Hello chaps, I must apologise, I feel a bit of a fraud as I'm far from the professional the membership form wanted me to be.

I've searched Google til my eyes bled, posted various "amateur" forums with no success, please help me?

Trying to get my ATA/100 HDD to run at a decent speed off my Nforce2 IDE controller (mobo, not PCI). At the moment it's behaving as if it was in PIO mode, but Xp has the IDE controller listed as ATA, and the BIOS has Ultra DMA set to auto.

So why can't I get a decent speed out of it? it's chugging along like something out of the Flintstones, wouldn't be surprised to open it and find a lizard running on a wheel.

It's all setup correctly, right cable (tried 2), correct jumper settings, this is the only drive on the IDE channel, Nforce2 ATA drivers are the latest from Nvidia.

I used to like computers, more importantly, they used to like me, I feel this is going to test our relationship..............

Many thanks to any who read this.

First, try the drive on the IDE channel by itself if it's not already.

Second if that wasn't it, consider that the problem might be with the OS or perhaps some of the processes that are running in the background.  You can try using msconfig (Go to Start -> Run and type msconfig).  Choose "Selective Startup", uncheck Load startup group items, hit OK and reboot.  The next time XP loads, it will only start critical Windows processes.  If the drive runs fine after that, then you know you have a software problem or conflict.

~cdogg
    "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
        - A. Einstein

It is the only drive on the channel, and it's a fresh install of Xp, so that rules out s/ware conflict.

Goto
http:\\www.pcpitstop.com

Register
And run a full test
See what kind of measurements and tips you get.

Also turn off all spread spectrum/cpu throttling
in bios.
Turn on IDE prefetch

You said "Xp has the IDE controller listed as ATA".

Well, it should say what mode like "Ultra DMA mode 5" which is equivalent to ATA/100.  Make sure you are viewing the Advanced Settings tab of the IDE Controller properties in Device Manager.

Spread spectrums are off, and IDE prefetch is on. And yes, it does say Ultra DMA mode 5.

Device mgr - Ide ATA/ATAPI controllers
should look something like this.

This is from my pc.

http://server4.uploadit.org/files/051203-dma-nforce2.GI...

The thing is, it doesn't seem too bad in Windows. But when I load a game up (one that I know the loading times of) it takes the same amount of time as running off my old 6 gig ATA/33, which surely isn't right?

I'll try the Pitstop benchmarks, sigh.

Take the pitstop test
Look at cached and uncached drivespeed.

Then compare it with mine.
I use a WD80gb w/8MB cache
http://www.pcpitstop.com/techexpress.asp?id=U4Q6KWYY7FM...

Thanks for the pic. I have 3 IDE controllers listed:

NVIDIA Nforce MCP2 IDE Controller

Primary IDE Channel

Secondary IDE Channel

But that's only because I've been mucking around with drivers. Originally I had what you have, both primary and secondary tabs available in one window, but now I have to click on the Primary or Secondary controllers seperately to adjust modes, either way, the drive was still slow as molasses.

I've tried the drivers from my mobo CD, which reported my drive as SCSI, so I updated to the latest Nforce2 drivers which solved the problem, but didn't solve the speed issue.

Dear oh dear, look at this............

http://www.pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/Disk.asp

We have the same drive, except mine is only 2 meg cache I think...........

You should only have one ATA controller .
And under that of course is the two ide channels.
http://server4.uploadit.org/files/051203-devmgr.GIF

I've been at that stage, exactly the same controller, the ONLY controller, no change in speed :(

But, if you think it might help, I'll uninstall all IDE drivers and reinstall the latest Nforce2 drivers..........

If you tried to post your test result i couldn't see it.

This tells how to get an url id.
http://www.pcpitstop.com/techexpress/howto.asp

When i loaded the 3.13 drivers .
I did it like this.

