120GXP and HD scores

[zachj]

I use PCMark2002 to bench my hard drives and memory. I don't really care how accurate my benches are, as other programs may be better, but I do want my scores to be similar to those that run the same test on identical hardware. I upgraded yesterday from a 4 GB Maxtor ATA33 hard drive to an IBM 120GXP 40Gig hard drive, but my scores are identical.....How can that possibly happen? It's a clean install and benches were done before any software was loaded, just drivers. What can I do to improve this? I know ATA 100 should out perform my ATA33, especially considerring 5400 to 7200 rpm spindle speeds.....SOMETHING should be faster? Specs of machine at bottom...No RAID

Thanks

Z

[Johnny Knoxville]

Try running Sandra and see what scores you get. Make sure it's running on ATA100

[zachj]

How do I make sure it's running on ATA100? In device manager, I have write caching enabled and Primary Master reports DMA mode 5. Is there something I'm missing? It's on a channel of its own.

Z

[Johnny Knoxville]

DMA 5 is ok. try Sandra tell me what scores you get, i get around 32,000 with the 120GXP 80gb

[zachj]

I got 22,794 with my 120GXP 40GB.....What's up with this?

[zachj]

And my memory benchmarks are 1732/1622. Is this normal for PC2100?

[Johnny Knoxville]

Originally posted by zachj
I got 22,794 with my 120GXP 40GB.....What's up with this?

the 40GB scores should be lower than the scores i got with a 80gb, that score may be ok.

[zachj]

much bigger problem. Now I can't start Windows XP. I was playing in the BIOS trying to do some of the things SANDRA suggested and when I restarted the computer, there was a problem....When I restarted after the problem I couldn't boot into XP. It's been that way ever since.....that was last night. It gets to the logon, I type in my password, click okay, it closes the logon prompt, thinks, sometimes plays the sound, and then just sits there. I ran CHKDSK and I think it fixed some errors, but that won't help.......What should I do? I'm running Linux off of my other hard drive right now......

help please.....


Z

[Johnny Knoxville]

You may have to reinstall Windows

[zachj]

I think I do......I tried to recover the installation and it said basically that it couldn't do it because there was a setup error. I'm angry. Also, I ghosted my drive onto CD-RW media to make my life easier, but when I boot from the CD and try to re-write the image to disk, it cannot find my CD-RW drive. That really bothers me. I know it should or else I wouldn't have been able to write to it in the first place. This is a really bad day. I hope I don't have to do this again. I guess restarting it improperly must have caused an error, but it did it on its own.....Oh well....Not too much I can do about either problem right now. Thanks for your help.

Z

[SemiCycle]

When you switched to the faster drive, did you also switch to an 80 pin cable. IF you are using the cable that you used with the older drive, then your drive isn't even working at ATA66 speeds. Make sure you are using an 80 conductor cable.

[zachj]

To the best of my knowledge, I am using an 80 pin cable. I'm using the one that came with the 7DXR+ motherboard which supposedly supports ATA100 and 133RAID. If it's not, then I don't have one. How do I find out if it's the right one? Just count the pins?

I did have to reinstall Windows and I never did figure out the problems with Ghost.....At least the images were on CD-RW, so I don't have new coasters. Seems to be working fine right now. instaling SP1 and then software. Maybe I'll ghost to my backup drive.....

Thanks for the help

Z

[SemiCycle]

If you are using the one that camewith that board,then you should be safe