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General discussion

SATA Speed dropping problem, help!

Apr 24, 2005 7:19AM PDT

When i bought my system (Gateway P4, 3.0GHz non-RAID)
i was getting 120MB as throughtput according to HdTach. This has been slowly dropping in speed (response time).
When i got the system, before i could get my finger off the
mouse, whatever i had clicked on was on-screen and ready to go. Now, when i click on the same thing, i will get the hourglass icon and it will spin 2/3 times before i see anything on-screen.

The speed reduction is getting worse. I started out with 120 MB (via HdTach), now its down to 54.7MB.
Looking at my config, i see that Intel(R) 82801EB Ultra ATA Storage Controllers is being used instead of
something called SATA.

I've tried a clean re-install of winxp (format c:, etc) with
no help.
At my wits end!

Looking for any/all suggestions,

thank you for replying,
savagcl

Discussion is locked

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ZONES.
Apr 24, 2005 7:21AM PDT

What you need to research are hard disks and zones. As you fill the drive, the speed drops.

Bob

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Bob
Apr 24, 2005 11:52AM PDT

Dont see my reply, So,

I dont have that much new stuff added to my HD's since purchase of system, surely not enough to justify a 2/3 drop in speed....

Under control panel>system>hardware>device manager>
disk drives both drives are listed as being IDE drives. Plus i'm not sure why an Ultra ATA storage controller is being used (instead of a SATA controller).
Looking at the IDE ATA\Atapi properties I see in driver
details: Windows\system32\drivers\atapi.sys, pciide.sys
and pciidex.sys....

Stillat wits end.
savagcl

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Yes. It can be dramatic.
Apr 24, 2005 12:03PM PDT

Also, if you ever allow a microsoft driver to be installed...

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?????
Apr 25, 2005 10:36AM PDT

How does this help me solve my SATA problem?

savagcl

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2 things.
Apr 25, 2005 10:47AM PDT

1. If you've researched how drives work, you now know that hard disk speed does diminish as the drive fills.

2. The other item is that XP has a bug in the DMA area. You set the drive controller to PIO, OK it then go back in and set it to DMA and OK it again. No reboot is needed.

Try again.

Bob

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Disk Storage
Apr 26, 2005 11:33AM PDT

You might want to partition your drive, and use another drive to store your programs on. Use as little space as needed to run the c:. My SATA RAID runs exceptionally fast by setting my drives to JBOD. See if that helps you.