Add/remove programs
Uninstalled all nvidia stuff.
Device manager removed all nvidia
ide / sound etc.
Did a reboot.
Clicked cancel on everything of new found hw
xp wanted to install.
Ran the setup exe for 3.13
new reboot , all done .

Soz,  http://www.pcpitstop.com/techexpress.asp?id=CCRQKWV0TSM...

Yeah, your instructions are exactly as I did. I'm now back to the one same controller as you.

Effectively the results seem half of what yours were!

Well uncached speed is much faster
measure on fat32 than NTFS.
As for the cached speed the HDD buffer makes a
great improvment .

The reason loading games might be slow
can be that you only have 256MB ram .
512MB would improve things , less usage
of HDD as paged memory.

You could aslo tweak some windows setting to
free up some memory .
Turning off some of the visual stuff.
http://server4.uploadit.org/files/051203-effects.GIF
http://server4.uploadit.org/files/051203-perf1.GIF
http://server4.uploadit.org/files/051203-perf2.GIF

And skip the blizz background picture ,
set the desktop to 16bit instead of 32bit.

That's the tips i can think of right now .

Btw i hope you answered yes to install the nvidia ide
software driver . It increase speed .
 

I knew you'd bring the RAM issue up, lol. 256 was damn fine before I upgraded my machine, and it still doesn't alter the fact that my drive is going the same speed as a ATA/33 drive.

I appreciate your help, you've been great, I think we'll just have to admit defeat on this day. I've really had enough over the past few days with new parts not working, or working incorrectly, poor customer service, I've had it up to the eyeballs. I'm going to buy a Playstation.........

I am still skeptical that the hard drive is the problem.

Have you tried benchmarking your PC with something like SiSoft Sandra or PCMark?  Perhaps the slowness is only occurring due to the game, video card driver, or improper settings within the game.

512MB of RAM, like it or not, is XP's sweet spot amount.  256MB can usually cut it though, and shouldn't really slow down hard drive access that much.  Since you've pretty much got a clean install of XP, it wouldn't hurt to delete the partition, re-create an NTFS one, and reload XP once more if you've got the time (you could use the FAT32-NTFS converter, but it's less efficient).  It's worth a shot.  If your current partition (C:) is larger than 32GB, file access times could significantly improve with NTFS.  Also, using an old partition from a previous OS can cause problems in XP.  I think you mentioned this was a new drive, but just thought I'd throw that out there in case you did an image or file transfer from the old drive.

~cdogg
    "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
        - A. Einstein

Fat32 & ntfs well you decide.
cdogg doesn't mention a thing i always do.
I always try to have fragmention at a minimum,
especially at the system drive.


To obtain this i do the following.
What makes fragmention of data occur.
-Installing programs.
-Temporary internet files & cookies.
-Pagefile that grows.
-Other temporary files ( cd burning etc)

I have four partitions.
First (C:) for windows only
Second (H:) for temp files and pagefile
Third (D:) for installed programs ,games utilities etc.
Fourh (M:) for archiving data , storage , backups.

(The drive letters are what i have i my system)

C: is 10GB witch is enough for windows
and some permanently installed MS$ programs.

Moved the swap file/pagefile to H:
setting it to fixed size (min=max same size)
Move the location of "My Documents" to H:
Made H: \temp_inet
Moved the temporary internet folder to it.
Made H: \temp_cd
Cd/dvd burning software use that space/dir for temp data

 

Have C: drive around 10GB
Have C: drive at the beginning of the drive(fastest part)
Have a (H:) drive TEMP-drive used for pagefile
and other temp files.

Install all other programs utils games to D:\Program Files

Storage place is Fourth (M:) witch in my case now is a external USB 2.0 dive.For holding downloads,archive data,
backups etc.

Then i use a third party defragmenter (i use raxco
Perfect disk 6)
Optimize placement of system files at C:
Defragments offline FAT32's table NTFS's metadata&MFT
and defraggs the paging file so it's one large
file in contigous sectors/clusters .

