Hard Drive Problems

Serbian

Hi there,

I posted about this problem a while back, but I didn't really look into solving it since it didn't really bother me at the time. It began to annoy me after I formatted my computer however!

The problem is that my second Hard Drive (180 Gigabyte Maxtor - Not sure of model number and order has disappeared off Komplett, I'll post it when I get home tonight) seems to run incredibly slowly. Copying files to and from the drive brings my computer to a near stand still, and the files seem to transfer quite slowly. After I formatted my computer, I had a few hundred megs of stuff to swap over and it took bloody ages! :mad:

I ran the Maxtor diagnostic tool on the drive and it passed fine, so I don't think it's a problem with the drive itself. It is quite possible that I have the jumper settings incorrect. I believe the drive should be a slave drive, and have set it to slave according to the diagrams in the Maxtor Hard Drive user manual. I think my CD / DVD Drive is on the same IDE cable, but more on that one later when I know for sure.

I have installed a bunch of Hard Drives before and never had a bother with them. Could it possibly be anything to do with the fact it's a 180GB model? Or have I overlooked something somewhere?

That's all I can think of for the moment, as I'm not in front of the machine. If you need any more info let me know and I'll try and get it for you

Thanks for reading!

[CrimsonGhost]

The model number would help. It could just be that's it is a slow drive, i.e. 5,400rpm instead of 7,200 or 10k.

Another thing to investigate is fragmenation. Run defrag and see if that will speed up file reading.

www.maxtor.com have diagnostic tools for different drive types. I suggest you grab on and check the results out.

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm

Hope that helps.

Serbian

Thanks for that CrimsonGhost, I'll try out the diagnostic when I get home and maybe paste the results here. Just about the drive speed, I'm fairly sure it's a 7,200 rpm but even if it was 5,400 rpm would that be enough to slow my entire computer down while data transfer is taking place?

Seems like there is something wrong to me anyway, but maybe that's just the way of these people. I'll let you know how I get on with the Diagnostic later.

Serb

milltown

Could be the same as a problem I had with a WD 120GB drive I had. After about three months use the whole PC became very slow, about five minutes to boot up fully, and the hdd led would stay on for a long time after I thought the disk should be inactive. I mailed WD support and described the symptoms and they replied that the drive was failing, backup the data and return it.
They have a good system where you can raise an advance RMA, they send the replacement out first, then you send the defective drive back. They take a credit card number and charge for the drive if they don't get the old one back.

But I digress. Have you noticed any strange LED activity? The WD disk utility came up clean too, for what it's worth.

kmb

Hi Serbian,your problem is with the harddisk on the same cable as cdrom it will drop to cdrom speed ie 33m instead of 133!!!never have these linked on same ide as system will crawl!!!check it out by removing cdrom and make sure ide cable is 133 with blue and black connectors....regds kieran

gurramok

Also check that the properties(advanced) of the disk controller is set to DMA.
Run a hard disk speed simulation utility such as activesmart

Serbian

Hey,

Gurramok: I used activesmart and it came up with my drive as OK. Looks like a useful tool, but I'm not really sure what I should be looking at in it Any values you would like posted from it?

Just wondering how I check the advanced properties of the disk controller? (I'm on XP Pro)

Still have to run the Maxtor diagnostic program as soon as I find a 3.5" disk!

I found a link to the technical specs of my drive, and the drive is indeed 7,200 rpm. I made a mistake about the size however, it's only a measly 160 gigs Does anyone else agree with kmb about not running the hard drive on the same IDE cable as the CD ROM drive? If so, I'll swap it around and see if I notice a difference when I get the chance.

Interestingly, when I go into the Startup Menu on the machine (Dell Dimension 4550) the second hard drive is not listed as a drive on the 4 drive slots. I'm sure this suggests what the problem actually is?

Any more ideas about what could be wrong?

Thanks for the replies so far, much appreciated

Serbian

Okay,

I just swapped the 160GB Maxtor onto the same IDE cable as my primary hard drive and it seems to be working perfectly now! Active Smart reported the following changes however:

Maxtor 6Y160P0
============
Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate: Down by 35 to 199.

Maxtor 6L040J2 (Primary Hard Drive)
============
Temperature: Up by 2 degrees to 39 degrees centigrade (That hot for a Harddrive or about normal? The other is working @ 36 degrees)

I'll just mention that I had to swap the physical position of both drives for the IDE cable to fit into the proper drives. All at the expense of my ZIP 250 drive (Never used it anyway )

OfflerCrocGod

Those temps are fine my Barracuda is running at 46C right now, mainly cause its outside the case in a sound insulated enclosure (ohh-la-la sounds impressive - it's just my PSU box:D), it's worst temp when being strained is around 48C the HD is rated to work at 60C so it should be fine. Your temp is excelent modern HDD are getting to be very hot so dont worry.