Slow HD access speed

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fitz
  • Start date Start date
F

Fitz

Access speeds to the D:\* drive are slow- 20-30 seconds to backup small
file like Quicken. Saving a renamed MP3 file can take the same amount of
time. Over all performance of the system is slowed when the D:\ drive is
involved. The D:\ drive is used for storage and backup only - there are
no .exe or apps running from that drive. The config is:

AMD AM2 5200 on an ASUS M2N-E motherboard
2 SATA 36GB Raptors in RAID 0 (C:\) which has the OS and programs on it
(plenty fast)
1 Maxtor Diamond 10 160 GB IDE drive (D:\)
4GB Corsair PC800 memory
Lite-On SATA DVD R/W
BFG 88640 GTS OC
Using on-board HD SoundMax and onboard ethernet connection
Corsair HX620 power supply
Vista 64 Premium

So, is it the HD config, the motherboard, or Vista? Would changing to a
SATA HD for D: solve the problem? There are no updated chipset drivers
from ASUS, nor any patches from MS that I can find. If a change in HD is
in order, what's the reputation of the WD 320GB SATA2 w/16mb cache?

Thanks,
Fitz
 
Not sure if Vista has this issue or not.. but XP sure did.

For repeated DMA errors. Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more that six DMA transfer timeouts
occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use only PIO mode on that device.
In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the device.
Windows XP downgrades the Ultra DMA transfer mode after receiving more than six CRC errors. Whenever possible, the operating system will step down one UDMA mode at a time (from
UDMA mode 4 to UDMA mode 3, and so on).

Also I suppose its posible the bios itself could have the wrong mode set.
 
ATA Channel 0 (only IDE device connected) shows UDMA 6 as the transfer
mode. All the rest are Serial ATA controllers, no transfer mode listed.

Fitz
 
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