SYAR

One more thing.
Diasble the indexing service.
Before disabling, uninstall this via the Add/Remove Programs windows components Control Panel applet.

SYAR does bring up a good point about fragmentation, but that's probably not the problem if you just did a clean install of XP on a blank drive.  Otherwise, it may be something you want to consider.

It will not be right anyway to compare your disk
ceche/uncashe speed with my pc.
You run a cpu/memory with 266mhz and i with 400mhz .
It's natural the my read write speed is faster than yours.

cdogg an xp-installation is only clean for a couple of days or so.
My advice is not to have one big partition with
everything in it regardless if it is ntfs or fat32.
I will give more flexibility when it comes
to doing defrags also.
What do you think is the difference in time defragmenting
10GB contra 80GB .
This i think is one reason why people have a great
amount of fragmentation.
They dont bother with it ,because it takes to long.

We always setup servers with a system partition
for windows , a data partition , and a archive partition .
There is no reason not to do this at workstations with large drives also .

And the indexing service "away with that" ,only servers
may have use for it.

I totally agree about partitioning.  You should always keep the system partition under 20GB when possible.  I've never recommended any different.

~cdogg
    "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
        - A. Einstein

Thanks a lot for your help guys, I hear what you're saying about defrag, and I run it twice a day. Yeah, partition size occurred to me too, as Xp is just bouncing around in 70 gig of space, but I solved the problem anyways.

I downloaded a set of generic drivers from Leadtek's website, isolated the IDE driver and installed it, everything seems to be fine now. Went back to PCPitstop and re-marked, my uncached speed has now improved by just over 30%.

I know we went through the whole driver issue, but I didn't expect to find anything other than the latest nForce2 drivers (which we had already ruled out as being useless, at least with my board) at Leadtek. It appears I was wrong, an old revision of the nForce2 IDE driver was what I needed it seems, but who would have thought that?

Anyway, there we go, am up and running now thanks to you guys. You may not have hit the nail on the head, but you were pushing me in the right direction and giving me ideas, so thanks a lot. And have a good Christmas!

Thats good , happy to hear you got it sorted out.
I guess we have covered a lot of tweaks/optimization
possibilities here in this post .Even if you had a driver problem.
To improve disk speed all my advice apply ,
as i have been to several testing processes optimizations
over the time.

Cheers and have a good Christmas to you to.
 

One more update, lol. It appears the drivers were not the problem after all, my results on PCPitstop turned out to be a fluke and I was no better off than before, like my drive wouldn't come out of PIO mode............

I formatted my HDD and started again this morning, this time doing a FULL format. When I first installed the new drive I only quick-formatted it, could that have been the root of my problems?

I reckon so as my computer is flying along as it should be now, brings a tear to my eye................

Glad the format & reinstall worked for you!

~cdogg
    "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
        - A. Einstein

Thats good don't let dumb computers let your head explode
of frustration , always looking for solutions and never
give up is my motto.

Hello all.
I found this forum looking for solutions to the same problem as Hooner. I want to add some info to the problem.

My system is a new installation of WinXP, registered, all drivers installed, NTFS on the disks (Samsung 80GB and 160GB), Athlon xp2800, 1GB RAM. In standard applications I never noticed, that there was a problem with the speed of the ide drives. Then I transfered a 4xdvd-rw into the system. This drive in my other pc with VIA chipset MB runs full speed, 4x was no problem. In the NFORCE2 system it doesn't even run with 2x speed!!
I checked the transfer speed of the hd's with nero:
Old system (VIA): ~12MB/sec
New system (NF2): ~4MB/sec max   !!!
NF2 3 times slower than VIA? Unbelievable!

As Hooner did, I changed drivers, checked settings (all showing UDMA 5 etc as shown above) without effect. Fragmentation is no point, the data are fresh on a clean partitions.
I don't understand this behaviour. Also I'm running out of ideas. I can try the formatting thing, but I can't believe, that this should help.
I really looks like the system runs in DMA2 or whatever, independent of the settings in the driver. Very bad...

