Re: Slow booting harddrive

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt george41407@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:31:06 -0500, Frank McCoy <mccoyf@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt george41407@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I have an 8 gig harddrive that I connected as Master to my second IDE
cable. This is then the 3rd drive on my system. I installed that
drive to be a backup and only used temporarily. I unplugged my CD
drive to avoid conflicts.

When I boot up, the computer hangs for well over a minute when it gets
to that drive. Then it finally boots. The drive checks out fine when
I scandisk it, and it works fine once I'm booted. The drive contains
SMART on it, and it says "disabled", which I have disabled in Bios.
Bur enabling it does not prevent the slow booting.

For the heck of it, I took a 40 gig drive which FDISK only allows me
to format to 8 gigs (Windows 98se). I placed that drive on the same
cable and it boots right up without any hanging.

FDISK should have no problems handling up to 64 gigabytes.
Perhaps you have an older/out-of-date version:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/263044

Both are set as MASTER since they are the only drive on that IDE
cable.

Anyone have any idea why this happens?

(I did re-FDISK and re-format it on this same computer).

Try using a later version of FDISK.

The computer is a PIII 700mhz homebuilt, with 320megs ram and an Intel
CPU. The AMI bios is dated 1999.

This drive is a Western Digital Caviar 28400
Model - AC28400-00RT

One other thing I should mention is that this slowness is booting into
DOS (which I believe is called post-boot or something like that. This
is not Windows 98 causing the problem. I always boot to dos because I
run a dos database for my address/phone number list, and often boot to
dos to retrieve a phone number. When I want to start windows, I just
type win. The computer reads the amount of memory, then reads my
regular hard drives without problem. When it gets to this 3rd drive,
it hangs and hangs, and the rest of the booting (to dos) is slow.
Once loaded, both dos and windows works fine.

You might try Spinrite, if you can get a copy.
The reason DOS and Windows work fine, is that you (obviously) aren't
accessing that drive for much in the way of files.

Thanks for the reply.
I'll have to see if I can get Spinrite
I have Partition Magic 8.0 and it shows everything is fine.

I dont access that drive for programs. That is just for backups.
I copied 4 entire partitions to it without any problems.
Last night I cut this problem drive into two partitions (with
Partition Magic), to see if that would change anything. It still
boots slow. There is an unused 7.8 meg segment on that drive, but one
of my other drives has that too. I have WinME and Fdisk from that. I
also have a copy of XP. I dont know if XP has Fdisk or not, I dont
really use XP. I much prefer Win98 or WinME. and this is a slower
700mhz computer too.

Like I said, another drive connected to that same cable (with this
problem one removed), boots fast and has no trouble. I wonder if that
SMART has anything to do with it. The boot is slow with SMART
disabled or enabled. (in bios) I think my bios is from 1999. I'd have
to reboot to know for sure. I have never known any way to see it from
Windows.

A thought just occurred to me; and it makes a *huge* difference in
speed, depending on the drive.

Do you have DMA enabled on that drive (or adapter)?
Also, do you have the latest drivers for your motherboard chipset for
Windows 98, since you say that's what you have.

I know running Via's 4-in-1 driver (on mobos with a Via chipset), and
enabling DMA modes makes a *heck* of a big difference in speed ...
especially if you can run ULTRA DMA modes.

Also, make sure DMA is enabled in the BIOS, as well.
Sometimes the default power-up mode os OFF or DISABLED.

DMA can make a HUGE difference in drive access speeds; especially in
older drives without modern buffering and large internal memories.

Start => Control Panel => System => Hardware
Not sure in 98 if you checked the drive in particular, or the drive
controller; but they're right next to each other.

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