WD Scorpio problems

I recently bought a new Western Digital Scorpion Blue 250GB hard drive for my HP nc4010 notebook.

I installed the the drive and also a fresh install of XP Home. I then installed my applications and transferred over my photos

When transferring things over I realsied how slow it was going. It was also taking longer than usual to boot windows.

I ran HD Tune and it showed results of around 2mb/sec

I posted these results in the HD Tune thread and was told it could be background processes running.

I then ran it plugged into my PC and the results were 60mb/sec. Which is more what I was expecting.

I then ran a fresh install of XP home on my laptop on the HDD and the first thing I did was run HD Tune.



This shows the processes running whilst doing the test and CPU usage.



What else could be causing the problem? Could the drive just be incompatabile with my laptop?

 

it was unlikely to be background processes anyway considering there weren't (relatively) many spikes on the hdtune graph. the drive is not incompatible. the drive is either, damaged, or incorrectly installed. of course it could be a problem with some other hardware in your system or even a virus (even though you've just reinstalled). I suggest downloading hiren's cd, and run some of the diagnostic tests.:
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

 

It may be in wrong DMA/UDMA mode. You could check your options in the bios and post a screenshot of the info page of HDTune.

 

You did install your mobo/chipset drivers,correct?

 

unlikely to be wrong udma mode considering, the lowest is udma 0 which has a max transfer rate of 16.7mb/s. It would have to be in pio mode 0, which peaks at 3.3mb/s... even so i think its unlikely to be the cause of the problem

 

That's definitely PIO mode. Look at the very high CPU utilisation (PIO uses the CPU, DMA (Direct Memory Access) bypasses the CPU).

Was it an early version of XP Home? It won't have got the right chipset driver and has then gone into compatibility mode.

First update the chipset driver to the latest from the manufactueer's website. Then uninstall the IDE channels under the IDE ATA/ATPI controllers and reboot. Windows will then redetect the hardware and should go into UDMA 5.

It would also be prudent to install SP3 for XP which will update and patch a lot of things.

John

 

That's what I meant with in the wrong mode. PIO.

 

This is something I have just suddenly realised I may have overlooked.

Can someone confirm this is the correct driver that I need here

As it doesn't seem to be installing for some reason

 

That looks to be the right software. Did you follow the installation instructions?

Otherwise visit Intel's site.

John

 

I did yes, and it's still not working.

Could it possible be that it doesn't like XP home, as I've always had XP Pro installed before with no problems.

Release notes don't mention XP Home on the Intel website and it is a business laptop. But could that stop it installing the drivers?

 

WD Data Lifeguard Tools results

 

1. What options do you have for the current transfer rate on the first IDE channel of the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller. Will it let you set it to UDMA Mode 5 (will require a reboot)?

2. If (1) doesn't work, uninstall the IDE channel and reboot (it might be necessary to uninstall the whole controller).

If the above don't work then the best approach is to use nLite to create a new XP boot disk which includes both SP3 and all the drivers. I think there's an nLite guide somewhere, but it's very easy. Once you have a new boot disk then redo the installation.

John

 

How do I set this?

 

try this guide:
http://www.cdrlabs.com/forums/how-enable-dma-windows-with-pictures-t7625.html

I made a vlite guide but unfortunately no nlite one.

 

These are the settings

 

This is where I'm getting puzzled. Device Manager is showing an Ali M5229 IDE controller. And the specs here say it is ATI 350M.

Did you try uninstalling the controller and let Windows reboot and redetect the hardware. It should then match it with the driver that's been installed on the computer using the INF update.

On the IDE channel, the DMA if available is the best you can do. However, something isn't right so it's not going into that mode.

BTW, what version XP was on that disk? Original, SP1, SP2 or SP2a?

John

 

XP Home 2002 SP3

Just uninstalled the ALi IDE controller and let it re0install on it's pwn after a reboot and it installed the same thing again. Could this be afecting it?

 

I've just Googled for "ALI M5229" and found this.

It could be very relevant. Give it a try.

John

 

Brilliant!!!
Thank you very much.
Installed the ALi UltraIDE driver and all seems much better.
I'll run another HD Tune and see exactly what results and post them up.

Thanks again.

 

But we couldn't have figured it out before seeing the IDE controller. HP's product spec wasn't very helpful.

Have you also got rid of all those other exclamation marks in Device Manager?

John

 

There is still one for the PCI modem and another unknown device.

Not sure what that is and I don't use the modem.

 

Probably is the modem then, did you install the driver for it? Not important though if you don't use it, and it's probably better not installing the driver has it would not use any resources.

 

Still getting strange resuluts from HD Tune



Just after 50% of the test it drops right down

 

Your CPU usage is high, that's your problem, quit from majority of your applications and run the benchmark again. Use Task Manager and kill any processes that take up CPU load, any CPU load will directly affect your HD benchmark.

That said, it looks like John solved your problem.

 

So basically something is causing it to fallback to PIO..... Maybe the drive has a faulty controller... Do you have a usb enclosure where you could test it?

 

It was a fresh Windows XP install, so it lacked the proper chipset drivers, so the system was running in compatibility mode (PIO).

 

Could it be to do with the 137GB recognition thing.
As the drive is 250GB and the first 55% is fine. Then it drops immediately?

Just a thought.

 

Going back to the link I found, it looks likely that the BIOS doesn't see properly beyond the 137GB limit. What does the BIOS report as the HDD capacity.

See the WD website for suggestions.

John

 

I'm talking about the last hdtune screenshot: it works well then it suddenly drops back to PIO speeds which means that it mysteriously falled back to compatibility mode...

 

Actually on second thought that graph is a little too level after 55%, and it sits right at the same PIO mode transfer speed.

It looks as though this is a chipset/controller limitation. The UltraIDE driver looks already a couple years old and lacks support. I don't know if you can ever get it fully working.

 

http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/1511/t435736-new-drive-refuses-to-work-in-udma-mode/

 

Just a thought,

Would partitioning the drive into 2 partitions less than 137 GB each solve the problems?


Alex

 

Unfortunately no. This has nothing to do with partition tables, but the overall capacity supported by the chipset. It identifies 137GB and operates that under UDMA, but beyond that would be in PIO mode.