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hard drive issues

frayfray Registered User regular
edited August 2008 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
Hoping someone might be able to help me out with this. Basically I upgraded my computer a few weeks ago, including replacing my old 120gb hard drive with a new 320gb one, both SATA. I formatted and partitioned the new hd and it works fine. Then I plugged the old hd in because although I backed up all the essential stuff that was on it, there were some things I couldn't be bothered to back up that I wanted to copy to the new hd. I don't really understand how this stuff works but I was hoping as the old one was already formatted and everything I wouldn't need to format it again, since I don't want to lose the data?

Anyway with both drives in my lovely shiny new pc everything seems to work and it recognises them both, the one major problem is that it runs vvvveeeerrrrry sssslllllooooowwwwlllllly. Like, to the point where it takes about 15 minutes to even boot up.

So what's going on here? Was I an idiot to even attempt this? Is it not possible to plug a hd that already has data on it into a computer and retrieve the data, without having to format it etc, or is there some other problem? Thanks a lot.

"I told you," said Ford. "Eddies in the space-time continuum."
"And this is his sofa, is it?" said Arthur.
fray on

Posts

  • mrbernzmrbernz Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    If you unplug the extra drive does the speed go back to normal? Secondly do you have your bios set to boot off of the new drive? It maybe slower because it's attempting to boot off of the old first. Which OS do you have?

    mrbernz on
  • yotesyotes Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    I have no idea if this is still an issue with SATA drives, but if it were 2003 I would say this sounds like your new one is running in PIO mode instead of UDMA. If that's the case, you should be able to change that in the device manager.

    yotes on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • 1ddqd1ddqd Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Before you do anything, just disconnect it and boot with only the 320gb drive, then tell us if it runs faster that way. If it does, it sounds like PIO mode. If it doesn't make a difference, it's probably something in your build.

    1ddqd on
  • frayfray Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Well yeah I did do that, I guess I should have explained that in the OP. I removed the old 120gb drive and now it runs fine again with just the new 320gb one. And to the question about which OS, I'm running Windows XP Home, fully updated and everything. And I'm pretty sure it's set to boot off the new drive.

    I was thinking maybe the two drives could be conflicting because they both have a partition named C: on them, but it listed the two partitions on the old drive as F: and G:, I don't know, could that still be an issue? The data that I want is mostly on the second partition on the old drive, so if neccessary I could delete the first, which was the previous C: drive.

    Also how would I go about checking the PIO/UDMA thing? I can't seem to see that option anywhere in the device manager, but maybe I'm just being retarded.

    fray on
    "I told you," said Ford. "Eddies in the space-time continuum."
    "And this is his sofa, is it?" said Arthur.
  • 1ddqd1ddqd Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    Hmm...
    For repeated DMA errors. Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more that six DMA transfer timeouts occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use only PIO mode on that device.

    In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the device.

    Windows XP downgrades the Ultra DMA transfer mode after receiving more than six CRC errors. Whenever possible, the operating system will step down one UDMA mode at a time (from UDMA mode 4 to UDMA mode 3, and so on).
    From here.

    So, if the drive has multiple read errors, you cannot change it. Also, the drive letter is assigned by windows, not hardwired in. The fact that you have a "C:" partition doesn't matter, it only matters if the PC is trying to load windows from the old drive (since I presume you haven't deleted it).

    2 things. You can put a SATA to USB adapter on the drive and try transferring the files that way, or just try the transfer as is and spend a day dealing with it.

    1ddqd on
  • frayfray Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    I'll probably try the adapter and see if that works, thanks, that's helpful.

    fray on
    "I told you," said Ford. "Eddies in the space-time continuum."
    "And this is his sofa, is it?" said Arthur.
  • 1ddqd1ddqd Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    I've used it before on dying drives; the only time you might get bad transfer times is if the disk is actually dying, and even then, it *should* copy everything. However, I'd suggest copying in Safe mode to speed up the process regardless. Now, if it's completely dead, you could send it to a data recovery service. Level 1 at Geek Squad is $250, which is around what most places charge. Level 2? Over $600. Level 3, hah, don't bother ($1200+)

    1ddqd on
  • yotesyotes Registered User regular
    edited August 2008
    1ddqd wrote: »
    I've used it before on dying drives; the only time you might get bad transfer times is if the disk is actually dying, and even then, it *should* copy everything. However, I'd suggest copying in Safe mode to speed up the process regardless.

    If the drive were to be silently dying, you would see it the Event Viewer System Log (Start/Run, eventvwr.msc), warnings would be popping there.

    yotes on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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