I had my original IBM ATA100 disk crash a while back, so I bought a 2nd Western Digital drive, installed it, and salvaged my files no problem. While install seemed to go smoothly, I always had a sinking feeling that even though it was a comparable ATA100, the Western Digital drive was slow. After procrastinating for a couple months, I finally used SciSoft’s drive benchmark and found that the new drive was indeed ¼ the speed of the original.
I did some trouble shooting, checked cables, verified that the drive had ATA100 enabled, ran scandisk to no avail, checked the BIOS, and found that DMA transfers had been turned off. After fixing this, I still have a drive that runs at about ½ the expected speed. I’m sure that I caused the problem, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how. Any gurus out there? I’m out of ideas as to what to check next.
Tattva: Yes, I forgot to mention it, but I defragged as well. It’s a 7200RPM, and all the spec’s are very similar to the old drive. According to SiSoft, it is inexplicably operating just a bit slower than an ATA66. I only copied actual files over, I did a fresh install of any programs including Win ME.
Harmonious Discord: I downloaded the latest version of Lifeguard last night, but unlike scandisk, it recommends the thorough scan, then hangs about ¾ of the way through it. I also used to verify I was in ATA100 mode.
I do have a message in to tech support, but I’m worried they will simply tell me to reformat. I was hoping the folks here might have an idea or two I could try before going that route.