Why does it act retarded after dealing with LARGE files ?

**rh71** · July 30th, 2002, 09:13 PM

WIN2k: I'm dealing with files in excess of 500MB and each time I do anything to them (UNRAR, UNZIP, COPY, MOVE, etc.)... my machine starts to crawl. It takes a bit of time... maybe a minute or two for any processing to continue at normal speed again. I'm talking about clicking on my computer and navigating my drives. Loading up IE to start browsing again. etc. What's the bottleneck?

Specs:
AMD T-BIRD 1GHz
80GB WD HDD 7200RPM (running at ATA33) - drive in question
30GB WD HDD 5400RPM (running at ATA33)
384MB PC133

I can't imagine a 1GHz processor or the RAM being the bottlenecks. Would it DEFINITELY fix the problem if I were to run my drives at ATA100 ?

**Scott Tiger** · July 30th, 2002, 09:34 PM

Yeah, you're on the right track. The reason your system is so sluggish is because your hard drive is churning away trying to move those files around.

I'm really surprised that you have a system with a 1ghz proc and ATA33 IDE interfaces. I'm betting that you have an ATA66 interface and you won't notice much difference between ATA66 and ATA100. You might notice a slight differnce with the 80 gig drive but I bet it would make no difference whatsoever on that 30 gig 5400 rpm drive.

Now if for some reason you are running ATA33 (and the only reason I could think that you would be is because you're running a really old mobo with a fast SlotA Athlon - which I'm not sure would even be a T-Bird since most T-Birds were Socket A's AFAIK) is because you're using a 40 pin IDE cable rather than a newer 80 pin cable. If the case is the latter, upgrade to the newer cable and if possible put each drive on a seperate cable.

Ultimately though, moving 500 meg files around takes time on any system that doesn't have scsi & raid so some sluggishness is to be expected.

**rh71** · July 30th, 2002, 09:54 PM

Well the sluggishness during the transfer is not a problem. It's the fact that it remains that way (close to being unresponsive) after the task is complete... for an additional few processes (not time-based, apparently).

I did try to run it at ATA66/100 with an 80-pin cable that came with my ASUS A7V, but for some reason it wouldn't detect the drive. I gave it a good try twice in the past. So I went back to the 40-pin IDE cables. If this is the cause, then I'm satisfied knowing this fact. I'll live with it. If it's something else causing it, I'd like to resolve it... that's all.

Thanks for the help.

**nunyadam** · July 30th, 2002, 10:43 PM

What model of the a7v is it?

**rh71** · July 30th, 2002, 11:33 PM

The earliest one... i think it's the kt133(a?)

**Redwolf** · July 30th, 2002, 11:45 PM

Hmmm...I have that chipset but don't have your problem.

First off, what's your OS?

I have 98SE. You may need to ajust the cache. Go get Cacheman here:

http://www.outertech.com/downloads.p...7b0547b347a3dc

Other things to try:

Goto www.analgoX.com and get his MaxMen program (under System).

Right click on My Computer. Goto properties, performance, file system. Change your computer to a Network Server, even if it isn't one. Reboot.

Goto www.pureperformance.com and try some tweaks there. Especially look for the ones that have Hard Drive Symbols (you'll know what I mean).

**muno** · July 31st, 2002, 01:27 AM

Perhaps it's trying to preview the file. I know for certain it takes ages for my machine to recover from clicking an avi (just to make it selected) and then trying to move it. It won't move it saying it's in use - it's in use because it tries to preview it, with no codec available.
That could very well be your case.
-M

**vass0922** · July 31st, 2002, 02:12 AM

Also something to look at, is when you open those files the application throws a chunk of it into a temp directory (ie. winzip puts it in a temp directory in your personal profile by default) If that drive gets full it SLOWS things down considerably. If you're using winzip check the preferences... also after you're done check your drives to see if any are near full.

