Why is my second hardrive so slow?

[rubberbed]

I installed a new maxtor 7200 60 gig hardrive. I set it up as cable select like the instructions told me to. Any program I try to run from that hardrive takes a while to load up. Anyone know why this is or what I can do to make it as fast at my primary hardrive. CPU is a 2.53ghz P4.

[peregrin]

Is the drive running in UDMA or PIO, if it's PIO change it to UDMA. Also you should get some more ram 128 isn't enough to run anything , my rule of thumb for XP is minimum 256MB , 512 or more better yet.

how is the drive formatted ?, Also is the drive a master or a slave , if master it should be jumpered as Master , if slave jumper as slave, it could be running slow because you have it jumpered as cable select !

[rubberbed]

Would it be better then to have it jumpered as slave?

[peregrin]

it depends on what position you have the drive in , is it connected as slave to your master drive or DVD writer? i prefer to have my harddrives in the master postions with CD-rom's and writers as slave , but it also depends on what periperals i have in the system. at any particular time.

But probably the main reason your system is slow is lack of ram memory resources

[rubberbed]

I guess I don't really know. It is on the same IDE cable as the primary hardrive. How can I tell?

[SignGuy007]

If it is on the same ribbon as your original HD, then yes, put it to slave.

I have also found that connecting a second drive to a second ribbon help keep things flowing quicker.

There should be no hesitations.....if there is keep trying something else

SignGuy007

ps....also make sure your original drive was set as master.....ya never know.....if both were cable select....i don't even want to think about it.

[rubberbed]

Thanks alot guys. I really appreciate the help.

[gmatov]

If they were both set to cable select, they would assume the position. The end one is Master, the center one slave. No two ways about it.
Another guy here sets all his to CS, all the time, as he switches them out often, doesn't have to rejumper every time.

[ZippyP.]

Also you should get some more ram 128 isn't enough to run anything , my rule of thumb for XP is minimum 256MB , 512 or more better yet.

I absolutely agree. The operating system is swapping off the hard drive as virtual memory and bogging down the whole system. Upgrade to 512 MB minimum and you'll notice a huge improvement.

[rubberbed]

I'm going to put in a 256mb module to go with my 128mb and see what happens I guess.

[Styro]

With another 256MB you should see a nice improvement in speed. Do check those drive jumbers and make sure you have one master and slave on each cable (unless you plan on swapping out alot, then use cable select). Make sure that XP sees the new drive as UDMA not PIO. If XP thinks there is a problem with a drive it will automagically reduce the UDMA rating until XP gets tired and pushes the drive down to PIO (then you'll really lose speed). If XP sees the drive as PIO then check BIOS to make sure that it is set for auto (between UDMA and/or PIO) and then you'll know if XP has an issue. To clear the XP drive error condition is a pain so just check on things as you go...

-- Styro

[JSB]

Any optical device (ie DVD or CD) should NOT be on the same HD IDE channel. The optical drive will run a ATA 33.... while your new HD will want to run at ATA 100 or ATA 133.

Even though you can put two devices on one IDE channel, you should try to keep HD's on their own channel.

JSB

[ldbs]

I have a question about this as well

So when u have two hard drives u should keep them on two different ribbons ?

like the master on IDE - 1 and the slave on IDE - 2 ?

cause i have a dvd writer and cd writer which are just connection to one ribbon as master and slave

and my hard drives on one ribbons!!

[Styro]

JSB -
That was valid on old motherboards, but with newer tech you can mix-n-match to a better degree. For example, I have my primary 120s on the same cable both running udma-5. My swappable 40 shares a cable with my Sony burner - the 40 runs umda-5 and the burner runs at udma-2. Before the 40 I had a cd burner on the cable with the dvd burner and both were happy at udma-2.

As for ripping - I only rip to the partitions on the 120s. I haven't tried ripping to the 40, but it shouldn't be a huge issue (maybe just a speed issue).

-- Styro

[JSB]

That was valid on old motherboards, but with newer tech you can mix-n-match to a better degree.

-- Styro

From Tom's Hardware...

"The most valuable advice for connecting IDE devices, however, is to always use common sense. For example, you might want to avoid using an old CD-ROM drive in combination with a brand-new hard drive. For some controllers, you still can't rule out the possibility that the total performance may suffer because of very different protocols and transmission capacities."

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20020806/ide-06.html

Granted this was written about a year ago....

JSB

[rubberbed]

How do I check if XP sees the new drive as UDMA not PIO?

[SLICK RICK]

You can right click on MY COMPUTER----------DEVICE MANAGER----------------IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers---------------then click on what ever channel your hard drive is on and click on your hard drive--------------then click on ADVANCE SETTINGS and it should tell you there.

SLICK RICK

[SLICK RICK]

Also if it is not in Ultra DMA mode, you can change it there.

SLICK RICK

[rubberbed]

I checked and my secondary hardrive is in PIO mode. How do I change it to UDMA mode?

[handyguy]

click on the down arrow & restart.....

btw, what kind of computer is this?

if you using 128 then after loading a dell 4550 you only have 25megs left. Get 512 or more, don't skimp.

[lordsmurf]

The more the drive gets partitioned, the slower it can get, or so I hear.

Using the software install instead of manual install will make it slower, this I know from my experiences. Plus it causes all kinds of other problems.