Very poor hard drive speed in XP Home ???

Unlucki · Sep 17, 2003

Hi,

Can anyone please help I have XP Home running on the following ;

Asrock K7VT2 (It does have up to ATA 133)
IBM DPTA-372050 (20 gig 34gxp)
Formatted as NTFS
Clean install just added all my usual games apps etc about 3 gig free
Athlon XP 2400+
512 meg RAM

The disk is soooooo slow ! I know Sandra is not the best but it is reported
at 7883 ! Which at best appears to be rubbish !! I also tried PC Pitstop
which reported I have uncached throughput of 0.71mb which is about 25% of
what it should be !

In BIOS (which BTW is 1.3) Drive is recognised as SMART and 'capable and OK'
Ultra DMA Mode 4

In device manager Primary IDE says 'use DMA if available' and is using
'Ultra DMA mode 4'....it is the only disk on Primary, CD is on Secondary.

My question is why does it feel so slow in fact no quicker (at all) than my
1 gig tbird...there has to be something wrong ?? Can any kind soul help
before I go and buy a new HD and install everything again to see if that
makes the difference.....

ANY help at all would be great.

He of little hair !!!!

Unlucki (felling very apt at the moment is my nick ;-))

Rod Speed · Sep 17, 2003

Can anyone please help I have XP Home running on the following ;

Asrock K7VT2 (It does have up to ATA 133)

Thats likely the problem, the VIA chipset.

Try the latest 4 in 1 drivers from the Ausroc site.
http://www.asrock.com.tw/support/Download/dl_k7vt2.htm

IBM DPTA-372050 (20 gig 34gxp)
Formatted as NTFS
Clean install just added all my usual games apps etc about 3 gig free
Athlon XP 2400+
512 meg RAM

The disk is soooooo slow ! I know Sandra is not the best but
it is reported at 7883 ! Which at best appears to be rubbish !!
I also tried PC Pitstop which reported I have uncached
throughput of 0.71mb which is about 25% of what it should be !

If the 4 in 1 drivers dont fix it, I'd personally ghost the entire drive,
format it FAT32 so you can use the free version of HDTach to get
a real look at the basic drive subsystem low level performance.

You'd obviously need a spare hard drive to be able to do
that and since its a rather elderly drive, you may not have one.

In BIOS (which BTW is 1.3)

That is the latest available.

Drive is recognised as SMART and 'capable and OK' Ultra DMA Mode 4

In device manager Primary IDE says 'use DMA if available' and is using
'Ultra DMA mode 4'....it is the only disk on Primary, CD is on Secondary.

My question is why does it feel so slow in fact no quicker (at
all) than my 1 gig tbird...there has to be something wrong ??

Very likely.

Can any kind soul help before I go and buy a new HD and
install everything again to see if that makes the difference.....

Its unlikely to help.

ANY help at all would be great.

He of little hair !!!!

Life wasnt meant to be hairy !!!!

Unlucki (felling very apt at the moment is my nick ;-))

Thats the problem, you shot yourself in the foot choosing that nick |-))

Unlucki · Sep 17, 2003

Rod Speed said:
Thats likely the problem, the VIA chipset.

Hrrummpphhh !!! Can't be that bad can it ;-) 27 quid the board was from
Scan, could not resist !!! Along with my new 2400+ for 67 ;-))) Upgrade for
94 smackeroos !!!

Try the latest 4 in 1 drivers from the Ausroc site.
http://www.asrock.com.tw/support/Download/dl_k7vt2.htm

Got the latest Hyperion drivers and installed, is there any way to tell if
that is actually the case ???

If the 4 in 1 drivers dont fix it, I'd personally ghost the entire drive,
format it FAT32 so you can use the free version of HDTach to get
a real look at the basic drive subsystem low level performance.

You'd obviously need a spare hard drive to be able to do
that and since its a rather elderly drive, you may not have one.

I'd also need to buy ghost etc....My understanding though is it is still a
7200rpm 2 meg jobbie so 'shoud' be half decent ???

That is the latest available.

Cool ! Something is correct at least !

Secondary.

Very likely.

Agreed.......hence my plea for help ;-)

Its unlikely to help.

Why ? I would have thought latest and greateset HD would be an improvement
???

Life wasnt meant to be hairy !!!!

I know now ;-)))

Thats the problem, you shot yourself in the foot choosing that nick |-))

Twas a good idea at the time....BTW thanx for your help thus far

Take care

U

Rod Speed · Sep 17, 2003

Hrrummpphhh !!! Can't be that bad can it ;-)
27 quid the board was from Scan, could not resist !!!

Maybe there was a reason for that price |-)

Along with my new 2400+ for 67 ;-)))
Upgrade for 94 smackeroos !!!

Got the latest Hyperion drivers and installed, is
there any way to tell if that is actually the case ???

Running HDTach, but thats not free with the NTFS format.

Try PC Pitstop again if you cant temporarily format the drive to FAT32
just for that thorough test of the drive subsystem performance.

I'd also need to buy ghost etc....

Yeah, tho its amazingly cheap if you buy
SystemWorks Pro 2003 off ebay etc.

My understanding though is it is still a 7200rpm
2 meg jobbie so 'shoud' be half decent ???

Yes, its getting a bit elderly now, but should perform
reasonably well on a motherboard with a decent FSB speed.

Cool ! Something is correct at least !

Agreed.......hence my plea for help ;-)

Why ?

Basically the current drive appears to be much
more sluggish than you'd expect. Hard to be
completely sure without running HDTach tho.

If that is in fact true, a new hard drive wont help.

I would have thought latest and greateset
HD would be an improvement ???

Yes, but only if the drive subsystem is working
properly. There is some evidence that it isnt and
if it isnt, then a new hard drive wont necessarily
help much and is a relatively expensive thing to try.

I know now ;-)))

Twas a good idea at the time....BTW thanx for your help thus far

No problem, thats what these technical newsgroups are for.

Take care

I prefer to live dangerously |-)

Unlucki · Sep 18, 2003

Hi,

An update !

Got a 60 gig Maxtor +9, ATA 133, 2 meg cache and it flies (cloned everything
with ghost 2003) I now have Sandra reporting 30883 as opposed to 7883 and
pcpitstop reporting uncached speeds of nearly 7meg as opposed to 0.71meg

RESULT !!!

Thanks for everyone's help...even if I do not quite get what happened !!!

Cheers

U