Regards, DocMigru

The problem with mine Doc, was that it was a brand new drive, and I made the mistake of only quick formatting it straight out of the box, rather than the tiresome full format. Once I'd given it the full format, it was back up to speed.

So unless you only performed a quick format like I did, I doubt this is your problem.

The HDs are in use for some time, I wonder, what a full format would change? Nevertheless I tried it. Result ... no change. Nero still reports 4MB/sec. :(
To be honest, I expected that.
But here some new info:
I checked my second PC. This one had an VIA chipset KT266 (oooold...), but 12MB/sec in Nero. In the meantime I changed it to an NForce2 (Epox 8rda+, one of the earliest?) with all NVidia drivers. I started Nero and guess ... 4MB/sec. Aaaargh! But this time the OS is Win98, not XP. I removed (!) the NVidia driver and installed the Microsoft standard driver. You won't believe it, Nero shows something around 18MB/sec !!! This is enough for a theoretical 13x-DVDRW!
Unfortunately the same trick on the XP machine doesn't work. Here the MS standard driver was also glued to 4MB/sec. I really hate it. :(
If I find some time I'll take an image of my installation (fallback to avoid this unpleasant xp registration) and check a fresh XP installation without NVidia drivers, to be sure. If this shows fast HD access, what then? NVidia should really do something about their xp drivers!
Regards, DocMigru

Well have any of you installed the nvidia 3.13 chipset driver pack and with the nvidia sw-ide driver ENABLED .

I have that , and no problemo .

syar

First of all, I'll be the first to tell you that the Nvidia NForce2 board is easily superior to the older Via KT266.  Also, there should be no problems with that motherboard and XP.

Since the problem only occurs with the XP system, it's definitely a driver or software issue.  Have you made sure that the version of Nero you have is 100% compatible with XP?  Have you tried to update it if any updates for your version exist on their site?

If that doesn't help, use another benchmark to test the throughput of your HDD, like Sisoft Sandra for example.  I suspect that Nero is not giving you an accurate reading in XP.

Also, it would help to know your exact IDE configuration by listing the devices you have on each channel.

~cdogg
    "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
        - Aristotle

Do you know what? I have no idea why the format worked either, but it did, so I aint complaining!

SYAR2003, yup, I have the 3.13 drivers installed with SW-IDE, and yeah, they work like a charm!

I agree with cdogg, using Nero as a benchmark is not the right way to go about things. If you look above Doc, you will find links to PCPitstop, an excellent benchmark site where you can compare your results with systems just like yours.

You all miss the point - I'm not interested in absolute speed results of the HDs. Of course there are other programs to do that. I simply compare different PCs with the same product and this is ok with Nero. If Nero shows 4MB/sec for PCa and 12MB/sec for PCb its a result. If another benchmark shows 5432MB/sec for PCa - who cares?
I noticed first time, that there is a problem when transferring my DVDRW and wondering why 4xDVDR needs nearly 1hr to finish. Then I activated the speed measurement and found that problem. My games and other programs are running fine on that machine. No noticeable problem there. Only dvd burning, which needs more than 4mb/sec, is a problem. Ok, a minor problem. In most cases I use RWs, which are writable with 2x speed. I can live with it, but its somehow annoying.

You asked for more infos:
I now use again 3.13 drivers (still the 4mb/sec). I had different versions tested during the last days, all with the same result.
IDE1 samsung80GB (Pr) Samsung 160GB (sec) both UDMA5
IDE2 Teac DV50W (Pr) LiteOn CDRW (sec)DMA66 and DMA33 (or whatever it was named).

Is DMA33 equivalent to 4MB/sec? Maybe the driver chooses the speed of the slowest drive on the controller for all of them?
You guys without problems - do you have all four IDE ports in use?

regards, DocMigru

I'm not sure what you are takling about here doc.