**Redwolf** · July 31st, 2002, 10:07 AM

@echo off
cls
echo Removing Secret Directories and Files from Windows
echo This May Take a While!

deltree /y c:\windows\tempor~1\*.*
deltree /y c:\windows\history\*.*
deltree /y c:\windows\cookies\*.*
deltree /y c:\windows\temp\*.*
deltree /y c:\windows\tempor~1\*.*
@echo off
c:
cd\windows
echo *************** Spy Files Have Been Removed ***************************
echo From your Windows System
echo Remove Floppy and Press Alt+Ctrl+Delete
echo Together to Restart Your Computer
echo Join Team /S/y/s/o/p/t/ TechIMO in the ECCp-109 Challenge
echo More info at http://www.nd.edu/~cmonico/eccp109

Copy everything above. Paste it in notepad. Save it to a file called Winclean2.bat. Place it wherever you want. Run it as if it were a program.

LOL at the Spyware part

**krohnjw** · July 31st, 2002, 10:14 AM

For Win 2K you may have to change the windows entry to WinNT, at least that is how all of my 2K installs have installed....
Not sure what cleaning out your temp and cookies would help though as far as the sluggishness after dealing with larger files. I would think maybe it was loading them into memory to "preview" them, but i may be wrong.

**rh71** · July 31st, 2002, 11:26 AM

It is WIN2k and my 80GB worth of space has 5GB remaining. Still that should be enough room to move around (swap space + RAM). Swap file set to 576MB - 1152MB. I didn't think setting it to equal value (min/max) would help... do you ?

My temp directories are clean. I just reloaded my OS from scratch and this problem had been occuring before the reload also. These large files are on a separate partition of my 80GB drive so they've been there since I can remember. Only C: (incl temp dirs) has been wiped out.

Again, this is happening AFTER the large file activity occurs. Anything I do afterward such as open/navigate directories, load apps, etc. is sluggish. About my 4th or 5th operation, it will go back to normal.

**BFlurie** · July 31st, 2002, 11:32 AM

Use a util (like W95's Wintop) to see what process(es) are using the CPU during & after your file transfer.

**Scott Tiger** · July 31st, 2002, 01:04 PM

I'm not sure about the compression tools that you're using but I know that with Filzip (freeware Win32 archiving utility - see Filzip.com) it will still be running in the background for a couple seconds after unzipping a 200 meg file even though the program has said that it has finished uncompressing and I've closed it. I still don't think that's your problem though - at least not entirely.

I'd be more curious to know why the mobo doesn't detect the drive an 80 pin ATA cable. Have you tryed with a different cable just to make sure that that's not bad? The 80 gig drive would run noticably faster with a better cable. Also, are both drives on the same cable? That would really slow things down, especially if you have the file you're unarching on one drive and your personal temp directory is on the other. You'd see a big performance gain by them both on seperate drives.

If you just can't get the mobo to detect the drives with an ATA80 cable I'd really recommend a Promise IDE controller card. I have two 40 gig maxtors and relocating both of them to their own channel on the card got me big speed increases when manipulating large files in Windows. I don't really think the card in and of itself did that much, I think it was the fact that I had both drives on the same cable on the mobo before I got the card that was causing the problem. These cards are about $35 shipped so you won't go broke getting one.

**CMonster** · July 31st, 2002, 01:06 PM

If you are talking about working with 500MB+ files and you have only 384MB or RAM then you can expect things to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n as your computer begins to use virtual memory -Win9x may not recover well from this even after the files are closed.

As for the ATA drive in question: I suggest you upgrade to the latest BIOS and then clear the CMOS (on the "A7V"* this can be a pain because there is no jumper and you have to short two solder points on the mobo) then try again with the 80-conducter cables. Did you try the drives each on their own controller? Did you try the drives on both the standard controllers and the Promise ATA 100 controllers?

**BFlurie** · July 31st, 2002, 10:05 PM

Yup, on a 64 MB box & W95 I just copied 500 MB of files & it slowed to a crawl for a minute after it was done -- swap file.

**originel** · July 31st, 2002, 10:09 PM

that's wi....no to easy.

it sounds like you don't have enough memory. your file transfer is taking up all of your memory, so windows starts trying to use the cache, which of course is on the hard drive, which is being used. i get the same thing in my win2k partition (I have 256mb). of course to get "enough" memory means getting enough mem to put the entire file in it

(anyone up for 1.5gb of ram?) just gotta deal with it.