Harddisc too slow for capturing DV?

[Dragonsf]

I have 2 Harddiscs for capturing in my machine:
One Maxtor (80GB 5400 rps) and one WD (80GB 7200).Both are on the same Ultra DMA 100 (Promise) Controller.And both are fresh formatted.
The Maxtor has 3 partitions and the WD just 1.
When I capture to the Maxtor (DVApp,VDub and AVi-IO),I'm getting normally 1 bad/dropped frame within 1000 (that's good).
When I capture to the WD, I'm getting 10 or more within 1000 frames.
These dropped frames come in clusters,i.e. about 5 in series.When this happens, the IDE LED stay on for about 1/2 sec.
Question:how can I check, if my WD is not working correctly (HD benchmarks?), or does anyone know, how this could happen?
I'm working with Win2K and NTFS.

[lineber]

NTFS allows you to have your hard drive compressed. Is that option on? If so, you can uncompress a specific folder to record to; because the compression may be slowing things down.

I currently have two hard disks and one is NTFS (20 GB) and the larger is FAT32 (120 GB). I record to the FAT32, unless I will be recording for a long time. Then I record to the NTFS in a folder that is not compressed. I will eventually CONVERT the larger to NTFS

Only other comment I have is that I prefer Maxtor HD over anyother. I however, have never used a Western Digital HD.

[Dragonsf]

The HDD are not compressed.Interesting thing is, under XP, both are working correctly.I presume, that some program is using the drive during capture (can be seen while performance monitoring the HDD writes/sec.
Index/VirScan are disabled!
I prefer Maxtor as well, but the dropped warranty to 6 month while WD gives 3 years.Looks like, MAxtor doesn't believe in their own drives.

[harry41]

i think you,r problem is you have to set you'r hdd to dma

put the tick in

[Dragonsf]

i think you,r problem is you have to set you'r hdd to dma

put the tick in

But how?There is no way (known to me), to set DMA on an Ultra drive.
Standard IDE drives are set to DMA.That was, what I first thought of, but could find a place to set it (not in BIOS or settings).Any advice?

[skateni]

I have 2 Harddiscs for capturing in my machine:
One Maxtor (80GB 5400 rps) and one WD (80GB 7200).Both are on the same Ultra DMA 100 (Promise) Controller.And both are fresh formatted.
The Maxtor has 3 partitions and the WD just 1.
When I capture to the Maxtor (DVApp,VDub and AVi-IO),I'm getting normally 1 bad/dropped frame within 1000 (that's good).
When I capture to the WD, I'm getting 10 or more within 1000 frames.
These dropped frames come in clusters,i.e. about 5 in series.When this happens, the IDE LED stay on for about 1/2 sec.
Question:how can I check, if my WD is not working correctly (HD benchmarks?), or does anyone know, how this could happen?
I'm working with Win2K and NTFS.

You mentioned you partitioned the Maxtor into 3 ?? Presumably you installed your OS in one of those partitions and if both disks are on a master and slave configuration in the same channel, try moving the other disk to the secondary channel. In IDE if the master drive is accessed ( like swapping ), the secondary drive can't be accessed.

[neo]

In short, if you have an Intel Processor go to the Intel site at www.intel.com and download and install their latest Application Accelerator. I have a very fast system and it dropped my CPU usage from 50% to 6% during capture. My dropped frames whet from high to 0.

XP tips: Manage your swapfile. Make your C: drive = your RAM for full support or a minimum of 126 MB. Set your D: drive to 3x your memory. Capture to your D: drive. This assumes equal, fast, and large drives. See the MS Knowledge Base to get the information directly. Do a search on "paging AND file".

Other: Defrag your drive. Use Norton SystemWorks (Pro for image BU) to correct all of the errors in your registry.

[Dragonsf]

My CPU is an AMD Athlon 1.2GB.I first had connected the WD to the secondary IDE Channel on the Ultra controller with the same results.
My RAM is 1GB, so no need for swapping.
On the Maxtor drive is the OS, but not the paging file, this is on a 3rd HDD (which is now on the secondary channel):
primary channel:master: Maxtor 80GB slave:WD
secondary channel: Maxtor 40GB (master).
CPU usage during capture: around 2% (max 6%).
And the HDD is fresh formatted (and empty), no fragments.