Subject: Another Slow Hard Drive Issue
 

Ack, I am having a problem.

Access to my hard drive is a tad slow.

I am running win 2K sp4, on a 1gig hz machine 768meg ram. I have a
Maxtor 200gig hard drive on the second IDE channel. It is plugged into a
removable tray.

I recently went to device manager, disabled the drive, then removed it.
Then stuck in another drive, enabled, copied files, disabled, and then
removed it. Then I stuck the Maxtor back in and enabled it. All fine.

Problem is that now the access time is about six times slower. It
reads/writes correctly, never any errors, just takes longer to do the
access. Also, the machine is very slow when doing large file copying, ie
the mouse cursor drags and is slow. Before, everything was zippy copied
large files many times faster than now, and the machine didnt suffer in
performance when doing this copying. It takes about 12 mins now to copy
700 meg of data to or from another hard drive on a different ide channel.


It is the master drive on the ide cable, w/a CDRW. Device Manager says
for "Device 0": "Transfer Mode" is "DMA if available", and "Current
Transfer Mode" is "Not Available".

I tried another posters suggestion of forcing it to "PIO Only" rebooting,
changing back, etc. No help. Everything is "Auto Detect", checked BIOS,
etc.

I dont know what is causing the problem, nothing has changed except that
swap, any ideas?

Where it says: "Device: Autodetection" that combo box is disabled.

Thanks,

-jim

jim wrote in message
...

Ack, I am having a problem.

Access to my hard drive is a tad slow.

More than a tad.

I am running win 2K sp4, on a 1gig hz machine 768meg ram.
I have a Maxtor 200gig hard drive on the second IDE channel.
It is plugged into a removable tray.

Those trays can be a problem.

I recently went to device manager, disabled the drive, then removed it.
Then stuck in another drive, enabled, copied files, disabled, and then
removed it. Then I stuck the Maxtor back in and enabled it. All fine.

Problem is that now the access time is about six times slower. It
reads/writes correctly, never any errors, just takes longer to do the
access. Also, the machine is very slow when doing large file copying, ie
the mouse cursor drags and is slow. Before, everything was zippy copied
large files many times faster than now, and the machine didnt suffer in
performance when doing this copying. It takes about 12 mins now to copy
700 meg of data to or from another hard drive on a different ide channel.

It is the master drive on the ide cable, w/a CDRW. Device
Manager says for "Device 0": "Transfer Mode" is "DMA if
available", and "Current Transfer Mode" is "Not Available".

That's your problem, DMA isnt being used.

I tried another posters suggestion of forcing it to
"PIO Only" rebooting, changing back, etc. No help.
Everything is "Auto Detect", checked BIOS, etc.

I dont know what is causing the problem, nothing
has changed except that swap, any ideas?

That OS family will disable DMA if it sees a
significant error rate with that IDE controller.

Try deleting the IDE controller in the Device Manager and
rebooting and letting it install it again. That should fix that.

Where it says: "Device: Autodetection" that combo box is disabled.

More than a tad.
LOL.


Those trays can be a problem.
Been fine for me.


That's your problem, DMA isnt being used.
Yeah, I knew that, just could not figure out what part of windows to
tickle to fix it.

Try deleting the IDE controller in the Device Manager and
You Da Man! That fixed it!

Thank You !!


Ok, Long story:

Delete secondary IDE channel.
Restart.
Access HD in question no problem back to fast transfer rate, great!

My system has a weird problem upon bootup where certain
functionality waits until something times out before I can do
these things such as go on the internet. So, for instance,
I boot up. From the time I can see the desktop, I have to wait
four minutes, yes I timed it, before I can:
Play a movie.
If I run the app to connect to my ISP, four minutes from
when I click to when I can see the dialog box appear.
Go to Device manager, click on Properties for IDE Channel,
have to wait these four minutes before I can see the property
page appear.

Some switch clicks inside, and then all these things start working.
Like these are all waiting on somethine. What I dont know. If I
shut down the system before these four minutes are up, I get a
notice about CSC Notifications not shutting down. Other
applications run fine within the four minute window. Access to all
hard drives is fine.

After the four minutes has expired, Windows now says Found New Hardware.
It installs the drivers. Back to slow access.
Go to the IDE Property page, PIO mode. Change to DMA if Available.
Reboot.
Now running Ultra DMA, even faster than my normal fast access. Even
better. Great!

Thanks again!

-jim