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two western digital h/r's

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7 replies

by terryd

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one is set for master and one set for slave, but have a lag time and a delay, running a p 400 on a sis630 m/b, any way to get rid of the delay. is it a board problem or do i need a disk managerand if so is there a good one out there od do i have to use westerns?

7 replies

by sonnguyen

What are the size and the speeds in rpm of these two drives?
You may try to have the faster one as master and the slower one as slave.
May try also with the 80 conductors IDE cable instead of the normal 40.
You should not use any overlay program as they tend to give problem later. just use normal fdisk tool and make sure the drives as well as the IDE controller are set correctly in the BIOS

by thechas

Where do you see the delay, and what version of Windows are you running?
Also, how much RAM is installed, and how much free space is on the C: drive?

With a Pentium 400 (PII?), and an SiS630 based motherboard, I assume that you have at best UDMA33 IDE support.

You can improve drive speed significantly if these are newer drives that support ATA 66 or 100 by installing a PCI IDE controller card.
Depending on your drives, you may boost drive data transfer rates by a factor of 3 for around $30.

There are numerous other problems that may cause a slowdown, including running in "compatability mode"
(Check on the performance tab of system properties.)

Sometimes, just installing the latest IDE drivers for the chipset will boost performance.

As will cleaning out your C:\Windows\Temp and internat cache files.

Another good maintenence procedure is to boot into safe mode, and run scandisk and defrag.

As to RAM, for W98 and Me, 128MB to 384MB is recommended.
For W2K and XP,256MB up to what the motherboard can hold.

Free hard drive space, I like to keep 1 - 2 GB of free space on the C: drive if the swap / virtual memory file is on the C: drive.

Chas

by alquinones

I have had the very same problem with WD HD in machines with older BIOS. 1) Make sure you have a current BIOS for your MB. 2) Do not use any disk management software, this is a thing of the past. 3) Make sure you are using the faster drive as your master. It will help speed up the boot cycle. 4) Make sure you have a new IDE cable 40 or 80 whatever your MB will support. Do not use an old or used cable unless you know for sure it is a good one. And last, make sure the jumpers for the HD are set correctly (double check) & BIOS are showing the HD in the SETUP area of the BIOS.

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