". But if your utilities tell you it's on anyway it probably is...
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