New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo Edition 1TB)

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Paul

Hi everyone,

I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line,
and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level.
If its already switched on when my computer boots up, it adds nearly
a
minute to the boot time while its little light is flashing away doing
unknown things, If I turned the drive on after boot up, FreeramXP
reports my available memory dropping to below 10MB while the drive
takes nearly a minute to introduce itself to Windows.
Does anyone else have this problem or any idea as to what might be
causing it?


Thanks,


Paul
 
Paul said:
Hi everyone,

I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line,
and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level.
If its already switched on when my computer boots up, it adds nearly
a
minute to the boot time while its little light is flashing away doing
unknown things, If I turned the drive on after boot up, FreeramXP
reports my available memory dropping to below 10MB while the drive
takes nearly a minute to introduce itself to Windows.
Does anyone else have this problem or any idea as to what might be
causing it?
Click to expand...
Restart your machine. (without the Maxtor).
Do a `Ctrl/Alt/Delete` to open Process Explorer.
Tab to Processes.

Then switch on your Maxtor, and watch to Processes
page to see what eats CPU time.
 
Hi everyone,

I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line,
and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level.
If its already switched on when my computer boots up, it adds nearly
a
minute to the boot time while its little light is flashing away doing
unknown things, If I turned the drive on after boot up, FreeramXP
reports my available memory dropping to below 10MB while the drive
takes nearly a minute to introduce itself to Windows.
Does anyone else have this problem or any idea as to what might be
causing it?
Click to expand...

I don't have the answer but would warn against FreeRamXP, as
XP automatically frees ram as needed, any effort to free
that ram ahead of this automatic process just wastes some of
the caching XP does for performance increases.

The ideal XP system has close to zero free memory, it is
caching everything possible which significantly reduces HDD
rereads.
 
Paul said:
I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line,
and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level.
Click to expand...

And what hard disk might that be? You should realize that not all
newsreaders display the subject line as part of the message.
Include the identification in your article. Google is only a
relatively poor interface to Usenet.
 
CBFalconer said:
And what hard disk might that be? You should realize that not all
newsreaders display the subject line as part of the message.
Include the identification in your article. Google is only a
relatively poor interface to Usenet.
Click to expand...

It is this box. Two disks and an Oxford 924 chip.

"Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition Hard Disk Drive with 1TB Storage Capacity"
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/maxtor-onetouch3-turbo.html

It may not be this exact chip, but this would give you an idea.

"FireWire800, 400 and USB 2.0 to dual SATA storage controller OXUF924DSb"
http://www.oxsemi.com/products/storage/OXUF924DSB.html

A little hard to understand how this would make demands on system
RAM. Unless there is some driver installed for the thing, for the
One Touch function.

Paul
 
It is this box. Two disks and an Oxford 924 chip.

"Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition Hard Disk Drive with 1TB Storage Capacity"http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/maxtor-onetouch3-tur...

It may not be this exact chip, but this would give you an idea.

"FireWire800, 400 and USB 2.0 to dual SATA storage controller OXUF924DSb"http://www.oxsemi.com/products/storage/OXUF924DSB.html

A little hard to understand how this would make demands on system
RAM. Unless there is some driver installed for the thing, for the
One Touch function.

Paul
Click to expand...

Hi guys,

I have stopped using Freeramxp but the problem still continues. I also
can't see how simply turining on an external hard drive would create
such a drag on the system.
I tried the Task Manager idea from meerket, and it was the System
process that jumped when I turned the hard drive on. CPU usage went
from 2% to over 40%.
There is a driver running for the drive, as this enables the button on
the front to work. I have tried running it without the driver (one
time after I decided to wipe my system and start over from scratch),
and altough the onetouch button obviously didn't work, the drive was
still producing the same drag on the system.
I've mentioned this to several IT instructors I know and everyone is
at a loss.

Paul
 
Paul said:
I've mentioned this to several IT instructors I know and everyone is
at a loss.
Click to expand...

Perhaps it's building a RAID or something - have you tried leaving it
for a few hours?

I suspect, as is the case with the vast majority of consumer grade RAID
kit, this is actually a software RAID device using a Windows driver to
emulate a hardware RAID solution.

