ATA133 drive causing extremely slow computer.

Lowfat · Feb 12, 2007, 05:04 PM

Hey. I have this Maxtor 300GB hard drive, which when formatted causes my entire system to go slow. I mean SLOW, as in mouse choppy slow. I originally installed windows to it, and it took no less than 1.5 hours to install XP. I then installed XP on a SATA drive in the same system, and erased the formatting on the ATA133 drive, and it installed in regular time. As soon as i try formatting it in windows it causes the entire system go to extremely slow again. It also takes forever to read/write data. Example: I transferred a 350mb file from a SATA drive to a thumbdrive, it took less than 30 seconds. From the SATA to the ATA133 drive it took over 5 minutes . I have done a full scan with the maxtor utility and it passed all tests. Any ideas what could help, or what is wrong?

coldfrontt · Feb 12, 2007, 05:31 PM

Couple of things off the top of my head..have you tried replacing the ribbon and checked the pins are all straight?
Have you verified the drive's DMA mode is correctly identified? It should be UDMA 5 at least.

Lowfat · Feb 12, 2007, 06:23 PM

Hmm. that is a good point. I was actually using an IDE cable that I had cut one of the connectors off before. It did work good before. But come to think of it, i was having problems with a DVD burner drive that it was attached too. I thought the drive died, so i threw it out :| O i will be hating myself it was just the cable. I'll check when i get home.

CDsDontBurn · Feb 12, 2007, 07:04 PM

is the drive set in the proper master or slave config as well?

Lowfat · Feb 13, 2007, 01:10 AM

Ya it was set as master. It is even wierder now. The low level format failed, and said the drive needs to be replaced. I changed IDE cables, booted up, drive is working fine

. So i swap cables back to the old one. Drive is still working fine.

It was a mystery!!

CDsDontBurn · Feb 13, 2007, 02:15 AM

sounds like you have a flakey drive there....what would happen if you were to put it inside an external drive bay and make it a USB or FireWire drive?

Lowfat · Feb 13, 2007, 05:51 PM

I actually had it in an external usb case for all its previous life, and it worked fine. The drive is still working fine. I think the cable was likely not seated fully.

Lowfat · Feb 13, 2007, 07:50 PM

Well i was wrong, drive isn't working correctly. It is back to being slow

Off to RMA it i guess.

H3X4D3C1M4L · Feb 15, 2007, 02:43 PM

Double check the DMA because I've had those exact symptoms due to Plextools disabling DMA on all my IDE devices.