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Veeerrrryyy Slllooowww (very slow) C drive
I have a Dimension 1100/b110 that I replaced the C drive with a Western Digital WD5000AAKB-00H8A0 about 8 months ago. There also is a Maxtor 6L160P0 as the slave on the primary controller that is designated as the E drive. About a week ago the computer stared running very slow. I downloaded "Dr. Hardware" diagnostic software and after several test did a benchmark test of the 2 hard drives. The C drive reads about 2500 KB/s while the E drive reads about 2500 KB/s or 10 times as fast. I ran the hard drive tests in the Dell Utility Partition and both drives read about the same at 25000 KB/s. That computer is now doing a backup using Norton Ghost. While the backup is progressing I am monitoring the disk through put and the CPU usage with Norton System Doctor. While the E drive was being backed up the CPU usages was about 40% and the throughput was about 14000 KB/s. When the backup of the C drive started the CPU went to almost 100% (almost all of which was kernel usage) and the throughput went down to about 2000 KB/s.
Does anyone have any idea as to what is going on? HELP PLEASE
bacillus
14.4K Posts
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January 10th, 2011 05:00
It's possible that the C drive has slipped into pio mode.
You need to look in device manager under the ide atapi controller section. Find the channel your c hdd is on>properties>advanced settings and you will see the current mode the drive is using. It should be udma 5 or 6.
osprey4
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January 10th, 2011 05:00
Hi Aardvarki,
A few things to check. Are both drives jumpered to cable select? Both listed in the BIOS (if you see "unknown", there's a problem)? Did you install the chipset drivers? In device manager, you can check the primary IDE channel to see if both drives are running in DMA mode. If you see PIO, that's a problem.
bacillus
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January 10th, 2011 11:00
You can first try uninstalling the ide channel that the hdd is on (right click on the channel>uninstall) then reboot. NB Do not uninstall the ide controller.
At restart windows should redetect the channel and reinstall it hopefully putting the drive back into the correct mode.
AardvarkI
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January 10th, 2011 11:00
Thank you Osprey & bacillus
You both hit the nail on the head but I guess I now need the sledge hammer. Under "Transfer Mode" it says DMA if possible and under "Current Transfer Mode" it says PIO. The question now is, how do I make DMA mode possible?
osprey4
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January 10th, 2011 16:00
I'll add a thought. The reason a hard drive slips into PIO mode can be due to errors on the drive. So it would be worth performing the Dell diagnostics on your hard drive. To test your hard drive using your Dell Drivers and Utilities disc:
1. Reboot your system. When you see the Dell logo, hit F12 to enter the boot menu.
2. Insert the Dell Drivers and Utilities disc in your CD/DVD drive.
3. Pick the option to boot from the CD/DVD drive.
4. You will be prompted to hit any key to continue booting from the CD/DVD drive.
5. You will be prompted to hit 1 to run the Dell diagnostics. You may see two such menus.
6. Select Test System.
7. Select Custom Test.
7. Use the arrow keys or mouse to select your hard drive.
9. Click Run Tests.
10. Write down any error messages.
AardvarkI
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January 10th, 2011 23:00
Thanks very much. My wife's computer is now back to normal and I can get on with other things