Huge problem with new Seagate hardisk

[SirCanealot]

Today I bought a new Seagate disk, the ST3160021A. I fitted it and installed it via Computer Management in adminstative tools. The hard disk formatted and was detected fine, but then I noticed how slow the hard disk was acting. And I mean REALLY slow. Someone sugested it might be on ATA33 mode, so I used Seagates ultility and made sure it was running on the fatest mode (ATA100, which it was already set to). I've basically got no futher in solveing this... I have no idea what could be wrong. I've connected 2 other hard disks the same exact way I've connected this one to my computer before and they were fine (allthough they were from other computers, with data already on them).

Does anyone have any ideas to what is causing my drive to run so slowly?
This is a screencap I took, after running a benchmark on both my drives, my main one and the new Seagate one. The top one is my main drive, which is working fine and the bottom if the Seagate: http://sircanealotshome.homestead.com/files/Harddisk.jpg

My specs are:
Atholn 1900+
512 megs of ram
ASUS A7A266-E
Windows XP with SP1
My main drive is a Maxtor 6L080J4

If anyone has any ideas, it'd be great.
Thanks

 

[lunitic]

Given the awful slow throughput and awful high CPU utilization I suspect your drive is running in PIO mode instead of UDMA.

Go to the device Manager, expand your IDE controller, select primary IDE channel and go to the Advanced tab. Transfer mode should be "DMA if available" and current mode should be "Ultra DMA mode 5" (or 6, or 4, but NOT some PIO mode).

If transfer mode is "DMA if available" but current mode is PIO there might be 3 situations:
- bad cable (maybe but less likely a bad controller). When a certain amount of errors occur Windows will switch down to PIO mode. I believe this can be remedied by disconnecting the drive, booting Windows, shutting down and reconnecting the drive (I am sure I remedied it once, just can't remember exactly how, so it must have been something simple).
- BIOS set incorrectly.
- Bad (old) drivers. check the manufacturer of your IDE controller (usually your mobo) for new drivers.

 

[SirCanealot]

Hi I fixed the problem. A person I haven't seen for ages who knows how to fix stuff like this (job heh) randomly came back onto the Irc chan I hang at and told me how to fix it. It was running in PIO mode. I needed new Mother Board drivers to fix it up. Pretty lucky heh. Always the damn drivers...

Thanks