[CounterCW]

Hi, I have a Maxtor 7200 ATA 66 30GB HDD.
I'm just wondering why the drive feels so slow! And how can I speed it up?
Sometimes, when I launch a program (eg. Internet Explorer), the LED light will come on, but I don't hear the hard drive moving. My system doesn't seem to response... and then a few seconds later, the hard drive starts moving again (I can hear it), and then finally Internet Explorer comes up! What's with that? It's like my HDD is taking a coffee break or something.

I've tried defragging but that still doesn't work! I'm running Windows XP, I have a P3 800, 512 MB RAM... I feel that the hard drive is bogging my system down! Is my hard drive faulty? Is there some "magical" tweak I can do? Help!

[mister_man]

Check to see if the drive is running in Ultra DMA mode. It's in device manager under the IDE channel that the drive is attached to.

[CounterCW]

thanks, but yes, it's using Ultra DMA mode 3.

[CUViper]

It might very well be taking a coffee break, so to speak... the power saving features can be set to power down the hard drive after a period of inactivity. Go to "Power Options" in the control panel (if the "user-friendly" mode is on, it will be in the "Performance and Maintenance" section). See the setting for "Turn off hard disks"? Change that to never, and you should be all set.

[mister_man]

I was under the impression that ATA66 should be UDMA mode 4. It seems wierd. My CDROM is ATA33 which should be UDMA mode 2 but XP reports UDMA mode 1 for the drive.

The drive could be faulty though. I have a ATA66 drive that refuses to function in DMA at all. But the BIOS and Win 2k say it works in UDMA. XP just says PIO Mode.

P.S. Does the computer take ages to boot?

[Marktait]

I have the same problem, i have a seagate 5400RPM 40GB on DMA Mode 4. Doesnt take ages to boot just takes a long time to open up internet explorer, etc but yet on windows me/98 it loads up faster than anything iv ever seen. To be honest i think windows XP should still be in BETA Mode as nothing has really gone right in this version of windows, according to Microsoft its faster that Windows98 but in my experience windows 98 is a lot faster on every computer iv seen windows xp on.

[CounterCW]

Well, it's not the Power Saving feature... that's been off since I've installed XP (fresh install)

It's really annoying... this Hard Drive "pause". I might have experienced this in 2000 too...
The thing is, I'm running a few services, such as IIS with Coldfusion... this computer I use as a developmental platform so I can test my own Coldfusion apps, etc.

As for boot time... my computer varies in that department. Sometimes my hard drive will make constant noise, and boot up rather quickly. However, other times (about 50/50), it will be do that stupid "pause" while booting up! Like, I've put my ear right be the hard drive, and you'll hear a little "tick" every couple seconds... and then, after about 10 seconds of ticks, the hard drive will start making noise and complete the boot.

And this problem occurs 50/50 to applications too. Sometimes after I boot up, I start my Email client as my first app. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes the hard drive pauses. WTF!??

Very frustrating. My hard drive is 100% defragged... but it doesn't seem to help. ARGH.

[Marktait]

That sounds more like bad clusters mate than anything else, i wud check it for bad clusters, my old drive started doing that and it turned out to be bad clusters, just 1 or 2 sitting on the windows partition

[Plumb]

a friend of mine had this problem on his POS but new VIA driver made a big difference in overall speed

[CounterCW]

How does one scan for bad clusters in Windows XP?

And as for VIA drivers.... I've installed the latest... 4.37a or something like that... but how does one know they are installed? All the drivers in Device Manager still say Microsoft Publisher with an old date stamp.

[ejsmith]

Run chkdsk /f c: (or whatever). If it's your system drive, or a page file drive, you'll have to do it next reboot. And the Via drivers make a huge difference under win98se/win2k. Udma mode 3 is ata33, and Udma mode 5 is ata100. There's an idetool that will tell you if you're running mode 5 with the 4n1 drivers.

[mister_man]

98 fater than XP. HAHA. Since I upgraded to Win 2k and then XP, I have never looked back. Windows 9x is nothing but CRAP. It is slow, unstable and now DEAD. Since changing to an NT based OS, everything has been faster and more stable. Seti@Home is one example, it takes a lot less time to complete a workload on XP than on 98. Mp3 encoding has improved in speed. Quake 3 performence is also better. I also like the extra stability of the NT core.

All the XP computers u have seen must really have problems then.

[CounterCW]

I've scanned my disk with both
chkdsk /f
and
chkdsk /r

Both scans turn up no problems on my system/swap drive.

I've also tried the Via IDE tool, but that didn't help either.
argh...

But I want to thank everyone for their help!

[Marktait]

As i said earlier i had this problem, just a few days ago my harddrive failed on me so i would check everythings ok with ur drive. The drive went really slow all of a sudden and it couldn't even keep up with my burn-proof writer, writing at 4x to a CDR-W. unbelievable, so i should have a replacement by tomorrow .

[XPletive]

I believe that Western Digital has a hard drive testing
program available. A friend of mine ran it againt his
hard drive and it turned up so many bad clusters that
WD replaced it for the cost of shipping.

[CounterCW]

thanks, I'll check it out... (I guess I should back up, huh?)... eeps

[CounterCW]

thanks, I'll check it out... (I guess I should back up, huh?)... eeps

[gekko56]

Try checking the power connector to your drive....I just fitted a new PSU to my system and noticed it was loose...Every now and then HD performance would drop dramatically...once I squashed the molex pins a bit it went back up to full speed...