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@Andrew777 wrote:

I bought 2 new 160GB HDs, one seagate barracude and one IBM deskstar to my DELL 4550 (Upgraded BIOS)! I already have one 120GB drive that works fine but theese two drives are totaly slow! To transer a 50mb file takes about 1minute, otherwise it is working fine! I heared about a limit of 137GB where there can be trouble!  Maybe split the disks to 2 parts (so I get 2x80GB) and they'll be fast again? Only Larger disks then 120GB have appeared slow for me...

Heared that you could recode regedit and it will be faster afterwards... How do I make the disks fast?

Using the Advanced Forum Search on the left, you can quite easily find the answer to this often asked question.

As a start, do you have Windows XP?  If so, is it updated to SP1 or higher?  If yes, did you partiton and format these drives in Windows XP's Drive Management?  If you answered yes to everything, then you need to check to make sure both drives are set to Auto in BIOS and the access mode is ATA-5.

I got the same problem. Maxtor 160GB in my Dell Dimension 4600 only got 2~4 M/s Read speed. Unbelievable slow.

The original 40GB has 30+ M/s read speed. Both are shown as Ultra DMA 5 in the Primary IDE advanced properties panel (Device 0: 40GB, Device 1: 160GB)

I took off the 160GB hard drive to another old Dell computer and tested it got 20+ M/s average reading speed.

I have done defraction, uninstalled ATA driver, changed cable, etc. Nothing helps.

Hope here I can get help.

Hehe as I was about to close the chassi i dropped a metalic thing on the chipset of the Harddrive so it got detroyed HAHAHA  LOL, I coulden't sleep that night ;) 100GB info got destroyed... To expensive to leave it to a data-recovery store... Well I hope I'll get a new one on the garantue...

 

Thanks for all help!

ps. When I had the 160GB HD on my ide slot on my motherboard I only had a single HD on the ide-kable and it was slow anyway... No just a single 160GN drive CD or anything...

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@Andrew777 wrote:

I managed to solve the problem!   I bought a IDE ultra dma controller card and it didn't work from the begining but when i upgraded my BIOS the disks got fast again on this controller card... They just don't work fast when I attached them directly to my motherbord ... So something with the motherboard makes them slow!

That's not quite right.  Your computer has two IDE ports allowing 4 drives including the DVD and CDs.  If you added a drive to a cable with a DVD or CD, that will cause slowness.  If you hooked the drives to the card and didn't first install it's driver, that will cause issues. 

Glad you got it working.

Just sent a service support email to DELL, they let me use 90-90 IDE diagnosis to check my hard drive. It is quite easy if your BIOS supports it. Just type Ctrl-Alt-D when you see DELL flash screen when you restart your computer. My test result is my 160GB hard drive fail - error code 7. I donot know if it is my hard drive failed or motherboard failed. Anyway, DELL will send somebody to do on-site service.