If that is the case, the driver will probably initialise the array at
some point before you use it, and if all that disc IO has to happen over
USB then it is likely to cause some kind of slowdown - how much that is
depends entirely on the spec of the machine, but all of that IO has to
be handled directly by the CPU.

If that turns out not to be the case, you have to start troubleshooting
from first principles.

ie. Is the USB/Firewire connection working properly with other
peripherals? Does the drive perform as expected when connected to a
different PC or by the USB vs Firewire connections. Is the drive
properly formatted? Are the cables known-good etc.

Cheers

Alex
 
Paul said:
Hi everyone,

I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line,
and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level.
If its already switched on when my computer boots up, it adds nearly
a
minute to the boot time while its little light is flashing away doing
unknown things, If I turned the drive on after boot up, FreeramXP
reports my available memory dropping to below 10MB while the drive
takes nearly a minute to introduce itself to Windows.
Does anyone else have this problem or any idea as to what might be
causing it?


Thanks,


Paul
Click to expand...

As a shot in the dark, here are a few things that might help.

Verify that your PC's FireWire interface is actually a full 9 pin FireWire
800 device and not an older FireWire 400 device.

Try another cable, making sure it's up to the FireWire 800 specifications.

And like someone else suggested, leave the system running for a while and
see if the problem irons itself out as the raid system levels out.
 
As a shot in the dark, here are a few things that might help.

Verify that your PC's FireWire interface is actually a full 9 pin FireWire
800 device and not an older FireWire 400 device.

Try another cable, making sure it's up to the FireWire 800 specifications.

And like someone else suggested, leave the system running for a while and
see if the problem irons itself out as the raid system levels out.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Hi,

Thanks for all the answers, you've been great.
There's probably some things I should have mentioned earlier.
Firstly, I've got the drive set up as RAID 0 so I can have full access
to the entire 1TB. As this problem has been occuring every time I've
turned the computer on for the past month, I don't know if that would
have any impact on building the RAID.
Second, I've got it connected via USB 2.0 (in its own port, not
through a hub). I have tried Firewire 400 which actually improved the
performance and cut the 1 minute lag I mentioned down to a few
seconds. Unfortunately the Firewire connector on my laptop is on the
side and right near the front of the case. I discovered that even a
gentle knock caused the drive to disconnect from the system and
sometimes it wouldn't reconnect unless I pulled the plug out and put
it back in. Not good if I'm accessing the drive at the time. As much
as I've love to go with the Firewire options, the position of the
connector on my laptop doesn't really make it practical to have
something permanently connected there.

Paul
 
I forgot to mention that I'm also using the cable that came with the
drive, it is pretty good when it gets up to speed, and my two other
external HD's seem to work fine. I'm starting to lean towards the idea
that it something to do with the RAID and the fact that there are two
disks inside it.

Paul
 
Paul said:
I forgot to mention that I'm also using the cable that came with the
drive, it is pretty good when it gets up to speed, and my two other
external HD's seem to work fine. I'm starting to lean towards the idea
that it something to do with the RAID and the fact that there are two
disks inside it.

Paul
Click to expand...

But the Product Briefing for the Oxford 924 chip, says it has
an ARM7 core in it. That is a separate processor, inside the
Oxford 924. The Maxtor box likely has an EEPROM in it, with
firmware for the ARM7 to execute. Which means it should be
able to hide its "RAIDness" and just present a virtual volume
on whatever interface you select.

Does the disk light flash on the case of the device, during
the time that the RAM on your system is being abused ?

Paul
 
But the Product Briefing for the Oxford 924 chip, says it has
an ARM7 core in it. That is a separate processor, inside the
Oxford 924. The Maxtor box likely has an EEPROM in it, with
firmware for the ARM7 to execute. Which means it should be
able to hide its "RAIDness" and just present a virtual volume
on whatever interface you select.

Does the disk light flash on the case of the device, during
the time that the RAM on your system is being abused ?

Paul
Click to expand...

Hi,

Yes its exactly the time that the available RAM drop to almost
nothing. After the light stops flashing the RAM goes back up.

Paul
 
Paul said:
Hi,

Yes its exactly the time that the available RAM drop to almost
nothing. After the light stops flashing the RAM goes back up.

Paul
Click to expand...

Maybe *something* is indexing the drive ?

Paul
 
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