HardDrive Speeds

SLNT_FIR

SLNT_FIR

New Member
I currently have 2 drives in my computer, one of them is a new one, one of them is 5 years old, year 2000. :eek:

New drive reads/writes at a MAX rate of 20MB/Sec
OLD drive reads/writes at a rate of 2MB/Sec
which makes it painfully slow to do ANYTHING with it. *play games, load any programs onto it that REQUIRES the BootDrive... ><

I think this partly has to do with me putting tons of crud on my computer such as norton antivirus, norton internetsecurity, and systemworks. :eek:

Basically, heh heh, i'm asking two questions. Is there a particular reason why my harddrive is so slow? and 2, is there anyway to fix it?
 
erm... harddrive? makes no difference?

i have 512 ram thank you, its fine. :p

and we DO have the new one. that's the other one up there.
 
I thought it was possible to copy everything (includiing system info) over to a new HD.

Then you could reformat the new one and use it as storage when access isn't critical.
 
Old drives have slower RPM, smaller buffers and are just slow. They dont match to todays performance. No way to fix the slow drive.
 
Uh... i was thinking, nevermind. new idea.

Since i have my new hd, its 200gbs, would it be better for me to move the whole operating system over since its faster? (i fear it'll make it slower... and it'll become half a slug like the old one :) )but that would mean throwing away my old drive. currently my new drive is the slave drive, and i use it for storage. the old drive has some stuff on it as well as the OS. (xp)
I thought it was possible to copy everything (includiing system info) over to a new HD.
Click to expand...
What would you use to do that?

Edit: Talon, i know the rpm differes, but i dunno how to find that in my computer without taking out my hd.
EDIT AGAIN;
NOOO!!!! I found out my drive is the "ST380020A" and googled it.
but i dunno how to find that in my computer without taking out my hd.
Click to expand...
i'm a moron. rofl. i found it in a minute
anyway, the ST380020A is a 5400 rpm hd.. *DOh!*

Problem fixed. If we still want to discuss Harddrives we can. :D
 
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You wont be able to copy over windows onto the 200gb drive and boot off of it. You'll have to reinstall windows, which will require a reformat.
 
Ok Silent, here's what you do:

1. Take the 2MB/s HardDrive, Backup wanted data from it, drop kick it out the window. I bet that sucker wants to die!

2a. Buy a new 'primary' Hard Drive. You can get an 80GB for like $50, here's a WD 7200rpm drive for $50.

2b. Or you can use your 200GB as your primary. I would recommend splitting the drive into at least 3/4 partitions*. You can accomplish this a number of differnet ways. Assuming your using Windows XP, you can do it durring the setup, you can do it using Computer Management in the Control Panel/Admin Options (XP Home has it hidden I think, dont remember.), or you can do it using a 3rd party application such as Partition Magic.


*splitting up the partition boosts proformance when playing games. If you have all your games on one seperate partition, and defragment it regularly, it will be faster loading levels, etc.

*Edit* Actually the link to resize an existing partition includes steps on how to do it w/ a 3rd party app. considering how the builtin WinXP tool doesn't allow this.


glhf.
 
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Thanks! :p

Take the 2MB/s HardDrive, Backup wanted data from it, drop kick it out the window. I bet that sucker wants to die!
Click to expand...

LOL. MY dad would probably say "Keep the hard drive, use it for the OS" If I kicked it out the window... >_> rofllll

anyway, we've already partitioned the new drive.
Buuutttt, you said i can:

PARTITION THEN Install Windows XP again? That requires a reformatting, but would that erase my whole harddrive or just that newly partitioned section?
 
I looked a little further for a free/open-source solution to PartitionMagic or other partition editing/resizing tools. You can use Knoppix Live to do this. More info about Knoppix on his page here.

P.S. It's a linux distro so it may take some basic linux knowledge.
 
SilentAssassin said:
Thanks! :p



LOL. MY dad would probably say "Keep the hard drive, use it for the OS" If I kicked it out the window... >_> rofllll

anyway, we've already partitioned the new drive.
Buuutttt, you said i can:

PARTITION THEN Install Windows XP again? That requires a reformatting, but would that erase my whole harddrive or just that newly partitioned section?
Click to expand...


The link I included tells you how to do it step-by-step. You partition durring the WinXP setup. Your stuff will be erased, so you need to back it up prior. Using the 2mb/s drive for your OS will still cause things to be slow. Loading Windows will be slower, installing applications will be slower. I think you need to boot that baby and use the 200 gig'er, but that's up to you.
 
Oh and also, what did you use to test the speed of this hard drive?

I use HDTach(free!) to test mine.

Actually, it doesn't sound right at all. I just tested mine and it reads 114.9 mb/s. Either you misread or there is something tremendiously wrong with your setup :p
 
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SilentAssassin said:
New drive reads/writes at a MAX rate of 20MB/Sec
OLD drive reads/writes at a rate of 2MB/Sec
Click to expand...
That's still suspiciously slow. Is DMA enabled on both drives? Here's how to check:

Control Panel > System > Hardware tab > Device Manager > Expand "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" > Double-click "Primary IDE Channel" > Advanced Settings > Set transfer more to "DMA if available." Repeat for "Secondary IDE Channel."
 
I have device 1 and device 2 for Primary IDE.

Then both say DMA if availible, but the device 0 is using PIO.
Otherwise everything else is using ultramode blahblah DMA blahblahblah.
 
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