Very slow hard drive performance on Acer Aspire 9410

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom Kennedy
  • Start date Start date
Tom

The Current Transfer mode is the relevant setting. If the system is
using PIO mode it will be slow. Don't forget the hard drive in most
laptops is only 5,400 (as your's is ) to conserve the battery. Desktops
usually are 7200. which makes for quicker read / write speeds.

Try HD Tune. It only gives information and does not fix any problems.

Download and run it and see what it turns up. You want HD Tune
(freeware) version 2.55 not HD Tune Pro (not Freeware) version 3.00.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on the drive under Drive
letter and then double click the two page icon ( copy to Clipboard )
and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message. Make sure you do a full
surface scan with HD Tune.

With graphics programmes if you are editing you need to be aware that
undo can generate very high memory demands. It is is best to save at
intervals. Alsp if the programme has a memory leak it is best to close
the programme after use and restart the computer to ensure all memory is
released. Just closing the programme does not always release the memory.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Well, good news. I think. Maybe.

I did a registry edit and changed some entries that control drive modes if I
understand it correctly. I then went into device manager and set everything
to PIO, exited device manager and then went back in and reset the drives to
DMA mode if available.

After that I rebooted and tried a 1 gig copy from one folder on C: to
another folder on C:. It went very quickly, probably about 1 minute or so
from start to finish I guess. Then I tried a 1 gig copy from C: to my
NexStar MX dual SATA drive enclosure. This enclosure is using a USB 2.0
connection. Again, the copy went very well. I have not tried a copy from
one of my compact flash cards that I use for my photogrpahy business but I
believe that if the drive to drive copy worked well that a memory card to
drive copy will work properly also.

I know that 2 copies prove very little but I am optimistic that the problem
is solved. It seems to be working at least as well as it ever did, possibly
even just a tiny bit better.

I will post again in a day or so to let everyone know if it is still
working. Tonight I will most likely install some software and see if it
works properly.

While I am on here I would like to thank all those who responded to my
request for help. I appreciate your taking the time to offer suggestions and
advice. Long ago I used to be the local computer guy for the bank I worked
for but those days are past. I have forgotten a lot of what I knew back then
and technology has not stood still either. This has been a difficult
problem for me and I appreciate the help and support from the other members.

Tom Kennedy
 
Tom Kennedy said:
This is my first post. I may not be giving the needed information for
anyone
to reply. If more information is needed I will gladly provide it.

My Acer Aspire 9410 laptop came with Windows Vista installed. I have had
a
lot of problems with Vista so I decided to change to Windows XP.
The installation seemed to go fine but now the hard drive is very slow if
you are copying a lot of files. I have a small photo studio and I copy
about
4 gig of files for every wedding. On Vista it would take maybe 6 or 7
minutes. On XP it would take probably a couple of hours.

I may not be using the right terms to say this but it is like there is a
buffer that fills up. The first few files may copy quickly and then
suddenly the process slows tremendously and the time remaining starts to
climb very quickly. It behaves the same no matter what I am copying from
or
to. I can copy from C: to C:, from C: to my external drive, from my
external
to C:, from memory card to C:, from memory card to external, it all acts
the
same.

For maybe 30 seconds it goes very well then it nearly stops. I don't mean
it slows down by a tiny bit. It goes from megabytes per second to
seconds
per megabyte. It probably takes 20 seconds just to copy one image file.
The system is basically unusable for my photo editing and work at my
studio
as it is now.

I believe I have installed the latest drivers, and device manager shows no
problems.

The problem does not seem to be intermittent. I have tried the external
drive on different USB ports and it doesn't seem to matter.

I have researched the problem and have found mention of it on other sites.
Unfortunately the links given to download files that were supposed to cure
the problem were not working. I have no idea what to do next. If anyone
could provide any suggestions or guidance I would really appreciate it.

Tom Kennedy
Click to expand...


If you are using an external drive connected via USB, you may be lacking the
core motherboard/chipset drivers that allow USB2 chips to operate at USB2
speeds. Without those drivers, they will work, but will run only at USB1
speeds, which would be consistent with the times you quote.

Those drivers were present in your Vista system, but may or may not be
available for XP. You have to get them from the manufacturer, and if they
don't have them, they aren't available.

HTH
-pk
 
Folks, I think it is fixed. I've been using the laptop some for the past
day and it seems to be working. Disk drive speed is much, much better. If
I look at device manager it shows ultra DMA 5 for the hard drive and ultra
dma 2 for the CD drive. It looks like editing the registry and then
resetting things in device manager cured it.

Unless any who responded have questions I guess this will be my last post
about the laptop problem. I appreciate all the help and suggestions I
received.

Thank you

Tom Kennedy
 
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