Weird hard drive issue

[milespower]

Hey.

So, my computer was running really slow, like really really slow, even transfering files so I benchmarked my HD and realized my 120GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 has a Sequential Read Speed of 3.0 MB/s when it should be around the 50MB/S mark.

What's wrong?

 

[SNGX1275]

Drive controller is in PIO mode rather than UDMA. Check/change this in device manager, its in the properties for your drive controller, one of those tabs. I'm not on a Windows machine now or I'd check - but you should be able to figure it out from this.

 

[milespower]

it's on the BIOS though. Will do it next time I power up the PC.

 

[milespower]

well, tuning the BIOS settings didn't work. Meanwhile, I found that a) my board somehow doubled the controller (2x Primary IDE, 2x Secondary IDE and I don't have any expansion card) b) the windows has "DMA if available" activated but it doesn't get out of PIO.

 

[milespower]

Figured it out already. Uninstalling and letting Windows re-install the IDE primary channel driver worked. Apparently this is an obscure Windows function that after six consecutive DMA errors it starts "underclocking" from UDMA6 to PIO0