|
|
 |
|
|
Pages: 1
hard drive issues
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)
Posted by: lcousins
Hi,
I have two harddrives in my XP Pro machine, a 120gb off which everything runs and a 200gb which is used purely to store data. they are on the same ide cable, the second ide cable being used for a dvd burner and a dvd rom drive. 2 512mb ddr ram if that makes a difference.
All programs run fine and fast off the 120gb, starts up and shuts down nice and fast too. The problem I am having is that transferring data from the 120gb to the 200gb (or any other device such as firewire or usb2 portable drives) takes ages (around about 20minutes per 1gb). Its actually mildly quicker to transfer files from another machine over an 11b wireless network to the 200gb drive than it is to transfer from one harddrive to the other.
I realise the answer is probably 'get a new harddrive', but before I go begging to the bank any ideas??
m.
Posted by: zorg
I have had this discussion with out sysad and he informed me (rightly or wrongly) that if you have 2 hdd's on one IDE and you wich to cpy stuff over it will take long. on IDE data can only be going one way, thus you are copying the data to the mobo then back up etc etc. This makes for a mess and slow transfer. try connection one hdd one cdrom/dvdburner on a ide cable. Also run hdtach which is a hdd utility which will test the transfer rates on your hdd which you can then compare to other tests.
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Publi...?request=HdTach
Posted by: Ion Silverbolt
Yes, devices on the same channel are restricted. The most optimal solution is to set both hard drives to master moving the second hard drive to the secondary chain. Run the DVD-ROM's as slave devices. They are rarely needed anyway and are more suitable as slave devices.
Another thing you might want to check is your IDE controller in the device manager. Make sure UDMA is enabled for the devices.
Posted by: redwench
nothing wrong with 2 drives on the same ide channel, but as they said, it will limit the transfer speed. of course, the same is true for any 2 devices on the same channel.
Posted by: lcousins
thanks for all the advice, a few questions -
would be fact that the harddrives are both on the same ide cable actually explain the literal 20minutes per gig it is taking?
also if I do switch them to seperate cables then will I have similar problems burning from 1 harddrive to the dvdburner if it is on the same ide cable?
finally i believe my motherboard has a SATA connection available, if I went ahead and bought a SATA drive to replace the 120gb drive and my primary drive, are there any issues I should be aware of and would it really make much difference??
thx
m.
Posted by: redwench
 Quote:
|
Originally Posted by lcousins
would be fact that the harddrives are both on the same ide cable actually explain the literal 20minutes per gig it is taking?
|
perhaps. youre actually transfering 2g of data, plus the seek times. so i would say its not unreasonable, but youll know for sure if you get them on different channels.
Quote:
|
also if I do switch them to seperate cables then will I have similar problems burning from 1 harddrive to the dvdburner if it is on the same ide cable?
|
the same logic would apply, but your burn speed is probably significantly slower than the ide so it wouldnt be particularly noticeable.
Quote:
|
finally i believe my motherboard has a SATA connection available, if I went ahead and bought a SATA drive to replace the 120gb drive and my primary drive, are there any issues I should be aware of and would it really make much difference??
|
i dont know why you would do that, if there isnt anything wrong with your drives. no issues other than getting xp to properly recognize the drive. unless you transfer many gigs daily between your drives, you wont notice much of a difference other than shortened load times for programs, including the OS. if you need more storage space, by all means, i would recommend sata. but no sense in replacing the existing drives if theyre working fine and are large enough.
seriously, if youre tranfering 20gigs every day, that is around the point you would want to consider buying something faster. putting source and destination drives on separate channels would cut the time by around half. if you need more speed, scsi drives are your answer. its rather silly to spend that kind of money to save yourself 10 min a couple times a week.
fastest ide drive: 7200rpm
fastest sata drive: 10k
fastest scsi drive: 15k
|
|
|
|
|
