Seagate 7200.10 Speed Problem

[Retorted]

Having already bought and used a 400GB Seagate 7200.10 for a while now, I recently decided to get another for extra storage.

I've been using the new disk to store captured video for editing. I had some problems capturing as I was getting some recorder errors which I've never had before, however I put this down to the camera I was using and that perhaps I needed to clean the heads. It was only when I came to playback the video files that I realised how choppy they were and when I keep them playing for less than half a minute the system usually resets itself.

I ran HD Tach and got the following results...



The blue line is my current disk while the red is the new Seagate. Also notice that the new disk is using 26% CPU while the other just 2%.

Any ideas what the cause of this could be? Is the drive faulty?

Thanks in advance, specs below

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Gigabyte DS3
Intel Core 2 Duo 6400
2GB Corsair XMS2-6400
Seagate 7200.10 400GB x 2
Winfast 7900GS
XP Home SP2
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[Retorted]

The low speed and high CPU suggest that the new disk is running in PIO mode rather than UDMA. Take a look in the properties of the appropriate SATA (I assume it's SATA?) controller in Disk Management, there should be something in there which a) indicates which mode the drive is running in and b) gives you the option to change it.

Thanks for the quick replies. Yep it's SATA. I looked in the controller settings and neither of the drives appear to be running in PIO mode.

I plugged the drive into a different SATA channel just in case but this made no difference. I've also dabbled with some settings in the BIOS but to no avail. Is there anything else I can do?

 

[Retorted]

Can you post some screenshots of the SATA controller settings, the drive is definitely running in PIO mode it's just a case of trying to see why.

Is there anything noted in the Event Viewer?

You're absolutely right. It was running in PIO mode - and I was being an idiot

Managed to solve the problem by simply uninstalling the offending channel then rebooting. Magic. All working good and proper now.

Spot on. Thanks for that