Slow HDD speeds

[Felix]

This is quite a strange problem. I was running Windows 2000 on a Seagate 7200RPM 40GB drive. Needed more space, so I bought a Western Digitial 80GB drive. Cool, I get an 8mb cache and decide to try out Windows XP. The drive was partitioned into 10/10/10/50 NTFS.

However things weren't quite right. WinXP would take several minutes to load up, and things seemed pretty slow. It was only HDD things that seemed slow, processing tasks are fine. I tried to run SiSoft Sandra File System Benchmark, but it was taking ages. I eventually did get a score of about 2mb/s after over half an hour. Another benchmarking program showed it running at 1-2 mb/s.

At first it seemed that the partition setup was slowing things down, because when I formatted and reinstalled with just a single partition and it seemed ok. However I've done quite a few reinstalls since then, and now even when I'm just using one partition its slow.

The drive itself is fine, if I boot in to my old OS (which fortunately I didnt delete) I can bench it as a slave and it scores about 35mb/s (almost as good as the raid setup!). HDD diagnostics can't find a fault either. I've also already had the drive replaced, but symptoms are still the same

As far as I can tell, it's some kind of weird Windows problem. Service packs, drivers, etc don't seem to make a difference. Any ideas?

Athlon 1800XP
Asus A7V333
2x256MB Kingmax Memory
Leadtek Ti4400
WD800JB
Seagate Barracuda IV 40GB 7200RPM
Creative Soundblaster Audigy

 

[cack01]

Have you checked to make sure UDMA is enabled? Even if it isn't you should get much much faster then 2 megs a sec.

 

[cV]

Could be corruption too. And I'd imagine it's not very fragmented as it's just been formatted. I'd try to reinstall windows after checking to see if UDMA is enabled. Could be corrupt drivers going into some kind of emulation mode too.

Very odd problem.

 

[XunknownX]

I would check to make sure I'm using an 80 pin IDE cable and not a 40 pin IDE cable. Just a thought.

 

[Felix]

UDMA and the cable are ok. It's the same cable I use for the 40GB Seagate.

Windows has been reinstalled quite a few times, but yeah maybe the HDD drivers are misbehaving for some reason?

One interesting thing I noted when using Performance Test. It does benchmarks on a few things including HDDs. When it first starts reading/writing the transfer rate spikes to an obviously incorrect 200mb/s or so. This might last for a second, it then drops down to 1-2 and stays there. This is only when Im running Windows on the WD drive. If I run Windows on my Seagate with the WD drive as a slave, no problems.

 

[redduc900]

What version of the 4in1's do you have installed?

The drive was partitioned into 10/10/10/50 NTFS.

Were all partitions formatted using NTFS?...and are you dual booting XP and W2K, with XP installed on the WD (and W2K installed on the Seagate)? How do you have that set up exactly?...and have you tried installing XP on the WD without the Seagate in the system?

 

[su root]

Have you replaced the IDE cable?
Have you tried it on another IDE channel?
Have you manually set the UDMA, PIO, and other settings in BIOS? (i.e. not using the autodetect?) You should be able to run all settings at their highest.
Have you tried removing everything else from the chain so that nothing could interfere with it?

The 200Mb/s spike is normal, that's your 8meg buffer. Fragmentation won't cause this on NTFS.
Is it excessively grinding the harddrive at any time? What does your HDD activity light look like? Solid-on/Blinking alot/Blinking occasionally?

 

[Felix]

Primary IDE - Has the WD800JB and the Seagate drives on it. These are set to either master or slave, depending what drive I'm booting from. I've also tried it with just one drive at once.

Partitions were all NTFS, although since then they have been deleted and replaced with one NTFS partition. The Seagate is partitioned 35/5 NTFS/Fat32. Windows 2K is installed on the 35 NTFS partition, with the other partition used as a backup.

Windows XP is currently installed on the WD800JB.

I'm not using a dual boot setup, I've just been changing the jumpers around when I want to boot from the other drive.

Via is 4in1442v(a)p2. Also just installed Via's IDE Miniport drivers, V320b.

I haven't replaced the IDE cable, however the Seagate can run on it fine. HDD LED is normal, only blinking when the HDD is in use. No grinding noises.

I haven't manually changed the Bios settings (but they report it as UDMA 5). I'm going to try a fresh install now, and will also manually change the Bios.

 

[Felix]

Update: Just been changing various things. Have a fresh install with SP1 and the latest Via4in1s. The WD800JB and the Seagate are on the secondary IDE channel (CDRW that was there is currently unplugged). WD800JB is master and working sweet. Looks like changing the IDE channels was the fix.

Kinda relunctant to muck round anymore in case it reverts to its former state