Dual Hard Dives causing problems

Zaphod1620

OSNN Junior Addict
Joined
19 Oct 2004
Messages
23
I have recently bought a 250GB Maxtor HD. I installed it as master one IDE 0 along with my old 120GB drive as slave. I put a fresh copy of windows on it (not dual booting). I kept my old windows install on the old HD until I get everything up on the new one. Everything works fine unless I transfer files between my old HD and the new one. The system will lock up for a few minutes, and stutter along until the files are transferred. I can't do anything else while transferring files. I have the new HD set to Ultra DMA6 and the old one on Ultra DMA 5. Also, Disk management list the old HD as "Active" and my new HD as "System". Anyone know what could be causing this?
 
Just found another instance. The system slowing down also happens when I just do a "Search" on the new HD, not even involving the other hard drive. This is a Maxtor 250 GB Ultra 16 drive, by the way.

-Zaphod
 
Did you change the HD to slave via jumpers? Also is both drives on the same IDE cable or on different channels?
 
You could try to move the 120 to the secondary ide channel. ALso double check your chipset drivers and make sure they are up to date and set properly for the drives.
 
Yup, the jumpers aee set correctly. I don't want to move the HD to the other IDE channel because I have A DVD-RW and a CD-ROM drive there. I don't want to mix the CD drives and the HD drives. Before I bought this drive, I had a small 10 GB drive slaved to the 120GB. There were no problems then, but that was on the other Windows install.

-Zaphod
 
generally speaking, its bad to have two volumes on one channel. For example, a cd-rom and a cd-burner. You couldn't use the burn on the fly option because transfering data in real time on one channel is problematic, and usually just wont work at all.
My opinion would be to put the Slave drive as secondary slave, then boot up and see how you get on. This solved an issue i was having back in 2002 with XP. Same scenario too transfering data from old os drive to new. Would be worth a shot.
 
thekore said:
generally speaking, its bad to have two volumes on one channel. For example, a cd-rom and a cd-burner. You couldn't use the burn on the fly option because transfering data in real time on one channel is problematic, and usually just wont work at all.
My opinion would be to put the Slave drive as secondary slave, then boot up and see how you get on. This solved an issue i was having back in 2002 with XP. Same scenario too transfering data from old os drive to new. Would be worth a shot.
I agree with this statemant. I always split my machines this way. first channel C:\ CD-RW second channel D:\ DVD-RW
 
Won't having a CD drive on the same channel as a HD cause slower speed from the HD?

-Zaphod
 
Zaphod1620 said:
Won't having a CD drive on the same channel as a HD cause slower speed from the HD?
Not on newer systems. Some years ago, it did afaik.
 
Zaphod1620 said:
Won't having a CD drive on the same channel as a HD cause slower speed from the HD?
Yes it will and if you have no choice make sure the slower drive is slave but you will still cripple performance of the faster drive.
If you have a cd/dvd burner and cd/dvd rom on the same channel make sure the burner is master to ensure reliable disc creation.
 
Well, I decided it would be best just to keep my 2nd HD on the same channel as my primary. There won't be alot of inter drive swapping anyway. But why in the world would doing something as simple as running a search on a single dive cause my PC to screech to a halt? It doesn't lock up, but it will do nothing else, and any commands or mouse clicks take 10-30 seconds to register. I'm stumped on this one. Is this just a side effect to having a large HD?

-Zaphod
 
I have used 2 cdrw/dvd/dvdrw on same ide's and never had trouble with copys and such and os for a large hard drive causeing that I dont see why it would I use 3 x 160 2 are SATA one is IDE plus an 80 and a 40 and nothing is slow in any direction. Have you looked into a bios update>?

Whats your motherboard?
 
I run 2 large HD on my IDE0 and a CDRW and a DVD Burner on my IDE1. There are no problems and no unexpected slow downs.

When you are transfering large files between 2 fast drives in DMA it will slow your system down. You just don't have that much bandwidth in the memory channel (unless you are using an Athlon 64). The same will be true of transfering from a fast DVD or CD drive.

How big are the files you're transfering and how long is it taking?

Go under control panel-system-advanced-performance-settings-advanced
In processor scheduling make sure Programs button is set. It will give priority to the upfront tasks you are trying to do.

And just for grins try setting both HD to UDMA 5.
 
*sigh* no luck yet. I've made sure my BIOS is up to date (it is), my MOBO drivers are up to date (they are), DMA settings are correct, the drives are set in BIOS to the correct 16 or 32 bit transfer modes, the drives have the correct jumper settings, virtual memory is enabled, programs are set as the priority for processor scheduling and memory usage, I removed the partition on the slave drive and reformatted it, and stayed sober for at least half of the troubleshooting process. I'm betting it is my mobo, Kermit. I have an Abit A7N8X-LA, the last remnant of this Compaq POS it used to be. I've been holding out on upgrading the mobo, because I want to get a 64 bit processor next, but I'm still casing the Circle K so I can afford the AMD64 FX-51 chip. Ah well. I just won't run search and pretend everything is perfect.
 
That really is a strange one have you got the tools from the hard drives website and tried to run some tests on it to see if it is not faulty?
 
Yup, even ran a Burn-In test from Maxtor and let it run for 8 hours while I was at work. No errors. It's probably just a combination of my POS motherboard and having two HD's on the same IDE channel.
 
They the new drive alone

Zaphod1620 said:
Just found another instance. The system slowing down also happens when I just do a "Search" on the new HD, not even involving the other hard drive. This is a Maxtor 250 GB Ultra 16 drive, by the way.
-Zaphod

Zaphod, you say the problem presents itself when you do a search on the new drive. Have you tried disconnecting the slave drive so that the master is the only drive connected to the primary IDE Channel and conducting the search again? This would identify if the slave drive is interferring on the channel or the problem is with the master drive.
 
Have you made sure the Master drive is on the end connector of the cable and the Slave is attatched to the middle connector?
 
The problem does not occur if I disconnect my slave drive. However, I used to have what is now my slave drive as a master with a 10 GB slave, and this did not happen. For kicks, I tried putting in my old 10 GB drive as a master and kept my current slave drive. No problem. Then I tried using my 10 GB as master and my new drive as the slave. No problem. It only happens when I have my new drive as master.

Yup, my IDE cables are correctly connected. I thinking this is just one of those weird things that I have heard of happening on ultra-big HD's like this.

-Zaphod:lick:
 

Members online

No members online now.

Latest profile posts

Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
Electronic Punk wrote on Sazar's profile.
Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

Forum statistics

Threads
62,015
Messages
673,494
Members
5,621
Latest member
naeemsafi
Back