clicks and pops on new hard drive's music files

by frankzxcv Apr 25, 2004 2:33PM PDT

I just bought a new 120 gig seagate harddrive, (it is the "E:" drive on my machine); and I transferred bunch of .wav and .mp3 files to it from C: drive. when I play the files back, it's like I'm back in LP record land. clicks and pops all over. (the files sound fine when played off the c: drive.) anyone have any idea what is causing this? is this a defective drive?

I tried xferring files one at a time, no help - fj

Discussion is locked

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my system info

by frankzxcv Apr 25, 2004 2:36PM PDT

this an 1800 AMD chip system on an MSI mobo running windows 2000. the C: drive is a 30 gb WD drive. the 120 gb e: drive in question is on the same cable as the C:, cable select jumpers, so it's the primary slave. has a soundblaster live card, never had any problem with it before. --fj

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new wrinkle

by frankzxcv Apr 25, 2004 2:59PM PDT

well these clicks and pops are all happening at the same time the "hard drive read" light flashes.

is this a dead drive? I just bought it from tiger direct. --fj

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Re:new wrinkle

by JMarchi Apr 25, 2004 10:42PM PDT

Double click the controller for drive in Device Manager. See if it shows under Advanced settings that it is using Ultra DMA 5. If you forget to change the BIOS and set it to Auto for a new drive it will work, but it will not work at the optimal speed.

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what is PIO mode?

by frankzxcv Apr 26, 2004 6:44AM PDT

in device manager, under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers,
clicking on properties/ advanced I see

the c: drive is in ultra DMA mode BUT

for the new troublesome drive,

the transfer mode says "DMA if available"
but the "current transfer mode" says PIO Mode.

-- what the heck is that?
??? thanks for your help!

(I think everything was set to auto in the BIOS but I can check again)

--fj

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Re:Re:new wrinkle

by frankzxcv Apr 26, 2004 8:31AM PDT

seagate support is sending me some diagnostics-- they think it's not the drive, they've never heard of this before. will try a differnt cable! - fj

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Re:clicks and pops on new hard drive's music files

by jconner Apr 26, 2004 9:07AM PDT

One thing to check is that you don't have an IRQ conflict. Device manager, system, view by resource connection. It could be each disk access is causing an interrupt on the same address as the sound card. Just my thought but I tend to make hard drives masters on each IDE and let the less used devices be secondary.

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solved

by frankzxcv Apr 26, 2004 9:11AM PDT

well I put the drive on the secondary IDE cable and all is fixed. fyi PIO mode is a really slow mode. . . probably caused by faulty cable. time to get to microcenter! - fj

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Re:solved

by JMarchi Apr 26, 2004 11:41PM PDT

Actually the PIO mode is usually caused by not going into the BIOS and setting the drive to AUTO when you add a new drive to a system. Are you sure you did this when it was plugged into the other connector?

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i did not

by frankzxcv Apr 27, 2004 9:32AM PDT

hmm, no i didn't, but i seem to recall it was set to that anyway when i looked-- is that not the default? next restart I'll give it a look! thanks - if that's the fix you'll save me buying a new cable --fj

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it seems to be the cable

by frankzxcv Apr 27, 2004 11:53AM PDT

well I set eveyrhting to auto in the bios and it still came up in PIO mode-- i think it's the cable. I hope it's not anything on the mobo! - -fj

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Re:clicks and pops on new hard drive's music files

by orubassman777 Apr 26, 2004 11:04PM PDT

Try buying a new UDMA cable. They're usually not that expensive. Search http://www.pricewatch.com for some.

clicks and pops on new hard drive's music files

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