Transfer speed between HD's

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I want to transfer some large files between drives on my system but I think it goes really slow.

I have tried with a 2 317 640KB file and I get a time estimate on approx 19min=1140sec/file size gives approx.

From: WD2000JB (D) to

WD600BB (C) - 2 033KB/sec
WD400BB (F) - 1 170KB/sec

I have no extra controllers.

Is this normal? If not what might be the problem?

In addition, if I want good performance with this setup - how would you recomend me to set the disks up.

I have a Dimension 8300, 3GHz, 512MB, HD as above, 128MB DDR ATI Readon 9800.
 
How do you have the drives set up? Better if they are on separate IDE/SATA channels, UDMA enabled and 80 wire cables used for IDE. If you have a HD on the same channel with a CDROM drive then it may run at ATA33 speeds instead of ATA100 or whatever your HDs support. If the source file is badly fragmented then the copying will be slow no matter what.

Also, the Windows time estimate is not a number you should believe. Try copying a 100 megs and time it manually. You can see how much you have copied by looking at the destination folder and refreshing the contents. Or use some other program instead of Windows Explorer a la FAR manager.
 
Do you have 80-wire ATA-100/133 IDE-cables installed or still the old 40-wire? If the latter, replace those.

Also check if your DMA is enabled. Rightclick "My Computer" and select Properties. Then Hardware/Device Manager and click on the + before IDE...Controllers. Rightclick on both controllers and select Properties/Advanced Settings to see if (Ultra)DMA is enabled.

Looks like your F-drive also has a CD-Rom or DVD attached, that's why it is so slow.
 
IDE1: C-drive WD 60GB and D-drive WD 200GB
Primary Controller:
Device 0 - DMA if available, Current transfer mode: Ultra DMA Mode 2
Device 1 - DMA if available, Current Transfer mode: PIO

IDE2: E-drive CD/DVD and F-drive WD 40GB
Secondary Controller:
Device 0 - DMA if available, Current transfer mode: Ultra DMA Mode 2
Device 1 - DMA if available, Current Transfer mode: PIO
80-wire on both

Should I get a controller card to mount the F-drive to or what do you think?

Are there other setups that might be more efficient?

I'm going to partition the drives in line with a post from Soul Harvester where I put the OS only on one, Apps on another, Swap etc etc..

And... Thanks already for the replies and that there are people like you that share you're wisdom with the rest of us - appriciated!
 
Since you have a Dell, you might not be able to pick up a newer BIOS, but see if there is one that addresses large(r) HDs.
Your 200GB should run under Ultra DMA.

You might benefit from buying a new PCI-IDE-controller to hang your 200GB on. Then move the 40GB from IDE2 to device 1 on IDE1 and leave the CD/DVD on its own on IDE2.
Not sure if CD/DVD benefit from 80-wire (personally I don't think so)
 
As you can see, D and F drives are running PIO. Better enable DMA on those.
 
I noticed that both controllers had the same setup but there are no other way (I know of) to set them.

You see that all 4 devices are set to "DMA if available" but only the first unit in the chain has Ultra DMA enabled, not the second.

There are no choice to "force" DMA in Device Manager on the controllers - or is it?
 
No way to force it. Just make sure DMA is allowed both in Device Manager and BIOS.
 
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