[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

I installed an 80gig hd (7200rpm ata)on my Mom's computer, which is an amd thunderbird 800 with 256mb of ram and windows xp. Whenever something is accessing the hd (such as downloading) the computer starts working really slowly with frequent pauses. Does anyone know why this is happening?

Thanks,

Biggie.

 

[c0mfortably_numb]

First problem is 256MB of RAM (you should really throw another 256 in there, I don't recomend a win xp install on anything less then 512)

The real problem is either one or both of these...disable auto restore...when that starts it will make an older computer crawl on it's knees, and some newer ones to. Also disable Indexing (double click my computer | right click hard drive | properties | Uncheck indexing) that is another system killer.

If you done all that and it still crawls, you need to see what is running int he background ( Cntrl | Alt | dele | task manager) click on processes then click CPU and see if there is a a program that is taking allot of CPU utilization.

Check the startup (start | run | msconfig | startup) and make sure there is nothing that isn't needing running at start up (resource hogs) also well in there you can click on services | hide all microsoft and see if there is any unecessory services starting you don't need.

Edit::
When I say to disable auto restore, it's mainly because of the cpu speed and the amount of ram....windows restore is really system intensive, and I think one would be better off with another means of backing up there data.

 

[SiBurning]

Is this a second drive? Is it sharing the IDE channel? Was it slow before adding it? How's the disk cache configured? In which ATA mode is the drive configured? Are the other drives in the same mode? Lots of possibilities. Hard to guess without all the info.

Finally, I seem to remember there were some issues with a few AMD chipsets from that era that caused drives to be terribly slow if they shared a channel. I had that with a Tyan dual Athlon board. I think it was actually a problem with the PCI bus, so certain cards in combination with drives could also cause issues.

 

[lini]

NB_PJ: Well, if you have added the drive to the channel with the optical drive, I'd recommend to use it on the other channel together with the boot hard drive instead. Then check out your device manager: For the drive itself, the write cache should be activated - and the controller channel should be set to use "DMA, if available" (or something like that - German version here...) for both hard drives. If that's all ok, then at least the hardware should be configured correctly - if it's still slow, then I'd recommend to continue with c_n's suggestions above.

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[JaGWiRE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SiBurning Is this a second drive? Is it sharing the IDE channel? Was it slow before adding it? How's the disk cache configured? In which ATA mode is the drive configured? Are the other drives in the same mode? Lots of possibilities. Hard to guess without all the info. Finally, I seem to remember there were some issues with a few AMD chipsets from that era that caused drives to be terribly slow if they shared a channel. I had that with a Tyan dual Athlon board. I think it was actually a problem with the PCI bus, so certain cards in combination with drives could also cause issues.

I'de say give us some more details on how it's configured and set up, and I would say if you are flooding the IDE channel which is possible (assuming your on the IDE interface which I would think as your rig is not new), it could be that.

 

[Zorander]

Check that the HD is not working in PIO mode!

 

[jbloudg20]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaGWiRE I'de say give us some more details on how it's configured and set up, and I would say if you are flooding the IDE channel which is possible (assuming your on the IDE interface which I would think as your rig is not new), it could be that.

I very highly doubt that is the problem.

 

[JaGWiRE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jbloudg20 I very highly doubt that is the problem.

Why? I've had some problems on older boards with the IDE channels being flooded, although I am talking about several drives, not two.

 

[jbloudg20]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaGWiRE I am talking about several drives, not two.

Answered your own question. This is highly unlikely.

 

[JaGWiRE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jbloudg20 Answered your own question. This is highly unlikely.

Yeah, but like I said, Notorious needs to give us more info. We don't know if this is the only drive in the computer, or if he has 5 others. We don't know what type of motherboard he has, and we don't have any statistics such as what he sees in the task manager when his computer is running slow. So many possibilities :\.

 

[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

Just to note the computer runs faster with winxp then it did with win98 and runs absolutely fine before the 2nd harddrive was added.

The 80gig hd is the 2nd harddrive, and we are only using it to store movies. I've also been monitoring the cpu and ram usage and haven't been able to pickup any strange anomolies as of yet. I disabled auto restore and other unneeded resource hogs long ago.

Biggie.

 

[tkam]

I would check to make sure its not running in PIO mode, thats really what this sounds like.

 

[NotoriousBIG_PJ]

It was in PIO mode. I changed it to DMA but its still chugging so far..

Biggie.

 

[euclid]

try disabling disk indexing and then defragment the drive, considering the disk diameter and rotation speed seek times will decrease if all the data is at the beginning(outermost portion of the storage layer). when it indexes the head has to move back and forth over large distances of unused disk space.

1. Go to Windows Explorer, right‐click on your hard drive name and select Properties.
2. Untick the ʹAllow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searchingʹ.

also go to Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager and under the View menu select ʹView Resources by Typeʹ, then
select the ʹInterrupt Requestʹ item. make sure the IDE channels are not sharing an IRQ #.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, make sure the jumpers on the back of the both the harddives are set to the correct master/slave configuration

 

[Guild]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NotoriousBIG_PJ The 80gig hd is the 2nd harddrive...

OK, is it the primary or seconday channel? Also, is it set in slave, master, or cable select? Using a 40wire or 80wire IDE cable? What is the max DMA mode of the older drive?

Quote:

Originally Posted by NotoriousBIG_PJ It was in PIO mode. I changed it to DMA but its still chugging so far..

WinXP will usually drop the mode one step after a few errors; this usually only happens to CDROMs because of bad media. Also, simply changing the drop down to DMA doesn't always work. It has been my practice to delete the offending drive and channel (or just all of that stuff,) reboot, and let the OS reinstall default drivers and configuration. A new hard drive should never have fallen into PIO mode unless the hardware setup is somehow incorrect or that particular channel was previously set to PIO.

I may be over analyzing, but it being an older computer, I bet some of the specs may not be perfectly compatible.