HDD drive setting

[Testing]

I've added a new HDD to the system but it has not been given a drive label.

Device manager read the HDD after first O/S boot, and sees properly what it is. It also states the drive is working properly and drivers are most recent.

Yet I cannot see or access the drive (my computer, dos etc).


Physically the connections are well. The HDD has no jumpers and is running off the slave connection of the cable. Bios however, states that group 2 is CD drives, group 3 is HDD drives and group 4 is networking drives. It also states that the main HDD is on the the third controller, on it's own, while the new HDD is a slave to the second controller where the master is the CD drive.

Oddly enough, the group 3 HDD priority lists the new HDD as main, and the original HDD as secondary, yet the computer boots straight off the main(original) HDD without a hitch.

The main HDD is also paritioned (safety recovery partition) so effectively it's using C: and D:.

E: is for the CD. F,G,H,I are removable usb storage and J: is a virtual CD drive.

I tried to take a stab at command line with "K:" but invalid.

 

[niko084]

You still have DOS?!?!?! Or do you mean a command line?

If you are on XP, you need to assign the drive a letter in disk management.

 

[Wile E]

Since it's already formatted, perhaps it's actually a bios issue on your mobo. Try updating to the latest? Also, what are the rest of your system specs?

 

[Athlon2K15]

go to start>control panel>performance&maintenance>administrative tools>computer managment>disk management>click on your disk and initialize it and then create your partition

 

[Testing]

Yes, I figured it would have set it a volume/label even before partition or format.

I'm looking into that right now.

I'm also supposed to match the file system to the main (sata) which is NT not FAT

 

[niko084]

FAT = Exactly that *Fat and Slow*

FAT32 is outdated... NTFS is far better.

 

[Testing]

Argh, sorry for the time wasted. I was expecting the original HD to be "Disk 0" and not "Disk 1." It was asking me to initialize Disk 0 and I got worried it was the wrong one.





Looks good so far!

 

[niko084]

lol I love those simple overlooks. Glad its working.

 

[Testing]

It's formatted, partitioned and working.

The drive itself is only 5300 RPM where as the main is 7200.

I have moved the PFile to it and off of the C:. I noticed that when do anything in XP, the drive seems to be active.

Isn't the PF only supposed to really be accessed when physical ram gets low?
I know some games are poorly coded, and seem to overuse the PFile, but something as simple as clicking on the start menu? The computer seems to respond a tad slower.

I looked around and my primary IDE is unused by either of the drives. They are both on secondary IDE where both drives are in DMA, Ultra 2 mode.

Is this correct, or do I need to move them around in BIOS for better performance?


EDIT: The BIOS says the main HD is ultra 5, but still listed as 2 in XP.

 

[Steevo]

It is possible that the drive has experienced CRC errors, XP will automatically slow down the transfer rate to try to overcome errors.

Or do you have a 80 wire cable that you are using to connect the drive?

 

[Testing]

Well the main HD is SATA, but this one is using the 40(or is it 80) pin slave connector shared with the CDRom which is using the master connector.

The drive shouldn't be bad. It's not extremely slow, and I don't notice much in the way of gaming performance.

I just wonder if I have it setup backwards. Or if I should put windows on the 5300 drive and the PFile on the 7200, or change BIOS.

 

[Testing]

I ran Everest and some tests with HDtach:

Everest reports:

The original HD is the ST3160812AS
The recently installed one is the Maxtor

ST3160812AS (149 GB, 7200 RPM, IDE)
Maxtor 2F040L0 (40 GB, 5400 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)


ST3160812AS

ATA Device Properties
Model ID ST3160812AS
Serial Number 5LS6BCB7
Revision 3.AHL
Parameters 310101 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector
LBA Sectors 312581808
Buffer 8 MB
Multiple Sectors 16
ECC Bytes 4
Max. PIO Transfer Mode PIO 4
Max. UDMA Transfer Mode UDMA 5 (ATA-100)
Active UDMA Transfer Mode UDMA 5 (ATA-100)
Unformatted Capacity 152628 MB

* I am quite content with the performance of this HD. It has an average read of 131/150 max.

However the Maxtor seems to capable of more, but it's being limited.


Maxtor 2F040L0


ATA Device Properties
Model ID Maxtor 2F040L0
Serial Number F1F3K4DE
Revision VAM51JJ0
Parameters 77505 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector
LBA Sectors 78125000
Buffer 2 MB (Dual Ported, Read Ahead)
Multiple Sectors 16
ECC Bytes 57
Max. PIO Transfer Mode PIO 4
Max. UDMA Transfer Mode UDMA 6 (ATA-133)
Active UDMA Transfer Mode UDMA 2 (ATA-33)
Unformatted Capacity 38147 MB




I've heard of some manufacturer programs that allow you to modify the 'active' transfer rate, but I have not found any with Maxtor.


Even if ATA 150 was the max for this board I will still like to punch the Maxtor up to UDMA 5.
And yes, both drives have at least 96% stability and performance results.

Unforunatley the BIOS will not allow me to modify it. The extra drive is great in that it's entirely unfragged, and could serve as a good static Pfile dedication drive. However, at ATA/33(UDMA2) I get better results from having the PFile on the UDMA5 drive.