Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Right, thought this was interesting....

I have, for quite a while, used a big slave drive fitted to the slave slot of the IDE1 cable in my PC to store all my music, video's, pic's etc - stuff I don't wanna lose if I have to reformat the PC.

Music seems to play fine from it, but big filesize files have always stuttered a little. I stopped ripping at variable bit rates (typical album could be as much as 500mb!) cos it was stuttering playing them back. MP3 @ 320kbps is pretty much fine tho.....

But video has never been good - a 700mb AVI is just about okay, but not great, but a DVD file rip is unwatchable, same with 1.5/2gb AVI rips.....

So, I also have an external drive connected by USB2, which I use to back up the slave drive (incase of drive failure) and I just played back some of the BIG video files from this drive - it was flawless!

I know USB2 is fast, but surely IDE connected drives should be quicker? or at least AS quick! It's also FAR faster when transferring files from the primary IDE drive to the USB2 drive than from the primary IDE drive to the slave IDE drive....

So how can I make my IDE drive transfer and read times quicker? My external HDD is only 80gb and I only have 6gb left on it, whereas my slave IDE drive is 320gb, with SHED loads of space left. I must admit, I don't often watch video's via the PC, I usually burn to CD/DVD-R or bung em on my HDD media player, but it'd be nice to get faster transfer rates for both of those too - burning a 4.5gb DVD from the slave takes AGES (and I mean ages, like 20mins+ ) A 1gb AVI tansfers via USB2 in 2mins or less, but takes ten mins or so to burn to DVD!!!!!

Turbocabbie

The IDE connections used on PATA drives can not read and write simultaneously across the same cable and because of this having the slave hard disk on IDE channel 1 makes it incredibly slow as the master disk being used for the OS can not be accessed at the same time as the slave.

Move the slave to a different IDE channel and performance will improve


you will also possibly find that the USB drive is FAT32 and the Slave drive formatted as NTFS... FAT32 is a faster file system however it does fragment and will not support massive drives like your slave without partitioning

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

USB drive is deffo NTFS as the disk in it was the original slave drive from the PC......

I am still pondering whether to open the PC up and remove the slave drive from the secondary connector on IDE1 and move it to the primary connector on IDE2 - which might mean that the read times increase??

frog

This should improve matters no end

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Frog - yeah, but I kinda expect XP to spit it's dummy out when I boot up again when it finds that the devices it thought were there are all moved about

Don't fancy reinstalling all over again

ps, welcome back

frog

It will be fine m8, don't worry.

I was never gone Just not posting much ...

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Well it didn't work!

For a start the IDE cables in the PC weren't long enough to use how I wanted (the master and slave connectors are VERY close together, so they can only plug into devices that are right next to each other)

I have a few spare cables, that worked last time I used them, so I used these as they are longer and the connectors spaced out further apart.

I connected IDE1 to the C drive (on the master connector) and then the E: DVD-ROM drive on the slave connector of IDE1

Then D: DVD-RW drive to the master connector of IDE2, with the F: Slave HDD to the slave connector of IDE2

All drives had jumper set to CS

Booted up and got 2 beeps followed by a DOS screen telling me it can't find the primary 0 drive or the secondary 0 drive.

Unplugged everything except the IDE1 cable with only the C: drive connected. Booted up, got 2 beeps saying it couldn't find the secondary 0 drive, but let me carry on booting by pressing F1

Left all IDE2 disconnected, and just plugged in IDE1 to mobo, slave connector to DVD-ROM (E) and master to C HDD - again wouldn't boot, told me couldn't find the primary 0 drive

So had to put it all back together as standard

Bit of a fucker, as I was looking forward to being able to read and write to both HDD's at the same time without it going super slow and shit

frog

Thrush,

Couple of thoughts. The beeps suggest that there is a fundamental problem. Looking up your bios on google, you might be able to find out what the 2 beeps actually mean. It's crude, but the BIOS is telling you what is wrong with those beeps, not just saying "I'm broken"

First, are you sure your spare cables were of the same specification ? iirc, there are two kinds of IDE cables, the newer ones have all of their pins connected, whereas, I think, the older ones didn't.

I believe (not really 100% sure), you can tell the difference between old and new by looking at the ribbon cable, new is thinner and has less ridges if you see what I mean.

Second, did you check your BIOS to enable it to recognise the additional drives ? Some bioses need you to specify that you want it to look for a drive on the extra channels, it may be set not to look, hence you missing some drives.

DanRSturbo

Thidly, use the jumper settings on the drives for master and slave settings rather then cable select

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

The cables that were in there as standard are thinner (in width) than the cables I was trying to use, and also, the cables had one of the pin holes blocked, whereas the wider cables had all the pin holes open... Would this make a difference then?

Alex_86

iTrader: (2)

first: your IDE disk, is it IDE, ata100, ata133 or ata150?
then how fast is your disk, is it a 7200rpm or a 5400rpm is it a 8mb buffer or a 16mb buffer?

and when you only have 6gb on your external HDD it will act slow, because a 15% is what they recommend. but if this is a 8mb it will go slow, if its a 16mb it will go faster

i have 2 external disk
1 maxtor 320gb 16mb
1 lacier 250gb8 mb

both usb2.. and the last one is using about 15-20min longer time to transfer 200gb

but not much you could do to get it faster