slow data transfewr for hd?

[stuartturrell]

Hi there,

I have recently baught unreal tournament 2004 and noticed it wasnt performing right, so i decided to use sandra to determine where my system is lagging behind.

It is a P4 2.0ghz (u/c to 2.5), 512mb (ddr2700) on a msi-6398 motherboard with gfx of a gf4 ti4200.

My harddrive is a maxtor 80gb partitioned 55gb/25gb.

This is my problem, data transfer to/from the harddisk.

SAndra reads my drive index as 16149 kb/s.

Similar hard drives are AT LEAST 292000 KB/S, but mainly around the 40000kb/s mark.

Whats wrong????

It has been de-fragged, i cant think of anything else.

I have it set up on primary on IDE1, along with a DVD-RW drive as slave (tried taking that out - no change) and on IDE 2, i have a cd-rw and dvd-rom.

Any suggestions?

Stuart

 

[stuartturrell]

its a maxtor 6L080J4

The hard disk drive cable is certainly on the end of the cable, just checked to make sure.

 

[ekÆsine]

is the cable 80 wires or 40 wires? the difference is that 40pin is fatter and 80pin is thinner, both same with. also...can't remember, but i think you should check for IDE PIO mode over DMA mode...somebody else will have to clue you in on that..i have no idea what that was for or where to change it.

 

[stuartturrell]

I probably havent got ultra ata cables then, i am using gray cables, both with black ends.

They are plugged into the IDE ports on motherboard, but there are 2 yellow ide ports on my motherboard, something to do with raid ata-133 or something, dont understand that raid stuff, something to do with a second harddrive used as a backup???!?

Here is the msi.com.tw webpage on my motherboard.

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=311

I have the 845E Max2-BLR version.

I hope you can help.

 

[stuartturrell]

got me a decent cable now, and instead of plugging it into my ide1 slot on motherboard, i have plugged it into ide3 (raid).

Without anything else on the IDE cable liek my DVD-RW, it works, i get booted up into windows and i use my sandra software and it indicates its running in UDMA-6 mode!

If i plug it in to the IDE1 port, it runs in UDMA-5, where you all pointed out, on my previous cable, i was in mode 2! haha

Anyway, will i benefit by leaving the harddrive connected to the IDE3 "raid ATA133" port, or should i really put it back into IDE1 where its only ATA100?

thanks for all your help, still takes a long time to load maps in unreal tournament 2004, but fps are up

 

[stuartturrell]

already at 218mb on the card.

Tho i have ddr 2700 in the machine already, the motherboard only takes up to 2100, so i have overclock the machine up to the speed of the ddr2700 (333mhz) well 335mhz its up to.

Looking at your specs, think i will be upgrading the machine by late summer anyway!

Thanks for your help!

 

[stuartturrell]

i dont know where 218mb on card came from, its 128mb on the card! haha

thanks again! life saver!