Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[icecold1980]

My current drive is a 60Gb Maxtor 6Y060L0.  I just installed my new ST3250820A 250Gb HDD, created 4 partitions, and installed Windows XP SP2 on one of the partitions.

My BIOS correctly detects that my Seagate is my primary master, and the Maxtor is now the primary slave.  Now, booting from the Seagate takes nearly a minute longer than the Maxtor drive.  So far, I've run SeaTools and did a Basic Drive Self Test, and came up with no errors.  I haven't done anymore diagnostics yet.  I keep reading reviews for this drive, and it is supposedly supposed to be pretty fast; however, I'm not seeing that kind of performance.

Help!  Thanks!

[icecold1980]

I forgot to add that transfer speeds are extremely slow on the Seagate, compared to my Maxtor.

[fzabkar · Accepted solution]

Can you show us some read/write performance graphs?

http://www.hdtune.com/
http://www.hdtune.com/testresults.html

Have you checked in Device Manager whether either drive is running in PIO mode rather than DMA mode?

Windows XP will downgrade a drive's performance from DMA mode to PIO mode if it detects more than 6 CRC errors.

DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

DMA reverts to PIO:
http://winhlp.com/node/10

[icecold1980]

Both drives are set to DMA mode.  Here are the stats for the Seagate:

http://depthofreal.shutterfly.com/pictures/197

Anymore inputs?  Thanks for your continued help!

[icecold1980]

Interesting - both these test results were done while using the OS from the Maxtor drive.  Here are the Maxtor results; big difference.

http://depthofreal.shutterfly.com/pictures/198#198

Now, I'm not sure where to go from here.  Thanks again.

[fzabkar]

It does appear that the Seagate drive is set to PIO mode. That would explain the flat 1.3 MB/s performance graph.

Does HD Tune confirm that the drive is set to DMA mode? If so, is it UDMA or multiword DMA?

[icecold1980]

I'm seeing two things: HD Tune info shows UDMA

http://depthofreal.shutterfly.com/pictures/199

And Device Mgr. shows PIO:

http://depthofreal.shutterfly.com/pictures/199#201

And just FYI, here's HD Tune Health:

http://depthofreal.shutterfly.com/pictures/199#200

How do I change that transfer mode?  Are those instructions in those articles in your previous replies?  Thanks.

[fzabkar]

I don't know what to make of your results. Your HD Tune data, and Device Manager, would indicate that your Seagate drive is configured for UDMA Mode 5, but its performance graph is what you would expect of PIO mode. I'm assuming that the Seagate drive is always the slave on the primary IDE channel, while the Maxtor is the master on the same channel. AISI, Device Manager is reporting PIO mode for the Maxtor drive, yet HD Tune's graph is consistent with UDMA mode. How does HD Tune report the Maxtor's PIO/UDMA configuration?

[icecold1980]

I'm not sure what to make of the HD Tune results either, but my Device Mgr says my primary IDE controller (Seagate) is PIO only, while the secondary IDE controller (Maxtor) is running UDMA.  I've tried the "toggling" method in Device Mgr to switch the Seagate back to UDMA, but that didn't work.  Deleting certain registry keys, uninstalling the primary controller and rebooting didn't work either.  So, I stumbled into a Microsoft hotfix that's specifically for this issue.  I hope it works!  I'll keep you posted.

[fzabkar]

At first you said that the Maxtor was the primary slave, now you appear to have it configured as secondary master. Have you been switching the drives around? If so, have you tried booting from the Maxtor as the primary master? Or what about booting from the Seagate drive on its own?