Major HDD speed difference between 2 OS's on same HDD

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pioneerx01

Posts: 279   +2
Hi,

I have one HDD split into two identical partitions. One has Win XP x32 and another has Win XP x64. When I boot to x32 the entire HDD runs at speeds 2-3MBps. When I boot to x64 the very same HDD runs 60-70MBps all across the board.
I have ran out of things to try besides reformatting the x32 and reinstalling.

Oh, and happy easter
 
That is odd. Are both partitions NTFS? What are you using that tells you those figures, and what are they anyway? Read-rate, write rate or what? In either case, the transfer rates are never constant. I suggest you download and run HD tune www.hdtune.com which explains things much better than I can, and will probably tell you that your existing figures are just plain moonshine.

Is there anything you cannot do in XP64? If not, some people would say 'what's the fuss?'
 
Solution

I have actually solved the problem yesterday, but with it being Easter Sunday and all...
Ok, here what it was:
Go to device manager (right click on My Computer) > IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > (pick a channel your HDD is on) Primary IDE Channel > Double Click > Advanced Setting. Your HDD should be set to Ultra DMA Mode # (some number 1-5). If it is in PIO that is why the HDD is so slow. To fix that go to driver tab and uninstall the drivers. Restart the PC. Your OS should automatically reinstall the drivers for your IDE channel. Once the PC boots it will tell you found new hardware...blah, blah, blah...please restart your PC. So, restart it again and once it boots it should be back to normal speeds.

I have used HDSpeed very nice little freeware, to test my speed before and after.

Thanks for the effort anyways.
 
why X32 and X64

And to answer your question of why I have both X32 and X64...

I use x32 for play, homework and basic stuff. x64 is optimized for work using Photoshop, Vegas, Dreamweaver, After Effects. I do not want any other crap on it, just work.

Also if one XP decides to take a dump on me I can still finish what I need to do on the second OS and reinstall it when I have time, not when my PC wants me to...
 
That's fine - thanks for the update. Actually, I recommend taking drive images for ultimate recovery, especially since those that do an incremental update only take a minute or less....
 
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