IDE Seagate very slow

[CoonDawg]

I bought this 120gb, 7200RPM Seagate about a month ago and partitioned it down the middle into two. Both Paritions are being slow.

It's set as a slave drive, sharing an IDE with my old Dell HDD. I would have thought, if anything, my new Seagate would be faster than this cheap Dell Maxtor. Well apperantly that isn't the case. I've timed a 115mb file, going from my I: (Which is my main storage parition) to my C:, C: to my I:, I: to my I: (Simply copying it), I: to my H: (Which is my parition I'll be using for OS experimentation (It's empty)), and it's all slow. I thought maybe it's just naturally slow because of the file, but I went C: to my C: and it took less than half the time (40 seconds, compared to around 1:40 when the file was involved with my Seagate) than it took me anywhere else. Are you confused yet? So am I.

Anyway, it's not a huge problem since I only use it for storage. But I still have to install my larger programs like games on my I:, and it takes FOREVER to install. I'm also contributing my slow Maya start-up to my Hard drive, also. Luckily I listen to music and watch videos much more than I play games, and those aren't a problem. But it is annoying having to write files to that thing.

The only problem I can see that I found on the internet is my drive is running in PIO, not DMA. But I have no idea how to get it into DMA.

I appreciate any help, and I probably left out some important detail (my knowledge of Hard Drives is very minimal), so pre-emptive sorry.

[cmptrgydv]

What speed is the dell drive? Is it a 7200 RPM
Is it a 100MB drive or 133MB,
With both drives on the same IDE line it will slow the faster drive down to the speed
Of the slower drive, it can not read write faster then the slowest drive,
So if the old drive is a 100MB and the new one is 133MB they will both run at 100MB
When on the same IDE line, but if your running windows on the slower drive,
I would install windows on the new drive, and use the old one for storage,

[CoonDawg]

My new drive IS the slow one. My Dell one is actually the fast one.

I have no idea the Dell specs, all I know is Everest calls it a Maxtor. My guess would be it's a 7200, and my new Seagate is a 7200 ATA/100.

And I know that one is only as fast as the slowest drive, and that's what I thought at very first. But they aren't running at teh same speed, or both slow. My Dell HDD is reading and writting (from what I can tell) at teh same speed it always has. My new HDD (The Seagate one) is running at less than half the speed of my OLD drive.

It's either defective (Which I'm almost sure it isn't) or something isn't configured right, or the universe hates me. And my magic 8 ball says the universe hates me.

[cmptrgydv]

Thanks’ I answered this thread and now I think the universe hate’s me to,



Ok let’s go over this again, and see if I have this right, so the Maxtor is the faster drive, Seagate is new drive, but slow, (what do you mean by slow)
Ok so XP or your OS is on the Maxtor drive, is the Maxtor drive set as master or slave,
First I would put the Seagate on the other IDE line, with your CDrom or whatever it might be,
As long as you’re not running something from the CDrom drive at the same time as the hard drive,
Then the hard drive can run at its given speed, and you will be doing that almost never,
If you have them set on Master, Slave, I would put them on CS or cable select,
I have found that the drives are detected faster sometimes, when there set on CS instead of master slave, but that depends on the Bios, but it’s worth a shot,

And one other thing, are you using an IDE cable that is good for 100\133MB drives,

[CoonDawg]

Thanks’ I answered this thread and now I think the universe hate’s me to,



Ok let’s go over this again, and see if I have this right, so the Maxtor is the faster drive, Seagate is new drive, but slow, (what do you mean by slow)
Ok so XP or your OS is on the Maxtor drive, is the Maxtor drive set as master or slave,
First I would put the Seagate on the other IDE line, with your CDrom or whatever it might be,
As long as you’re not running something from the CDrom drive at the same time as the hard drive,
Then the hard drive can run at its given speed, and you will be doing that almost never,
If you have them set on Master, Slave, I would put them on CS or cable select,
I have found that the drives are detected faster sometimes, when there set on CS instead of master slave, but that depends on the Bios, but it’s worth a shot,

And one other thing, are you using an IDE cable that is good for 100\133MB drives,

It's set as Slave (The Seagate), and the Maxtor is Master. I'll try sticking them on CS, and I'll also try sticking it on my other IDE cable, and then I'll tell you if it works.

