Member Avatar for moospy

Hello, i am currently running windows xp pro, and have 2 hardrives main (hitachi 160gb) for system and programmes and a secondary (Maxtor 250gb) for my documents etc. i have found that with the secondary hd plugged in then the boot time for my computer is considerably slower than if i just had my main hd in. i have tried another smaller hd in as my secondary and the problem does not occur. i have run speedtests on both hds and my main is running fine and is up to speed but my secondary is reading and writing at about 2mbs which well below the expected speed at which is should be running, can anyone help me sorta out this problem.

thanks

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by khess

Dani AI

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As noted, start by confirming the basic box-level setup and that the BIOS sees the drive. Beyond that, do not delay: copy any irreplaceable files off the Maxtor immediately. A sustained ~2 MB/s transfer rate plus boot delays strongly suggests either a driver fallback or a failing drive — treat the data as at risk.

Check whether Windows has fallen back to PIO (very slow) instead of DMA:
open Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers -> double-click the Primary/Secondary IDE Channel -> Advanced Settings and look at the Current Transfer Mode for the device. If it shows PIO, right‑click the IDE channel, choose Uninstall, then reboot so Windows redetects it and attempts to restore DMA. Also try the drive on a different IDE cable or port (use an 80‑conductor cable for UDMA modes) to rule out a bad ribbon cable.

Run diagnostics and surface checks next. Use the Maxtor/Seagate diagnostic utility (SeaTools/PowerMax) and run short and extended tests. Check SMART attributes (reallocated sector count, pending sectors). From Windows, run chkdsk /r on the drive to find/repair bad clusters. If SMART or the extended test report problems, the drive is failing and should be replaced.

Hardware checks to isolate the fault: test the Maxtor as the only drive in another machine or in a USB/SATA adapter to see if speeds remain low. Swap the Molex power lead (a weak power rail can cause slow spin-up). Updating the motherboard chipset/IDE drivers and the drive firmware can help in some cases, but they are secondary — only after backing up and confirming diagnostics.

If diagnostics are clean but the problem persists, keep data backed up and consider replacing the drive: slow sustained throughput and boot delays are classic signs that a drive is approaching failure.

Member Avatar for khess

This is hard to illustrate in just words but here goes:

In your computer you have two drive controllers IDE0 and IDE1 probably.
On IDE0, put your main drive and a CD/DVD ROM drive...make sure they are jumpered as master and slave.
On IDE1, install your secondary drive and any other secondary CD/DVD drives. Jumper them to be master and slave. Hard drives should almost always be master unless you have some other reason for not doing so.
On your first boot, go into Setup by pressing F1, F10, or DEL when you see the message come on screen.
Make sure that all drives are detected.
Sometimes you can enter the drive geometry (cylinders, heads, sectors). If you have an option for that, enter them for each drive. If not, then your BIOS will detect them automatically.
Also, if the secondary drive persists in slowing down your system, you should virus scan the entire thing to see if that is a problem.
Finally, turn off indexing on that drive by right clicking My Computer, Manage, Services, Indexing Service. Make the necessary changes there and reboot.

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