Detecting IDE drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom
  • Start date Start date
T

Tom

OS: WinXP Pro
RAM: 128MB
Intel Celeron: 700GHz
HDD: Samsung SPO802N 80GB
I recently installed the HDD to my computer, it was
working fine until power went out. Now, when I start my
computer it shows a message "detecting IDE drives..." for
about a minute then finds "Samsung SPO802N" and starts
normally. I'm wondering, if it's a sign that HDD's going
bad or something else? Any fix also?

And here's what I did so far: set the BIOS to it's
optimized default, but it didn't help to solve it.
 
Tom, try moving the drive to the Secondary IDE channel and in Device
Manager set the ATA/ATAPI Controllers to DMA.
 
Thanks Rich,
I did as you told me to do: moved the drive to the
Secondary IDE channel, and changed in Device manager
ATA/ATAPI controllers to DMA for the secondary IDE
channel. Current transfer mode is 'PIO mode' and it's
grayed out for the Second/IDE.
Now it detects the drive fine, but it takes about 30 sec
on Windows XP logo screen with blue bar moving under it to
login. I guess it's OK, right?

Here're my questions:
- do I need to change Device type for the Primary IDE
channel to None or leave it as Auto?
- will changing the IDE channels affect to my PC's
performance?
- what was the reason of the delay detecting the drive?
 
Tom, if there's nothing on the Primary IDE then you can leave it on
None. Try setting your hard drive as
first boot device in the Bios. Disable boot floppy seek and few of the
other settings that slow you down.
No, the Secondary IDE channel should not slow you down as long as you
have DMA selected. One
other thing I noticed is the amount of Ram you have. Another 128MB of
Ram would surely help and
XP works best at 256MB and above.
 
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