allriight new problem. the new drive is working but when ii am transfering stuff my computer is acting up. it will work fine for like 5 seconds and then totaly freeeze up for like 3 seconds. and then work, then freeze, over and over, and when it freezes the cpu usage goes to like 96% then back to like 5%. is this just how it is going to be? like my computer can't handle this drive? or is there something i can change to stop it from doing that? it also does it when i am trying to watch a video that is on that hdd or when i added all my stuff to itunes. and it runs kinda slow all the time now too. what i have is a amd athlon 1800 1.53ghz with and 1024 of ram (2-512 cards). the hard drive is a western digital caviar green 500gb. can be see here. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136358 i have the jumber on pins 5 and 6 for the 1.5gb phy. wondering if there is anythign i can do or if that is how it is going to be. if that is the case i will probably get a ide hdd and use this one for another back up of my stuff. i never had a problem before when i had a secoind hdd one the ide port. any help is greatly appreciated

also i have everything backed up on another computer that is networked. when i watch the same video through the network it works fine. is it possible that the card i have just sucks. if so any sugestions on what one to get?

That can be true, i've talked around abit about via's sata controllers and they don't have good repute here due to performance/compatibility issues.

Personally I do not like to take the route of adding additional controller just to run SATA on old computers; i need additional storage for an old machine which didn't had SATA ports; i just went and bought a WD Passport drive and it works wonderfully/plays video just as good.

Also if you can find new drivers on their site, try using them i think current version is something like 2.8 or above. I posted the link in one of my previous posts.

Also i think the WD 500GB Caviar Green may not be an issue here as I have this same HDD in one of my computers operating perfectly alright. However to make it sure, if you can arrange check it by connecting it to a onboard sata connector of supportive baord (may be with a friend perhaps?).