The IDE cable I'm using is what came with the Seagate. I have two others, one that is similar to the one that came with my Seagate, except it has "dents" in it so I didn't want to us it. Then I was using an old IDE that seemed to have half the amount of wires running through it (They were bigger), so I figured that was inferior and I swapped it for the one I'm using now.

Also, when I say slow I mean it writes files half as fast as my maxtor. For example it took 40 seconds for me to copy a 115 mb file on my Maxtor. Then I tried transfering the same file from my Seagate to my Maxtor and it took 1 minute 40 seconds. Then I thought "Maybe it's the cable and files aren't transfering as fast between the two hard drives", so I copied the same file on my Seagate to my Seagate, and it took just as long.

[DeathWish187]

when i had multiple ides hooked up it was set up like
IDE1-OS HDD master, n optical drive slave
IDE2 was other hdd
didnt have any problems
2 hdd's on same line may be the problem...

[CoonDawg]

Here's a problem: I have 2 disk drives. One's a DVD burner and the other's just a CD burner. I don't need two, but having two is very convienient.

If cmp's idea works, should I put:

IDE: Maxtor and CD/DVD drive
IDE2: Seagate and DVD/CD drive

?

[cmptrgydv]

The IDE cable with the thin wires is the good one, 100/133 cable,
The other one is 33/66MB
Will your DVD-RW burn cd’s , it should, if it does I would just take the CD burner out,
Less power for your PSU to worry about, that may become a problem if your power supply
Is not big enough, with all them drives installed,
Try to have the drive with the OS on it, hooked up alone on IDE if you can, but make sure
If you have it alone, it’s set on CS, not on master, having it set on master, when it is alone,
Will slow down your start time, because it will stop to look for the slave drive on the IDE line,
And it will sit and think about it for awhile, when you have it set on master, it’s telling the bios that there is a slave present, so it spends time looking for it, but it’s not there,

[stroyal]

The IDE cable with the thin wires is the good one, 100/133 cable,
The other one is 33/66MB
Will your DVD-RW burn cd’s , it should, if it does I would just take the CD burner out,
Less power for your PSU to worry about, that may become a problem if your power supply
Is not big enough, with all them drives installed,
Try to have the drive with the OS on it, hooked up alone on IDE if you can, but make sure
If you have it alone, it’s set on CS, not on master, having it set on master, when it is alone,
Will slow down your start time, because it will stop to look for the slave drive on the IDE line,
And it will sit and think about it for awhile, when you have it set on master, it’s telling the bios that there is a slave present, so it spends time looking for it, but it’s not there,

The old 40 conductor cable is for 33mb only, 66MB hard drives also require the new 80 conductor cable.

Quote:Here's a problem: I have 2 disk drives. One's a DVD burner and the other's just a CD burner. I don't need two, but having two is very convienient.

If cmp's idea works, should I put:

IDE: Maxtor and CD/DVD drive
IDE2: Seagate and DVD/CD drive

You should never have a CD on the same chanel as your primary hard drive, and probably not even your secondary. CD/s are 33 MB and will slow anything on the same channel to 33 MB

[stroyal]

The only way to do what you want to do and still get max performance out of all your drives is to get a PCI/IDE expantion card to give you 2 more channels.

If you put the old drive on the same channel as the new drive it will make the new drive run the same speed (or slower) than the old drive.

If you put any CD on the same channel as either hard drive they will run at 33MB.

If you use a 40 conductor cable with any hard drive it will run at 33MBs.

[stroyal]

To change your DMA/ PIO settings, right click my computer/properties/choose the hardware tab/click device manager,expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, then right click Primary or Secondary IDE Channel, Choose properties, click the advanced settings tab.