SATA1 Samsung Spinpoint - very slow

pointy shadow · 13 Jan 2007 at 11:32

I have 1 x 250GB Sansung Spinpoint IDE and I have 1 x 250GB Sansung Spinpoint SATA as well as another IDE drive that I have XP installed on.

My problem is that transferring anything to/from the SATA drive is painfully slow.
The drive is a SATA2 drive but I have the jumpers set up to use SATA1.

Could the fact that the SATA drive is a dynamic disk and not logical partition have anything to do with it?

Any help is appreciated as this is really doing my nut in.

Many thanks.

rpstewart · 13 Jan 2007 at 13:31

Have you checked that the drive isn't running in PIO mode? Take a look in device manager, the properties of the SATA controllers should tell you the mode in which each of the attached disks is running.

pointy shadow · 13 Jan 2007 at 15:33

Hi RP

In my device manager under IDE/ATAPI IDE Controllers I have 2 instances of Primary IDE Channel and 2 of Secondary IDE Channel. There is also a "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" and "VIA Bus Master IDE Controller" but there is no option or display of any PIO/DMA settings.

My 1st IDE slot has 2 HDs connected and the 2nd IDE slot has 2 DVD drives connected.

In the 2nd Primary IDE channel entry it says PIO Mode but wont let me change it to DMA (only use DMA if availlable which is selected). The 1st Primary IDE channel entry says that both devices are running in DMA mode.

There is no mention of any SCSI controllers in the "IDE/ATAPI IDE Controllers" part of device manager but it is further down the screen but there is no mention of PIO/DMA settings in the options once I double click that.

Any help is appreciated.

pointy shadow · 14 Jan 2007 at 00:22

Anyone else got any ideas?

I tried copying over a 1.8GB file to the SATA drive and it is taking 10 minutes!

Help!

MadMatty · 14 Jan 2007 at 00:46

looks like its running in ide mode, have you tried installing sata drivers ?

pointy shadow · 14 Jan 2007 at 12:01

I have deleted the relevant registry entries for PIO/DMA but when XP rebooted the bloody thing still stays in PIO mode.

In the BIOS it says that it is set to DMA mode though.

Anyone have any ideas? Would a more modern atapi.sys help?

rpstewart · 14 Jan 2007 at 12:12

From your earlier description it sounds like it's your DVD drive which is in PIO mode, not the HDD.

Can you run HDTach against each of your hard disks and post the traces here.

pointy shadow · 14 Jan 2007 at 19:13

Its defo my SATA drive thats in PIO mode.

Will try that program and post the results.

pointy shadow · 14 Jan 2007 at 19:24

On the problem drive the results are as follows:

Random Access: 114.4ms
CPU Utilization: 50%
Average Read 3.5mb/s

Heres the results for one of my other IDE drives that is working OK.

Random Access: 13.3ms
CPU Utilization: 5%
Average Read 49.4mb/s

I think I will try and uninstall Alcohol/Demon Tools and delete the controller to see if that works as I have tried everything that I can think of.

rpstewart · 14 Jan 2007 at 19:31

Yeah, that disk is in PIO mode - the CPU usage is a dead giveaway.

Have you checked the BIOS to make sure it's not limited in there?

pointy shadow · 14 Jan 2007 at 22:43

rpstewart said:
Yeah, that disk is in PIO mode - the CPU usage is a dead giveaway.

Have you checked the BIOS to make sure it's not limited in there?

The BIOS says that it is DMA mode.

There is an option to select PIO mode (Auto,0,1,2,3 or 4) and its set to 0.

I will try and remove Alcohol/Demon tomorrow and delete the channel to see if that forces it to use DMA.

Anything else you would advise that I should try?

rpstewart · 15 Jan 2007 at 08:58

pointy shadow said:
There is an option to select PIO mode (Auto,0,1,2,3 or 4) and its set to 0.

There's your problem. Set that to Auto and everything should be better.

pointy shadow · 17 Jan 2007 at 20:24

I tried that but still no joy.

Ended up formatting and all is OK now

Many thanks for your help