Hard Drive transfer rate very slow (Seagate Barracuda 120GB)

[Cy6erpuke]

Hi

I have searched long and hard and need help please.

I have a P4 2.8 CPU with 512 DDR400 Ram and WinXP Pro installed. My hard drive is a Seagate Barracuda 120GB (Ultra) ATA. I have replaced cable to manufacturer's spec Ultra ATA cable, black interface used for master and jumper on Cable Select. I do not use the slave on this cable. I have checked BIOS and auto detected drive again. All seems fine here.

I have tested transfer rate on this drive with HD tach and HD Tune and get around 2.8 MB/sec. I experience very slow boot up and PC in general is very slow to start and execute programs.

I have removed all spyware and other threats with no effect.

 

[Nodsu]

Make sure you have hard disk DMA enabled in BIOS and see if Windows is using it.

 

[Cy6erpuke]

I have looked at BIOS, I do not see DMA setting there Except one that give two options (1 or 3) I chose 3.

In device manager under IDE controllers and Primary IDE it is set to DMA if available.

Anything else I need to try?

 

[Cy6erpuke]

Transfer mode : DMA if available
Current transfer mode: PIO mode

how do i force UDMA modes?

I tried to toggle PIO the DMA if avail..... does not work

 

[Nodsu]

Do you have the latest (and correct) drivers for your chipset? There was also some registry hack to make UDMA work with win2k - it won't hurt to do that for your XP.

Windows falls back to PIO mode when DMA is not available (disabled) or too many errors occur (bad cable? bad controller? bad drive?).

 

[Paragon33]

UDMA reset

Sometimes uninstalling IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and then rebooting to put them back will correct the problem.
If that does not work, read this
http://www.techweb.com/winmag/columns/powerw2k/2001/05.htm#udma

 

[Cy6erpuke]

Thanks guys, you are all spot on. Sorry for replying so late. Had very good support from Seagate, the told me to uninstall IDE ATA controller from device manager, reboot, install newest IDE controller from motherboard manufacturer and reboot again. Great! Picked up everything now running like greased lightning!

Thanks
Cy6erpuke