I have the DVDRW drive alone on IDE chl 2 .
And it's running in UDMA 2 (as all ATAPI devices)
Nothing else on IDE 2 .
Harddisks on IDE 1.

I ditched all old CDRW reader/writer and DVD reader ,
As my DVDRW drive covers all needs now.

Burning a 4GB movie takes about 20 minutes (on a 2,4x DVD+RW disk).

(of course the reading of it first and making of
the files to be burned has to be added to the time)

1X DVD speed is equal to about 9,2 X cd speed
in the Kilobyte pr. sec. measurement.
1X cd is 150KBps , 1X DVD is 1350KBps ( or 1,3MBps )
So a DVD writer writing on a DVD 4x rated disk
will write at 1,3MegaByte times four ( 5,2MegaByte pr.sec)
And this is not constant in the writing caused by CAV or
other mecanisms .
Just as with CDRW's the write speed varies depending on
where the laser head is aligned on the disk .

So the DMA33 bandwith on the ide channel isn't near
it's top threshold with one DVD writing session going on if
the writing data is being passed from a HDD in ide1 chl to
DVDRW in ide2 chl .

DVD roms and CDroms that use UDMA2 (DMA33) for transfer that is 33MBYTE/s .
In kilobytes that is 33782KBps.
This is the max speed(bandwith) of the channel between the ide controller and the atapi device .
But reading and writing to from cd/dvd is another thing.

A good article :
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/dvdspeed.htm...


syar

 

Doc,
I'm not sure if you are looking for help or to prove a point, but so far you have seemed ungrateful for anything you've received thus far.  Do not forget that this site is a professional one which serves as a forum for peers to help each other.  It is not a helpdesk, so try not to vent your frustration on anyone here.

"If another benchmark shows 5432MB/sec for PCa - who cares?"

You should care, because if another benchmark shows that the HDD is running up to par, then you know the problem is not the HDD physical configuration or an operating system setting.  You can conclude that the problem is either the DVD burner itself or the software that it's using.  To most of us here, that would be an important thing to know.

Secondly, between PCa and PCb there's a huge difference - Win98 vs. WinXP.  You can't rely on one piece of software such as Nero Burning ROM 5 for accurate readings across two completely different OS's.

"Maybe the driver chooses the speed of the slowest drive on the controller..."

And finally, no that shouldn't matter.  WinXP and newer motherboards easily have the ability to run two separate devices at their own rated ATA interface.  In other words, you could have a CDROM drive running at ATA/33 and a hard drive running ATA/100 on the same IDE channel.  That shouldn't be your problem, as long as XP is showing you the two separate modes are properly set on the channel.

At this point, I think you're going to need to suck it up and do some of the following:

1)  Update/flash to the latest BIOS revision on your motherboard
2)  Try benchmarking your hard drive with Sisoft Sandra, PCMark, or PCPitstop
3)  Look into any firmware updates for your DVD burner that might have resolved issues in XP
4)  Try another burning program

~cdogg
    "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
        - Aristotle

Sorry, maybe it's a language problem, but I never intended to attack someone or ignore your hints even if it looks so.

1)  Update/flash to the latest BIOS revision on your motherboard

I can try this some day...

2)  Try benchmarking your hard drive with Sisoft Sandra, PCMark, or PCPitstop

Well, I still don't see a reason for that. Nero showed on my Win98 sytem correct ratings (please forget absolute numbers). Slow with NVidia driver, fast with MS driver. Even the DVDRW was the same. If the IDE driver is faulty on XP and another one not, Nero will show the difference!

3)  Look into any firmware updates for your DVD burner that might have resolved issues in XP

That might be a point and isn't wrong, regarding new DVDRs on the market. But I still see the IDE driver as a problem. Remember: The same hardware can be used in the other pc without any speed problem. But I will look at this.

