Slow hard drive [SOLVED]

Riqa

I just got a second hard drive and for some reason transferring files to it seems to takes more time then it really should plus the rest of the slowing the entire computer down to the point where even web browsing is impossible to do and the mouse lags if you move it. Download something from the Internet or even opening a video file or something also caused things to lag.

Right now I have it setup where the original drive (Samsung) is set as the master while the new drive (Seagate) is a slave, both are IDE. I've had never installed a hard drive before but it didn't seem to be too much trouble other then having to unplug the floppy drive since the power supply was not long enough.

I know while having both drives on the same cable isn't ideal, I wouldn't think it would cause things to slow and lag like this but I'm not really sure. So I was just wondering if anyone had any idea as to why its slow and/or suggestions for helping to speed things up, at the very least stop the whole computer from lagging.

robaal

Check if the IDE controller (or was it in drive properties?) is set to use DMA in device manager.

Long PATA cables, or rounded ones might also, theoretically, cause lower transfer rates though the lagging thing really sounds like DMA is disabled.

Riqa

robaal wrote:

Check if the IDE controller (or was it in drive properties?) is set to use DMA in device manager.

Long PATA cables, or rounded ones might also, theoretically, cause lower transfer rates though the lagging thing really sounds like DMA is disabled.

Under the Primary IDE Channel settings for Device 1 (Slave) the transfer mode is set to "DMA if available" but the current transfer mode is set to PIO Mode, the Device 0 (Master) is currently in DMA. Is there some way to force the slave to use DMA? None of my fidling with it was able to get the settings switched to DMA instead of PIO.

Riqa

Ok, I fixed it. Seems BIOS didnt have it set right or something; once I changed that Windows automatically turned DMA on. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.