New HDD but very slow

[Art Vandelay]

I just installed a new HD 750|WD 7K 32M SATA2 WD7501AALS drive in my PC. It also has a SATA drive in it which is my system drive. I just formated it to NTFS and tried to build a ISO with ImgBurn but the transfer rate is very slow at 1.5 X when reading from C and writing to the new drive K. I tried to copy some files from C to K but the proces is very slow. Any ideas what is wrong, this is the first time I have installed a second HDD in a PC. 3 Gigs DDR2 Ram, AMD Athalon X2 64 2.41 GHZ processor.

Thanks

[PurpleDemon]

Check the back of the drive for a jumper. Some drives come default at 1.5 GPS until you change your jumper to 3.0 GPS

You should have no jumper on.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2534&p_created=#jumper

[Art Vandelay]

Thanks but i thought this may be it, I check my DMA and it was PIO so I uninstalled and reinstalled the primary/secondary chans. Now I can get 25X building with ImgBurn from the C to K but the PC crashes when I try and copy from C to K. The PC just freezes about 10 seconds into the transfer.

[atifsh]

i would still remove those jumpers first... what OS and motherboard ur using?

[Art Vandelay]

No jumper on any of the pins, nothing there. Keeps crashing, I have win XP media center not sure of the Mobord. it is a HP Pavilion m7557c media center PC

[PurpleDemon]

Serial ATA

* 4 SATA connectors
* Each connector supports 1 serial ATA-150 disk drive

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00714578&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3220013

You might need to jumper it after all.

[Art Vandelay]

Thanks burrell84601, what does the 150 mean? I got this drive from newegg and there was nothing in the box other than the drive and a packing slip. There was no jumper? can I get one at a computer store and if so how should the jumper be set?

Here is a link to the drive:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...Content-_-text-_-

Thank you

[PurpleDemon]

And as far as your question. HERE is a good read to explain it.

However, the most promising feature of Serial ATA is that it eliminates the transfer limit hit by PATA. First generation has a maximum transfer rate of 150 MBps, and second generation SATA delivers 300 MBps. A third generation SATA set for 2009, "SATA 6Gb/s" will deliver roughly twice the speed of the previous SATA iteration

[Art Vandelay]

Going Crazy

burrell84601

well, I got a jumper and set it on pins 5,6 just like you have in the pic, I updated my bios, checked to see that the drives are DMA and they are. I swaped the SATA power and SATA cable from the system drive and pluged in to the new drive that is crashing my system the SATA power and SATA cable that was in my system drive. I don't know what more to do.

the jumper only goes in 1 way right? it slides over the 2 pins fine 5,6

[PurpleDemon]

the jumper only goes in 1 way right? it slides over the 2 pins fine 5,6

Yes

If the OPT1 jumper setting does not resolve the issue, please contact Western Digital Support for further troubleshooting. See Answer ID 1048: How to contact Western Digital for support (email or phone).

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=1337&p_created=1112379341

Let us know.

Times like this I really miss Chewy. I wonder when he is coming back.

[Art Vandelay]

Not Fixed

well after restarting 1000 times in the past 2 days since the PC has been so unstable after installing this drive. The PC just freezes up and ctrl, alt, del doesn't even bring up the XP task manager. I had no problems before installing this 2nd drive. I called Western Digital and after telling the guy the drive was recognised by my BIOS and in the device manager and was formated to NTSF and was saing it was online and healthy I managed to write a few movie ISO files to the drive as this is the purpose of it to hold my Itunes stuff, a second drive for DVD-RB to use. But when I would double click on the drive to view the files it would freeze up, often copying a file of 1 GB it would say it was going to take 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 35 minutes. Heck, my DVD writer is faster than this drive. The guy from Wester Digital ended up areguing with me becasue he said the drive is 750 GB so when installed it must say 750 GB. Well windows doesn't see it that way. So I had the jumper on pins 5,6 to make it 1.5 GBs rather than 3GBs since my other drive and Mobord are 1.5 GBs. Wester digital startes that the dive will regognise this and will step the transfer rate down for the mother board, but sometimes the jumper is needed. It worked better with the jumper off, so I uninstalled it and removed the SATA cable and my PC is very stable and runs perfecty now. I now need to call newegg for a replacement of the same model or get stuck with a restocking fee if I retun it.

[MilesAhead]

Yeah, in that situation some software the showed if the drive was doing retries would probably have saved you a lot of headaches. I don't even know what diagnostic software is out there now. There must be some that could pick off a bunch of retries though. If you get tons of retries the drive seems "slow" because it takes you 3 or 5 or 10 goes to do an operation that should be completed on the first attempt.

[doctorhardware]

One question, when you formatted the hard drive did do the quick format. That can cause some weird issues. You need to do the slow or complete format, this is per WD.

[Art Vandelay]

doctorhardware

yes I did the 2 hour long format. real frustrating as I had herd good things about WD HDD's. I am no expert but after all the reading I have done about installing a 2nd HDD I was frustrated to learn that the tech guy at the WD 1-800 # knew less than me, 55 minutes of my life I want back. I hope the next drive is OK

[MilesAhead]

I bought 2 of that exact model drive in the last few months. But I'm just using them in USB docking stations, not internally. So far they've performed flawlessly. Did you by any chance buy the drive at an online store shipped via UPS?? I've heard that UPS ground has 6 foot drops on the conveyor setup. All the user comments I've seen at Web stores said get the drives shipped FedEx.

SuperMediaStore charges more than Egg but FedEx ground is standard shipping there and the drives are packed in boxes with large foam cubes instead of just bubble pack.

btw I bought one drive at SuperMediaStore, and I bought the other at NewEgg since the Egg deal was cheaper even with paying extra to get it shipped via FedEx ground. So far both are working great. At this point if I buy another I think I'll go with SuperMediaStore even though it costs a bit more. I just like the idea of the drive being surrounded by 2 cubes of foam rubber with a square cut out that the drive sits in, instead of just bubble pack or popcorn.