How do i change my ATA settings

[CompuGeek247]

I was moving some data from one drive to another and i noticed it accessed and transfered my main hardrive slowly. I checked my ata settings with a a western digital disk. I put in at startup and it booted. I saw that it was at 33. my second hardrive which is a western digital is at 100. my first hardrive isnt western digital. How do i change the settings and get it up to 100 or 133?

 

[Nic]

Maybe you are not using a proper ATA-66, ATA-100, ATA-133 (all same) cable, but are using an ATA-33 cable instead. That would certainly explain it as your hard drive settings should be automatically detected.

 

[CompuGeek247]

well it cant be my cables. there brand new and there suppose to go to 133. Its my first hardrive. I checked in my bios to see if i could change anything and it didnt even give me anything. like it wasnt being detected. I formatted it and everything and it stores my windows on it so it works fine, but its only at 33.

 

[Nic]

Are you certain that your drive supports ATA-100 or above?
Also, make sure your bios is set to auto-detect each of your drives.

 

[Nodsu]

Do you have any CD/DVD drives on the same cables?

 

[agissi]

Originally posted by Nodsu
Do you have any CD/DVD drives on the same cables?

hey Nodsu, what happens when you do have an ATA100 HD on an ATA100 cable, but with a cdrom attched? Will it make your HD run at ATA33 to be in sync with the cdrom or something??

 

[Phantasm66]

check that everything that should be enabled in tbe BIOS is - then look at the IDE controller settings in device manager.

 

[Nic]

Having CDROM/DVD drive on same cable as your hard drive will, on older controllers only, slow down your hard drive (as Nodsu is hinting). Worth checking.

 

[CompuGeek247]

No my cd drives are on different cables. The cd drives go into my primary socket in the motherboard. My hardrives go into the secondary.

I just checked my device settings and my primary hardrive is on ultra dma 4 and the second is on ultra dma 5

in the bios it is also on auto detect but it still isnt coming up with anything.

I am not certain is the drive supports up to 133 but im sure it supports up to 100.

I dont knwo if reformatting will make any difference. Im stumped at what to do.

 

[young&wild]

For optimum performance, connect your Hard Disk Drive to Primary IDE and CD-ROM to the Secondary IDE.

 

[Nodsu]

Reformatiing will have no effect on the ATA setting, you could blame poor cables, mobo drivers or the OS for the lack of speed tho.

 

[Phantasm66]

Originally posted by Nodsu
Reformatiing will have no effect on the ATA setting, you could blame poor cables, mobo drivers or the OS for the lack of speed tho.

You are exactly right. ATA is to do with the way data is moved from your HDD to the other parts of your computer. However, formatting a drive is to do with how data is arranged and stored on your hard drive. Although there is no doubt - at some deep level - some relation between the two, this isn't the source of your problem unless you have discovered some kind of interesting fluke.

Try another HDD cable, try installing mobo drivers, etc, as Nodsu rightfully suggested.

 

[Argnom]

Nerver underestimate the power of your chipset drivers. A lot of people just don't install them because you won't really "see" a difference (unlike video card drivers for example). The computer will run fine, but you'll notice something is wrong when transfering large files or trying to get you USB 2.0 port to work properly. After all, it is the chipset that controls data x-fer between your different periferals.

Could also be that your Western Digital "diagnostic disc" is made to give false readings on other manufacturer's HDs. I really don't know how the program gets the info. Does it just check for the ID of your HD (model xxx-xxx-xxx = ATA33, xxx-xxx-xxx + ATA100 etc...) or does it really test the transfer rate?

 

[acidosmosis]

You may consider updating your BIOS if all else fails.

 

[XtR-X]

You may be trying to transfer files to a blank hard drive that does not have the driver(s) for ATA100 or so. Install the drivers on the drive that runs at ATA33 first, then transfer.

**Hope that is what's goin on.**