how best to use a new slave drive

[dmcg501]

I'm still very new to this, also a bit of a handicap that I dont know much about pc basics either.

I'm now managing to produce my own dvds from video after help from a few of the members. I realised I needed more disk space so I got an 80GB slave drive put in.

The trouble is I'm not sure how to use it to store my video files ( each one 10-13 GB) most efficiently and easliy on my new slave drive.

I thought all I had to do was capture my video to the slave drive (E but when I try to do this I get an error message :- Cannot capture, the data rate on drive E: is less than the reqd. rate of 4444KB/sec

Could someone please explain to me what this means, and how do I use the slave to best advantage to store my videos.

Ta Much David

[ozymango]

Hi. Well, we need to know more hardware and software details in order to really help -- are you running Windows, 98 or 2K or XP, for starters. Assuming it's a relatively recent computer, I'm guessing that the problem is that your new hard drive is running in PIO mode vs. UDMA mode.

PIO mode is slow and UDMA is much, much faster and, depending on your motherboard and OS, UDMA might not be configured correctly either in the BIOS or your OS. Or it could be a bad drive cable. Lotsa things can make UDMA flaky.

If you let us know what version of Windows you're running (assuming you're using Windows), I can walk you through some stuff to see what your speed your drive is running at. Pardon the dangling preposition.

[dmcg501]

thanks ozymango

I'm running windows xp.

I've put my system details on the website can everyone see them ok? or havent I entered them correctly

Anyway its after 1am in Scotland I'll have to look at any replies tomm.

thanks again

[redwudz]

In XP, go to Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > IDE Controllers > Then the properties of the first and second controller. > Advanced. You should see 'DMA if available' and it is usually DMA 5 for a harddrive. If you are using a 40 conductor cable, upgrade to an 80. HDs are usually DMA 5, while CD or DVD drives are DMA 2. If it says PIO for your HD, you need to change it to DMA. Let us know what you find.

[Skith]

Another thing to consider, where (physically) did you install the drive. Did you attatch it to the same cable as your primary (boot) hard drive? If so, did you set the jumpers on the drives (master/slave/cable select)? Did you connect it as a slave to your NEC DVD drive?

Slave devices should always be connected to the middle connector on an IDE cable (some hardware configurations may support slave devices at the end of the cable, but it is safer to stick with what is tried and true).

How are you capturing video (firewire/usb/other)?

Another thing to remember is that only one IDE device PER channel can be accessed at a time. Most computers have two IDE channels, each supporting two devices. These often show up as the Primary IDE Controller "IDE0" and Secondary IDE Controller "IDE1" in Device Manager.

If you Have both hard drives on IDE0, only one can be accessed at a time (they must take turns sending data).

[dmcg501]

Very perplexed house builder will now attempt to make some sense

Redwudz,

primary controller__________DEV.0=ultraDMAmode2 DEV. 1=PIO


secondary_________DEV.0=ultraDMAmode2 DEV.1= not applicable


I put the pc into a shop for the HD. How do I tell if its a 40 or 80 conductor cable?


Skith

I'm transfering with firewire.

Would I be able to see 4 myself how the conections have been made or better to ask shop?

thanks

[ozymango]

primary controller__________DEV.0=ultraDMAmode2 DEV. 1=PIO

secondary_________DEV.0=ultraDMAmode2 DEV.1= not applicable

I'm transfering with firewire.

Well ... this may or may not be a DMA thing depending on what drive is physically connected where. In any case, I don't like the dev1 being PIO, even if that's your CD-ROM and it's some antique. Something's off here.

Okay, for starters, "dev0" on your primary controller is your primary hard drive (boot drive, unless it's been switched in the bios) and UDMA2 should be giving you a data transfer rate of something like 16 megabytes/sec. So that's okay, though I suspect a 40-wire cable is why you're getting UDMA 2 instead of UDMA 5 (which is something like 100mb/s). Dev1 on the primary bus is probably the problem -- this is either your CD (or DVD) drive and if you've got a DVD on that bus running in PIO mode, there is something *seriously wrong* here. If it's your second hard drive, then we've still got big problems. So we need to get into your case here to check what's going on.

No worries! No need to touch anything, just look. So turn the power off your computer (I'd unplug it also, just to be safe), and open the case. There will be two wide, flat cables running from the motherboard (both connected pretty much side-by-side on the mb) to your two hard drives and CD/DVD drive. Each cable has two connectors on it, and thus you can connect two drives to each cable.

One cable should be connected to one hard drive and your CD/DVD drive, and the other cable should be connected to just one hard drive. If you've got one cable connected to both hard drives, that's your problem, as it means one drive is running in UDMA and one in PIO mode. But even if you've got your hard drives on different cables, I still wanna figure out why your CD/DVD drive is running in PIO mode. Ugh.

Anyway, first step is, if you feel comfortable, open the case and check where the flat IDE (drive) cables are connected and let us know, we can go from there. I'm guessing these are 40-wire cables and in any case I think you should swap 80-wire cables on both of these ... really a very easy job and if you're at all interested we can walk you through that, too. I'd say take it back to the shop for this if you're at all nervous, but what kind of computer shop puts in a new drive and then checks out your system and doesn't notice there's something wrong here?

Hope this helps. Good luck!

[dmcg501]

Thanks Ozymango

I'll check and change the cables myself if reqd. Will let u know how I get on