4)  Try another burning program

Hmmm...

Regards, DocMigru

Doc,
If there's a language barrier which caused any confusion earlier, then I apologize for taking it the wrong way.

2)  One of the biggest things you are overlooking is the Operating System.  Windows 98 and Windows XP are completely different and will give different results in certain tests if the driver or software being used is not optimized for either OS.  My suggestion is that Nero's built-in benchmark does not work well with either XP or one of the drivers you have installed in your system.

In order to rule out Nero as the problem, you must use another piece of software to test the drives.  The numbers don't matter.  Just run a new benchmark test in both the old and new PC with the same DVD burner and hard drives.  The result will show you whether the problem is Nero or not.

In an earlier post, you pointed out that Nero did not work well with an Nvidia driver.  Well that makes sense.  Everything else seems to work fine on your PC except burning.  THE SOFTWARE (NERO) SEEMS TO BE THE LIKELY CAUSE.  Fixing it should be a matter of:

A.  Upgrading or reinstalling Nero in hope that it will eventually work with the drivers in your system

-OR-

B.  Change the burning software to something else

If you change the drivers in your system to work with Nero, then there's a chance you could make performance worse in other areas.  Changing the firmware on the DVD burner would be my only other choice, but that's just me.

~cdogg
    "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
        - Aristotle

Some news:
Latest Bios for my MoBo (Gigabyte 7N400L F6) --> No effect
Latest Firmware for the TEAC DVDRW --> No effect

Then the hint "other burning software". Maybe that's really the point, because I never noticed speed problems in games or other apps. My beloved Nero, extremly good software through years? ;) But ok, I never used it with XP before, at least not with fast DVDRWs. Should it be the cause for slowing down everything to <2x speed ?
Since I'm obviously a Nero addict, I downloaded the demo for Nero version 6.3 (was using 5.5...). Running the same burning test as the last days showed:

...28MB/sec !!!  Aaargl! *heartattack*  X-[


Ok, I'm back to life. Unbelieveable! Enough speed for 16x-DVDRWs! Nero 5 has problems with WinXP and NForce2 chipsets! Not like "doesn't burn anything" but like "burning much slower than possible". Wow!

Thank you guys, case closed, your hints helped. :)

...even if I didn't use other hd benchmarks... ;)

Bye, DocMigru

Yeah, it sounded like the Nero version was the problem.  If you look back on my Jan 7th post, you'll see that I asked:
"Have you made sure that the version of Nero you have is 100% compatible with XP?  Have you tried to update it if any updates for your version exist on their site?"

I'd say that was more than a hint!  

Glad you got it fixed!

~cdogg
    "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
        - Aristotle

I have been reading with interest the problems you have had with Hard drives. I also have a very similar problem, with with my Maxtor 160Gb drive,set as a  primary slave , it will only run in PIO mode. ASUS mother board BIOS ( upgraded)is set for DMA and all my other 3 Devices run in DMA, it has been recognised by XP to be 160GB.( I have installed SP1 and the 137GB fix )
I noticed the problem when read /writing video for the first time , the software said it was to slow to tranfer data,2495Kb/sec transfer rate , yet my primary drive is Ok at 40000 Kb/sec. Play back of video on this drive is very jerky.I have installed /uninstalled IDE/ hardware drivers etc , reformated the drive. But still no joy.
At this rate it will be going back!
Any help gratefully received.

Just as a test, have you tried the drive on an IDE channel all by itself?

Also, there's another option to buy a cheap OEM PCI IDE controller card that does ATA 133 and gives you an additional IDE channel.  Perhaps you could move a secondary drive over to the PCI controller and keep your main 160GB drive on the mobo IDE controller.

I'm also sure Maxtor would have a few suggestions if you contact them.

~cdogg
    "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
        - Aristotle

Cdogg
Thanks for the reply, not yet tried it by its self so I will give it ago.

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