New drive very, very slow

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martinlest

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Oct 2, 2009
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Hi. I just bought a (generic) 500GB IDE disc from Amazon - it had lots of good customer reviews - to be used as a slave drive (XP SP2) for backup. but I notice that the performance is very poor: videos played from this drive stutter and freeze up for several seconds, especially when trying to 'fast forward'. The same video doesn't have the same problem when read from my master drive.

So I downloaded a couple of HD speed tests - DiscSpeed32 shows my master drive read speeds at c.35 MBytes/sec, average, whereas the new slave drive comes out at barely 2 Mbytes/sec. DiscSpeed32 also shows CPU usage: the master shows c.10% during the read test. The new drive the CPU shows at 99%, so the responsiveness of the PC plummets of course. Something's clearly very wrong. Is the drive definitely faulty or might there be something I can do before I have to return it? Drive properties show DMA as DMA 2 - switching to PIO doesn't help (why would it?!).

The disk has been defragmented BTW..

Thanks,

Martin
 
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Any disk will suck at PIO transfers; its most likely not the disks' fault.

You can try running (and completing) a HDTune benchmark, it will display raw speeds and also CPU utilization. If this is a flat line of no more than 14MB/s (the maximum PIO speed) and near 100% CPU utilization (50% for dualcore; 25% for quadcore) - then its pretty much a PIO issue for sure. :)

To fix it, deleting its IDE/SATA controller from device manager will reset the controller to use DMA mode again. So after you've confirmed you've got a PIO issue, find your controller in the device manager list and delete it (hit the DEL key). It will find it again when you reboot, and reset it so it uses DMA again.

This may also be caused by bad cabling; so if the issue...
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Yes, I don't want to send the disc itself back because I really don't think it's the disc that's at fault. If I get problems, I'll take this disc out and try it in another PC. For now, it has been running in DMA mode all day - not sure why, I just removed the cable (it was a new one bought yesterday for the purpose) and plugged it in again - but I've done that a dozen times this week, checking the pins are seated properly.

I'll try delting the NVida entry, but it will then ask me to reinstall the driver and for now I have no idea where the driver may be - have to search online first.

M.
 
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Deleted the Nvidia controller & both channels. Rebooted. XP finds all three & reinstalls them. Primary Channel, 2nd. device, still PIO. Select PIO for that device, reboot, twice. Then select DMA if available, reboot. It's still in PIO mode. :fou:

I can only assume that the drive itself must be the cause. I will bite the bullet and install it into my mother's PC tomorrow (which has onbly one HDD) - as I say, since the other PC is so inaccessible (my mother prefers 'tidy' to 'convenient'), it's going to be a pain, but if the drive is PIO there, I think that will prove that it is the culprit.

Martin
 
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An update: the drive maintains DMA Mode5 until I reboot, when it reverts to PIO. Hibernating in between PC use doens't kill the DMA mode, so that's what I do for now.

I downloaded a script which forces DMA on all drives, so if I run the script and reboot, I usually get DMA again, uintil the next reboot.

All very odd: I haven't tried the drive in another PC yet, which may tell me whether the drive itself, or the M/B (etc.) is at fault,. I will do at some stage in the not too distant future..

Martin
 
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This is probably a long shot, but I wonder if the drive is configured to use a delayed spinup and the OS isn't able to communicate with it right away during boot? You could probably tell by putting your hand on the drive while powering the machine up to see if you can feel it spinning up or not.
 
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The disc seems to spin on startup. But oddly, the past few days I have rebooted the PC, the disc always comes back in DMA Mode 5, according to Device Manager. Well, so much the better, but I am no nearer to finding out whether the problem is with the PC or the drive. I will have to put it into the other PC at some stage and see what happens, though, as I said, given how inaccessible the other PC is, it's going to be a bit of a pain and so I've not actually tried it yet..

Martin
 
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Just to round this up, the new drive is fine. I had returned the faulty drive to the supplier (via Amazon) who sent me a 'replacement' (without any reply to my various emails) in the shape of the old, faulty drive now repackaged as if it were a fresh one. Crooks! Luckily I'd made a mark on the side so recognised it. Amazon got me my money back, and I got a Western Digital drive from somewhere else: I still have the original faulty drive, not that I am using it now of course. Any suggestions? (Use it as a replacement brick and throw it through the original vendors window perhaps?). 🙂

Martin
 
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