My Harddrive is reading/writing too slow - how do I fix it ?

[CurryKitten]

Hi guys, thought I'd give you a bit of an update on things.

I opened up the PC again today and stared at it very hard. The only jumper settings on the drivers are the normal things to set as master, slave, cable select etc. They were both set as Masters and were each on there own IDE interface.

I bought a new IDE cable today rated at ATA100, it's 80wire cable, and is heavily sheilded all over.

Installed this and got no improvement

Noted as well, as Stu mentioned that one of my IDE interfaces on the motherboard was blue (as was my new connector) I've tried the PC on with just a single drive connected to this interface with the new cable... still crap.

I've searched all over my motherboard looking for anything that might change the IDE's ATA speed, but can't see anything, I've got one or two unidentified jumpers still, but still no identifying marks on my motherboard... other that "N1996" which seems a sort of generic VIA thing.

Anyone anymore ideas ?

[Super Stu]

Well, that's eliminated the obvious stuff, though at least when you get it working you have the correct cable now.

I asked about the jumpers as Maxtor drives have a large jumper block with various configs for master/slave etc depending on the age of your motherboard. If it's a simple thing, you needn't worry.

I suppose now you could either blame the drive or blame Windows, though let's blame the PC first. If you have the drive on an 80 wire cable in the blue slot, when your PC does the power on test it will tell you which udma mode the drive is using (you know the screen, in a big box with various sections, tells you clock speed, memory stuff etc). It only flashes up quickly, though you can hit the pause key (top right) to view it for longer.

Now, my very hazy memory tells me it'll be at least udma mode 5 for ata66 and above (Someone help me out here, I'm in the middle of playing an mmorpg and can't reboot to check). If that's ok, then we can assume both bios and drive are (probably) fine.

Now you get to moan at Windows. I might be tempted to download a trial version of something like SiSoft Sandra 2003. It has a fairly lengthy diagnostic test which often tells you "oh mate, setting such and such could use some tweaking for performance". With a bit of luck, it'll notice your drives are performing ****e and tell you why this is the case.

HTH

[Kirby]

Have you made double sure that you have the VIA 4-in-1 chipset drivers installed properley and also the IDE Miniport Driver (if you need it)

What chipset/motherboard do you have?

[CurryKitten]

Have you made double sure that you have the VIA 4-in-1 chipset drivers installed properley and also the IDE Miniport Driver (if you need it)

What chipset/motherboard do you have?

Yes, pretty sure, the view under system-devices changed so they actually had a box for DMA after the updates.

I can't find out what motherboard I have, it's practically unmarked. All I have is something that says N1996 on it which suggest a microstar board, but which one is anyones guess. The chip set is VIA, esupport BIOS agent tells me it's VIA 82C691 rev 68 if that'a at all meaningful.

I thought about getting a BIOS update, but because I can't tell what motherboard I had I can't identify which one I need - do you think this is worth pursuing ?

[yashiro]

Follow Stu's advice.

[Adrock]

Havent read everything but check UDMA is enabled in the bios and in windows.. But yeah Stu's advice is pretty much all you can do.