OK. Hi everyone, this is my first post, I'm a bit stuck so I hope you don't mind me diving in here and asking for help right off the bat. I'm running Windows XP on a 2.8 P4 with 3GB of RAM and a 200GB hard disk. I recently added a second 750GB hard disk, which installed perfectly and works OK but data transfer seems to be really slow. I use my machine for video editing and when I play an HD video file (on Windows Media Player/VLC) from my original hard disk it plays fine. However when I play the same file from the new one it plays back very jerky, as if the hard disk can't keep up. The hard disk itself is a Seagate 750GB 7200rpm ATA100 (more info: http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/110738) Anyone got any ideas as to why it's running slow? I've checked for spyware, run various disk-checking things etc.. Thanks, MIKE (P.S. How on earth do you make it format correctly with new lines?)

Hey Mikelike,

Welcome to PCHF. We have a great team of techs here, and I am sure that we can get that second harddrive to behave itself.

I'm going to turn this one over to the hardware gurus, for their take.

In the mean time, how do you have the second HDD installed? Slave?

Is it just videos that are having difficulties with the 2nd HDD? Have you tried other applications?

Look forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

The first thing I can think of-- given your great system-specs... and how recently HD's of this massive proportion became available-- is it COULD be a BIOS issue. Have you tried updating it yet ?? These monster-drives have only been out a couple of months-- and when larger drives first started becoming available there were bios issues which prevented Windows from recognizing their full size correctly... something to do with "cylinders" or how windows recognizes the structure of data on your disc.

This is a somewhat dated -- but readable explanation of the earlier problems...http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_d...e_barriers.htm

Hi there, thank you for your replies so far, you guys have already been much more helpful than the Seagate tech support people!

In response to your questions:

In the mean time, how do you have the second HDD installed? Slave?
I should have mentioned before, it's a SATA drive so I have plugged it into the keyed slot on my motherboard next to where my original drive is plugged in. There are actually four slots in total, perhaps it's worth me trying plugging the HDD into a different slot?

Is it just videos that are having difficulties with the 2nd HDD? Have you tried other applications?
Just videos as far as I know, but I'm only going to use the drive to store video media so that's all I've really tested it with. I have just run a program called 'HD Tach', which puts my new HDD's sequential read speed at 3.5MB/s (whereas my original HDD runs at 44.1MB/s).

I have not tried updating the bios, that wil be my next step. I'll let you know how that goes, just to keep you updated.

Thanks again,
MIKE

Aha!

I have updated the BIOS and now it works perfectly! Faster than my old HDD even.

Thank you very much guys. I shall endeavour to stick around and help out with any problems other people have.
MIKE

Awsome Mike!!!

Glad to hear you are back in business thanks to ih8bills wonderful insight.

We'll look forward to having you around the forums,

See you soon,

TTFN

LGW


Marked as Fixed.