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strange (suspected) hard drive

sytaylor

sytaylor

Sy
this is really strange, ever since i go tmy new hard drive and installed windows on it, its seemed to have a problem where it doesnt like doing mroe that one thing at once..

strange for this system...

OS: WinXP Professional 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build #2600) CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (T-Bred) , 1.80 GHz Video: Plug and Play on nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4400 (1280x960x32bpp 85Hz) Sound: C-Media Wave Device Memory: Used: 191/512MB Uptime: 20m 50s 78ms HD: Free: [C:New Sys Dri] 8.19/10.70 GB [D:Storage] 80.74/81.09 GB [E:programs] 18.43/20.00 GB [G:STORAGE] 3.32/74.53 GB [H:] 1.18/18.55 GB [I:] 0.62/9.39 GB

:geek:

The drive in question is a 120gb western digital JB, im convinced its that, but it could also be my old drive (the i drive) which has been unreadable the last few times ive booted with the exception of this one (and things are a lot better but not perfect).
 
T

Trotterwatch

Active member
Well drives can be put into PIO mode as well as DMA. PIO (forgot what it stands for now) must use the CPU before it accesses memory, whereas DMA stands for Direct Memory Access, and can access memory bypassing the CPU

But needless to say yes DMA can be disabled, and it can cause quite a performance loss when it is, as everything is routed through the CPU.

... y'know if I've got something wrong there it will be pointed out and although I will feel stupid, I will learn! :p
 
OP
sytaylor

sytaylor

Sy
thats set in the bios right? hmm ill have to check that in a bit, but i doubt thats the case
 
OP
sytaylor

sytaylor

Sy
i think we're gettin somewhere, in my device manager one of them was set to pio only...

now its running in mutli word DMA mode 2.. which sounds wrong considering the others are running in dma 5...

help again!

(edit.. rather than another post)

ok, reebooted, its running in DMA mode (albeit dma2) and im still getting pauses across all apps and in windows itself every 30 seconds or so :getlost:
 
Last edited:
T

Trotterwatch

Active member
AFAIK Windows will always pick the best DMA mode possible, though obviously it can make mistakes (I would assume).

What DMA mode you can use depends on the drive, cable and bios settings also. If you have a Via chipset or suchlike then installing the latest Via Hyperion (formerly called 4-1) drivers can help.
 
T

Trotterwatch

Active member
ok, reebooted, its running in DMA mode (albeit dma2) and im still getting pauses across all apps and in windows itself every 30 seconds or so
Click to expand...

Use Task Manager to see what processes are taking up most CPU time, suspects could be things such as Virus checkers running at aggressive settings.

Try looking at eventvwr.msc (accessible easily via the run command), are there any services that seem to be hanging and entering the start state almost immediately.

A reformat is a last resort, I wouldn't go that far just yet to be honest.
 
RJARRRPCGP

RJARRRPCGP

The Rocking PC Wiz
That don't look good. Looks like you should back up the installation archives for the anti-virus and drivers to the second hard disk drive, delete all partitions on the first hard disk drive, repartition the first hard disk drive, reformat the first hard disk drive and re-install Windows XP on the first (primary master) hard disk drive then copy files back to the first hard disk drive from your second hard disk drive. Then of course, re-install the Via
Hyperion 4 in 1 drivers (if IO chipset is Via).
 
OP
sytaylor

sytaylor

Sy
the diagnostic tools from westerndigital.com found nothing wrong with the drive.. next thing its tech support *JOY*
 
The Khan Artist

The Khan Artist

Warrior for God
I had a problem like that once, which was fixed by making it a single drive on the IDE channel. For some reason it did not like working if there was another drive on the channel. Never figured out the cause.
 
OP
sytaylor

sytaylor

Sy
The Khan Artist said:
I had a problem like that once, which was fixed by making it a single drive on the IDE channel. For some reason it did not like working if there was another drive on the channel. Never figured out the cause.
Click to expand...

thanks kahn, ill keep that in mind :)
 
RJARRRPCGP

RJARRRPCGP

The Rocking PC Wiz
The Khan Artist said:
I had a problem like that once, which was fixed by making it a single drive on the IDE channel. For some reason it did not like working if there was another drive on the channel. Never figured out the cause.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm aware that can occur too.

For a precaution, I *always* have only
one hard disk drive attached to IDE connector 1.
 
ickle_moi

ickle_moi

Monkey Ball Addict..
try upgrading the via drivers if it is a via chipset (or other drivers for your board)
and check that the drive is in udma mode 5 or 6 (5 being 100mbps and 6 being 133 i think)
my 4x cd writer uses multi word dma 2 (whatever that is)

*edit* opps didnt realise this was nearly a year old
 
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