Slow access/transfer

  • Thread starter Thread starter Todd Brooks
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Todd Brooks

This is my 2nd hard drive (Western Digital 80GB 8MB cache). I have another
80GB WD already in my system, I believe it is the 2MB cache though.
Everything was set up fine, I was able to transfer some files from the old
drive to the new successfully, but I noticed that when I play videos from
the new drive it become choppy at times, and I notice my mouse skips around
as if the computer is working extra hard. Sometimes the video freezes, and
then speeds up really fast to catch up. I also noticed that when I download
large files to my new drive, the time it takes to transfer from a temp
folder to my download location seems excessively long. I have a moderately
powerful system so I don't think that is the issue, as I have not had this
problem before with the old drive.

Thanks!
 
Todd said:
This is my 2nd hard drive (Western Digital 80GB 8MB cache). I have another
80GB WD already in my system, I believe it is the 2MB cache though.
Everything was set up fine, I was able to transfer some files from the old
drive to the new successfully, but I noticed that when I play videos from
the new drive it become choppy at times, and I notice my mouse skips around
as if the computer is working extra hard. Sometimes the video freezes, and
then speeds up really fast to catch up. I also noticed that when I download
large files to my new drive, the time it takes to transfer from a temp
folder to my download location seems excessively long. I have a moderately
powerful system so I don't think that is the issue, as I have not had this
problem before with the old drive.
Click to expand...


Make sure DMA is enabled for the drive. Since you haven't mentioned
anything about your OS, I'll leave it up to you to Google any info.


-WD
 
I am using WinXP Home.

For primary IDE channel, for device 0, it's on Ultra DMA Mode 5. But for
device 1, it says PIO Mode. For secondary IDE channel, device 0 is on PIO
Mode, device 1 is on Ultra DMA Mode 2. Should all these devices be on DMA? I
have "DMA if available" selected on all of them, but for some reason it says
PIO on the two I mentioned.

Thanks.
 
Just some additional info. I use WMPlayer and I looked at my task manager
while I had the videos up. During the parts where the video is choppy my CPU
is up to 100% and it is taken up by the wmplayer application. Also when I
drag the bar to go to different spots in the video, my mouse is very choppy
and the computer is slow, and the CPU goes up to 100% again. For a test I
transferred one to my old drive and it worked fine. I have also tried other
media players and get the same problem.

Also, I don't know if it matters, but after looking at transfer times here
from drive to drive it seems mine may have been excessive. 8GB of transfer
took over 100 minutes. Another 6GB folder took a little over an hour I
believe. I figured it must have been normal at the time but is it? I have
the jumper settings correctly on both drives.
 
Todd said:
I am using WinXP Home.

For primary IDE channel, for device 0, it's on Ultra DMA Mode 5. But for
device 1, it says PIO Mode. For secondary IDE channel, device 0 is on PIO
Mode, device 1 is on Ultra DMA Mode 2. Should all these devices be on DMA? I
have "DMA if available" selected on all of them, but for some reason it says
PIO on the two I mentioned.
Click to expand...


Ideally, all devices should be in DMA mode. PIO mode can cause the
symptoms you describe.

As for *why* they're in PIO mode, I'm not sure. When your computer
first boots, does the screen after POST show those two devices in PIO
mode also? What are the actual devices that are in PIO mode?


-WD
 
I checked the startup screen, and from what I could see both devices,
master/slave, were in DMA mode (UDMA 2).

When I look at my HD properties in Data Lifeguard Tools (Western Digital
program), for my old drive it says "Ultra DMA Active: 5", but for the new
drive it says "Ultra DMA Active: None". So it seems in the Primary IDE
channel, the new drive is not in DMA mode.

If it helps, my motherboard is an ASUS A7V333, and I am using the same
channel (cable) for both drives.
 
Ok, I checked my boot screen again and it was the secondary IDE channel I
was looking at. For the primary, It shows my master HD in UDMA mode 5, but
for the slave it says "None". I've tried uninstalling the device and that
still didn't take it out of PIO mode.
 
Good news! I fixed the problem. Since the HD wasn't being detected I flashed
my BIOS and then went in and added the drive manually, where I could select
DMA and PIO modes. Now both drives are running in UDMA mode 5.
 
Most likely you had the drive type set to NONE in setup. Flashing a new Bios
would set it to AUTO, as would "load defaults".
 
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