Re: Faulty Hard Drive?

Allan wrote:
Not really related to this newsgroup but |have always found people really helpful and knowledgable here.

Currently Have:-

Vista Business
Asus P5B Deluxe
Intel CPU Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz
Asus Extreme 7600GS Silent 256MB DDR2
250GB Seagate Barracuda SATA II 300 7200rpm 16MB cache
160GB Maxtor 6Y160M0 ATA Device Hard drive
** Geil Value DDR2 2.0GB PC6400 Dual Channel memory kit (2 x 1GB) 800MHz
(5-5-5-15) +Aluminium heat spreader, ATI Crossfire Ceritified
NON Raid

The two hard drives are partitioned as C/D/E/F on Seagate and G/H on Maxtor
When transferring data from one hard drive to another (eg F to H) it has now practically come to a sudden halt.
Usually it will transfer 1 GB in less than a minute.....now it is taking over an hour.

If I transfer data on the same hard drive (Seagate) eg D to E that will transfer quickly.
The problem all of a sudden seems to lie with the secondary drive (Maxtor).

Is it on the way out or can anyone suggest anything that might have changed making it run so so slow or any tests that i can run?

Many thanks


The best you could do, is to test with the manufacturer's diagnostic.
Maxtor was acquired by Seagate, so the Seagate web site is where you'd
look for tools.

The problem is going to be, whether the test program can work with the
JMB363 or not, when testing an IDE drive.

I might be tempted to move the Maxtor IDE drive, to another computer,
and plug the drive into a Southbridge based IDE connector. Take the
floppy or CD with the disk drive test program on it, and use it to
boot that computer and run the test.

If the test passes, then you might suspect the JMB363 or whatever
driver it is using. You could check for another version of driver,
and the Jmicron.com web site is another place to look for such a
driver.

ftp://driver.jmicron.com.tw/jmb36x
ftp://driver.jmicron.com.tw/jmb36x/Win2k_xp_Vista/JMB36X_WinDrv_WHQL_R1.17.21.zip

I don't know for certain, why it would be running slow. There are
more than one possible cause.

On WinXP at least, there is a "feature" where the interface drops down
to PIO (polled input output) mode, instead of using DMA mode, if
there are CRC errors. If the interface is flaky for some reason,
the OS can reduce the transfer rate, in an attempt to make the
transfers error free.

Try running HDTach on the Maxtor drive. If the graph is a flat line
and limited to about 4MB/sec, then you know you're in PIO mode. If
a higher DMA mode was being used, the graph would be tilted, and
achieve 60MB/sec near the beginning of the disk, and 40MB/sec
near the end of the disk. A flat horizontal line in HDTach, tells
you the transfers are interface/cable limited.

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

For cables, the cable you use, should have 80 wires, and use 40 pin
connectors. The 80 wire cable contains 40 ground wires, and those
improve the signal quality. With the older, 40 wire cable, the
software driver would not allow the higher ultraDMA transfer rates
to be used.

I don't know whether Vista has the same response to CRC errors
and interface speed, or not.

Another way to solve the problem, would be to get an adapter
dongle, to convert the Maxtor IDE interface to SATA, then connect
the drive to the Intel Southbridge. In the past, Intel has not
approved of such devices, but they have been known to work. The
purpose of using one of these, is so you can avoid the JMB363
entirely.

"SYBA SD-SATA-IDE SATA/IDE Adapter, Connect IDE Devices to SATA Port on Motherboard - Retail"
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822998001

Paul



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