HDD problem...

i've noticed that whenever i access one HD (its not partitioned, so its a full letter drive) it runs kinda slowly, ya know, anything that does a lot of work with it generally runs slowly... and so i checked and realized that during the boot, the things the BIOS runs through (before it goes to the HDD to start the OS) it says that that HDD is "ATA 33" instead of "ATA 100" like the HDD above it....

im just confused cuz they are pretty much the exact same HDDs!!! Western Digital "Caviar" 8mb cache HD's, the main one is 120GB, and the one having these ATA 33 probs is 80GB... thats the only difference!!

i upgraded from the 1004 Uber BIOS to 1006 to see if it was the BIOS config... (don't wanna go "back" yet) and so on... reinstalled Windows and reinstall the 2.45 Nforce2 drivers about a week ago (started from scratch essentially) and it still says the same thing about the HD in the boot....

i thought i'd just ask you people on here to just see if you'd know anything in order to help me and ya so on and so forthh..... i am wondering if it has to do with my rounded cables... or if I am only allowed one HDD device on a IDE line... cuz i've got 2 CD drives on one IDE line, and the two HD's on another... anyways PLS HELP i'm trying to figure this out! so lemee know THNX!!

(BTW -- sys info below in sig)

It's the IDE cable your using, go find or buy a new one and it'll be right, and it will make some bit of difference as i made the same mistake last time i upgraded.

well.... hmmm i had a green rounded one that i bought a while back... and i don't seem to ever remember it having problems like this...

then about 2 months ago, i bought some red UV ones (cuz i luv em) and put them in, and now that is what i had in there.... so someone else suggested this on AIM, so i switched the rounded cables out to try it (back to the rounded cable green one).... and i didn't see any really performance change...

i don't know what to think since i wanna try to stick with the uniform red UV rounded cables in the case, and those are only special and made by 1 manufacturer and sold at 1 store

Well the performance may be one thing, did you fix the ata100 problem though?

Try swapping out with an 80-wire flat cable to see if that makes a difference.

Also, however, it's possible that the UDMA100 mode is disabled in the drive's firmware. Download WD's drive utility, run the standard fitness test, and check to see whether UDMA100 is enabled.

jamespetts said:

Try swapping out with an 80-wire flat cable to see if that makes a difference.

Also, however, it's possible that the UDMA100 mode is disabled in the drive's firmware. Download WD's drive utility, run the standard fitness test, and check to see whether UDMA100 is enabled.

Click to expand...

if i still got the WD disk that came with the 120GB HDD (and since they are the same) should i just boot to that and it should have that "fitness test" on there?

You can download a drive test program from WD for free. But you can also check in device manager and see the transfer mode the drive is using. PIO=bad. UDMA ( in ROM drives, multi word DMA )=good. If the secound HDD is ATA33 the other drive can only use ATA33. ( even if its a ATA100 drive )

I would try using just the slower drive ( ATA33 ) on a IDE by itself and see if it stays at ATA33. ( fresh OS install if possible ) If it stays at ATA33, and you have run the diagnostic programs, there isnt much left to do. You have updated firmware, so I doubt thats the problem. If one drive is using ATA100 and the other is ATA33 then I would also rule out the cable.

Just some ideas. PS... UDMA5 is good in device mangler.

hey... i found my WD disc, and tried doing some diagnostics last night... the first thing i found that i suppose was wierd wuz, u could just goto into some Ultra ATA managar, and turn the second HD "on" to ATA 100, was really really wierd... but i enabled both and made sure both were at ATA 100, and that seemed to work fine....

so then i had some other problems... windows wouldn't boot, would do the thing when it "loads windows xp" and it has that little loading screen, the ntoskrnl.exe one, and it did that, then went to a blacksreen, and rebooted...

so while in the HD diagnostics, i ran a "quick test" on my main one (with windows) and it said something like "error, run some more scans" so I ran the full media scan, and then checked back and it said that errors were found, but they repaired, and so i booted, and i got a registry fixed via some log file message, and now I can boot...

the other thing was that i got a very very rare BSOD in WinXP Home, and the only big thing I noticed... first: it said data_inpage_kernel_error or something like that, but there was a thing down at the bottom that noted atapi.sys as having the wierd error codes... i looked up some more info and realized that atapi.sys is an IDE driver...

any suggestions of why i would get this error in conjunction with my harddrives (this was before i repaired error and before i changed the second HD to ultra ata 100)...

The system not loading windows all the way, sounds like a CPU voltage ( overclocked ) problem. Have you been able to run the HDD tests and not get any errors?

K1ll1nT1m3 said:

You can download a drive test program from WD for free. But you can also check in device manager and see the transfer mode the drive is using. PIO=bad. UDMA ( in ROM drives, multi word DMA )=good. If the secound HDD is ATA33 the other drive can only use ATA33. ( even if its a ATA100 drive )

I would try using just the slower drive ( ATA33 ) on a IDE by itself and see if it stays at ATA33. ( fresh OS install if possible ) If it stays at ATA33, and you have run the diagnostic programs, there isnt much left to do. You have updated firmware, so I doubt thats the problem. If one drive is using ATA100 and the other is ATA33 then I would also rule out the cable.

Just some ideas. PS... UDMA5 is good in device mangler.

Click to expand...

Kill1nT1m3 - Unless he's on a mainboard using EDO memory(read ancient by our standards), the MB's on board interface chip will have dual FIFO buffering. This allows Independent Device Timing and both devices will run at their specified speed, as detected in BIOS, unless the OS overrides modes or there is a PIO mode device on the chain. This is due to the fact that the communications on the cable are done individually, not at the same time. As the address bit for each communication bit changes, the on board interface starts communication with the actual ATA controller(located on each device) and resumes it's communucation at the BIOS stated mode. Please note the controllers are actually on the phycical devices and due to the address bit communication method, the drive controllers are not communicating when not addressed. SCSI supports multiple request tagging, but not IDE. Due to this, the only slow downs possible are due to PIO mode devices, OS intervention in setting modes, or, the most common, the other device is using the channel.

Trying the drive on a separate channel is an excellent idea.

Buddha1822 - With respect to your problem, I have heard of drives that run in a lower mode when attached as slave. Have you tried running the HDDs as master on both channels and Opticals as slaves on both channels. Master/slave configuration, as noted above is, for all intents and purposes, just an addressing issue. Make sure that both cables are good 80 conductor cables. Check your Event Viewer also, as XP can ramp down ATA/UDMA modes when excessive device CRC errors occur, though I do not see this happening since the BIOS is reporting a lower mode.

As to corruption, the drive could be going bad, controller driver problems, excessive overclock or PCI too far out of spec, a number of others. Make sure you run full diagnostics on the drives(non destructive) and run full chkdsks on the drives as well.

Good Luck!

Thats good to know. Everyone has told me IDE devices were only as fast as the slowest one in the cable. So that means all these people saying you shouldnt run a CDROM on a HDD channel are incorrect. ( i just took their word for it )

If the OS still has problems. The XP cd has two repair options as you boot it. The secound one will replace the system files and leave your files intact. Just an option if all else fails.

Thanks Xaotic for correcting me. Good luck.