New Hard Disk is slow

[Iced Coffee Man]

Hi everyone,
I just got a new 400GB Samsung hard disk a few days ago. The problem is that it's very slow. If you've seen what a fragmented drive is like, this is the same.
Say I have Winamp going and then open a Firefox window, the music stutters and drags and sounds generally crap until firefox opens completely. The same goes when anything is loading.
Also when I'm playing games it will slow me down too because it's loading constantly. I know it's the hard disk because I look at the HD activity light and it's almost always flashing.

Everything else with my pc is normal, I have 512MB RAM and 3Ghz cpu. It only started happening when I put my new hard disk in.
At first I thought it WAS fragmented, due to the symptoms I listed above, but I de-fragmented and it's still slow.

One thing I've thought of is to put my old HD (80GB) as master and the new one as slave, then only use the new one when I need to.

I did a Computer course a few years ago so I know some of the basics but maybe I'm breaking a very simple rule that I don't know about?

[Der Cute]

Questions:
What's the RPM on the drive?
What connections are you using? ATA/IDE or SATA?
what is your Motherboard specs?


Have you researched / looked for SEEK TIME averages on the drive?


Personally, I'd put the smaller drive as the C: drive to hold the OS and some data...
then have a larger drive as the slave/ data bucket.

Something else you can do is reformat the drive after you've put the smaller as the OS...low level format and see if that helps the big drive, I'm wondering if the MBT got corrupted or fubar'd.

Any other ideas guys?

Cutenoob

[LostMyMind]

You didn't say what OS you have. It's possible that you're running on virtual memory more than you were. Plus with larger drives it uses more memory to access. I would bet you would see a vast improvement just by upping from 512M to 1G.

[Iced Coffee Man]

Hey thanks for the quick response

The RPM is 7200, and it uses IDE. The average seek time is 8.9ms. Here's a page if you want to look at anything else
http://www.samsung.com/au/products/h...Specifications

and this is my motherboard http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?f...=1&cat2_no=170 - VIA P4M800CE and the drivers are up to date.

One other thing I should mention, when I was installing Windows on it for the first time, I chose quick format instead of full format. Could that have damaged it?

I'm on WinXP Pro and I have ordered some more RAM, it should arrive in a few days.

[LostMyMind]

No, the difference between quick format and full format. is Quick format don't go through the entire drive and wipe it clean. All it does is wipe the FAT table clean (or NTFS) But if it was brand-new, quick format shouldn't have been an option. Or is it a new thing that drives come pre-formated now? Extremely strange to be NTFS pre-formated. It's entirely possible that you need to do a full format. Personally I never trusted some other computer formating. Every drive controller device has it's own personality.

Check what file format the drive is formated under. If it's FAT, that is your problem. FAT32 is great for smaller drives (under 20G) but for very large drives Windows chokes (it's not FAT fault, it's because microsoft programmers tries to be too clever).

If it's NTFS, WinXP pro has alot of services that run by default. It's most likely memory. Since you have memory on the way, I would wait for it and see if it clears it up. If it don't clear it up. Take out the big guns and format baby!

[Shabo]

Could be an unlucky hard drive, too. Does it make any noises when it runs? Does it take forever to boot into windows? When hard drives are starting to fail, they slow the computer down like that.

Also, check for viruses and spyware, as that could always be a culprit.

[Pedersen]

Possible items to check out, and some added questions for you that you didn't make clear yet:

Items To Check:
First, make sure that Windows is seeing it as a UDMA drive. Places to look: Control Panel->System->Device Manager, check the specs on the IDE driver, and on the drive itself. Make sure that DMA is turned on. If the option is there, check the highest level of DMA supported. Make certain that Windows is not using PIO to access the drive, which is abysmally slow.

Second, check the drive itself. How are the jumpers configured? Master or Cable Select? Do you have anything on the second connection of that IDE cable (does it *have* a second connector?).

Third, the IDE cable: Is it a 40 conductor or an 80 conductor. If the cable is old enough, it's likely to be 40 pin, and that will cause slowdowns. Here's a page that explains what it means, and how to tell: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_Cable80.htm

You might be having a memory issue, but that remains to be seen, or even guessed at. I'd check over the other settings first, since drive performance is affected directly by them, and program performance is affected by them and memory (eliminate one problem at a time, always).

[Iced Coffee Man]

First I'd like to thank everyone for their input.

I have done a full format, reinstalled Windows and the file system is now NTFS. It's not slow anymore, but I only have my 400GB HD connected at the moment. It's configured as primary master, the cable is 80 conductor and it's now connected to the black connector.

When it was slow, I'm not even sure what the jumpers were set to , but I know that both of the drives were on the primary channel.

If it's possible without the slowdown, I would like to connect my old drive just to retrieve all my data from it.

The site that Pedersen gave suggests that it's best to put my main drive as primary master, then my old drive as secondary master with my dvd-drive as secondary slave. Would you recommend that?

I know I said I wanted it the other way around, but there's a flight sim I want that requires 60GB install, so I think it would be better to install it on my 400GB (and it's also why I ordered the extra RAM.)

Sorry for backpedalling and thanks for your help

[Mango]

I have done a full format, reinstalled Windows and the file system is now NTFS.

Good.

The site that Pedersen gave suggests that it's best to put my main drive as primary master, then my old drive as secondary master with my dvd-drive as secondary slave. Would you recommend that?

Yes, that sounds like good advice. The old and new drives should not interfere with each other, since they are on different channels. Also, as Pedersen suggested, be sure that all the drives are not in PIO mode.

[Kilamon]

The site that Pedersen gave suggests that it's best to put my main drive as primary master, then my old drive as secondary master with my dvd-drive as secondary slave. Would you recommend that?

Yes. Your primary IDE should have two drives and make sure to set the jumpers on the drives to use master or slave or however they're calling it now. Obviously, set the larger, new drive with the fresh install & format as master and the older, slower drive as slave. Use your secondary IDE for your DVD and CD-ROM.

Did you add more ram? You said earlier that you were using 512mb. That's fantastic if all you're running is windows, maybe some solitaire, freecell if you're adventurous. Seriously, though, get more ram. The more likely culprit from your stuttering is the amount of swapping you're doing when you are multi-tasking. The low ram amount means that windows loads, then swaps itself (or portions of itself) to disk from ram. Then you load apps. These apps are run in memory until swapped. then you load winamp and it has to decompress the songs as it plays and run, but with less ram, part of the process is being swapped and your new app (firefox) uses up some MORE memory.

So, yeah, get more ram. Seriously. I saw that problem in your first post and my immediate thought was not the hard drive but the ram.

[Iced Coffee Man]

Yeah that's how they are configured now, because I haven't had the time or patience to do them the other way.

I did get my ram (it came in Air Mail from USA) but I don't think that was the problem, because it didn't happen with my old 80GB, and I did the full format before I got the ram.