Slow HDD?

celliott · 3 Sep 2006 at 15:12

Sisters PC has been quite slow for a while so I decided to run some tests on it.

Intel Celeron (Tualatin) 1.1GHz
256MB PC133 SDRAM CAS3
DFI Via Motherboard
Maxtor 40GB 5400RPM

Does this seem very low to you, or is this ok since its quite an old system? Im sure this cant be right, and don't know whats causing this.

The transfer mode for Primary IDE in device manager is "Multi-Word DMA Mode 2"

rpstewart · 3 Sep 2006 at 15:21

To be honest that's not an unexpected speed for that drive. DMA Mode 2 is probably all that it'll support which will limit the transfer rate but it's the spindle speed that's the real bottlneck of the drive. At 5400 rpm the amount of data going under the disk heads isn't that great so the drive just can't get data off the drive all that quickly.

celliott · 3 Sep 2006 at 15:33

hmm ok. I wasn't sure as the drive is less than a year old, suppose its no comparison to my 200MB/s+ SATAII drive

Justintime · 3 Sep 2006 at 16:46

16.7 MB/s is the max of multiword mode 2 if i remember right, prolly limited by your chipset, is the Celeron on a slotket on a older slot 1 board? or is the chipset a ATA33 only chipset, have you tried the Via 4in1 drivers?

celliott · 3 Sep 2006 at 16:50

Its a socket 370 mobo, in the bios I can set PIO Mode 1-4 or DMA Mode: Auto, both are set to auto currently. Yep thats with the 4 in 1 drivers installed.