HDD Transfer Rate causing slow PC?

Yeah theres something wrong with it. Try defragmenting it for starters.
If the hdd supports SMART then use speedfan or something to read the SMART status.
Make sure the ide(?) cable is plugged all the way in, I once had with my old ide hdd the cable poorly plugged in and it slowed it way down

3MB/sec transfers indicates that the hard drive is stuck in PIO mode.

Follow directions at the bottom of this page to attempt to restore the hard drive to DMA mode.

If that doesn't work, post back, there is another undocumented procedure.

Kari said:

Yeah theres something wrong with it. Try defragmenting it for starters.
If the hdd supports SMART then use speedfan or something to read the SMART status.
Make sure the ide(?) cable is plugged all the way in, I once had with my old ide hdd the cable poorly plugged in and it slowed it way down

Out of all the attributes, I have 6 with an OK. and the others dont have anything. Will check the cable in a bit.

Anonymous said:

3MB/sec transfers indicates that the hard drive is stuck in PIO mode.

Follow directions at the bottom of this page to attempt to restore the hard drive to DMA mode.

If that doesn't work, post back, there is another undocumented procedure.

It is indeed in PIO Mode, and will not change to DMA.

UPSer said:

It is indeed in PIO Mode, and will not change to DMA.

Perform the following procedure:

1. Update Windows XP to SP2 if you haven't done so already.
2. Make SURE the IDE cable you're using is an 80-conductor cable (blue connector for motherboard, black and gray connectors for devices), and is NO MORE than 18" long. If your cable doesn't look like this, trash it and get a correct cable.
3. Go into Computer Management, and click on Device Manager.
4. Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers node.
5. Double-click on the IDE controller that contains the hard drive that is stuck in PIO mode.
6. Go to the Driver tab, and click Uninstall to remove this IDE controller.
7. Restart the computer. Windows XP will reinstall the IDE controller during the restart.
8. After the restart, go back into Device Manager and verify that the IDE controller is reinstalled.
9. Run regedit, locate the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001

You may see more than one key under this node, you will have one for each IDE controller. For example, there might be:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0003

etc.

10. Inside each of the 0001, 0002, 0003, etc. keys, do the following:

Create a new DWORD value named "ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess". Set the value to 1.

11. Restart the computer.
12. Go back into device manager, make sure the offending hard drive is now in DMA mode.


The .vbs program that nukemaster posted essentially does the same thing.

Problem Solved!!! Thank you guys very much! Happy New Year To Everyone!

Keep an eye on it. it it reverts again. check the cables....

hiya, first post...

**HDD SLOW TRANSFER RATES OR SLUGGISH PC ISSUE**

THE PROBLEM OF SLOW HDD TRANSFER RATE CAME TO ME AFTER CONNECTING A SECONDARY 2.5" LAPTOP SATA HDD TO MY PC WHILST PC SWITCHED ON AND DISCONNECTING IT WHILST PC WAS SWITCHED ON (YOUR NOT MEANT TO!)

I HAVE COME UP WITH THE FOLLOWING CHECKLIST...

1-CHECK DEVICE MANAGER FOR ANY ERRORS (YELLOW /!\ )
2-CHECK WRITE CACHING ENABLED ON DISK
3-CHECK VIRTUAL MEMORY ENABLED!!! (PAGING FILE)
4-UNINSTALL STORAGE CONTROLLERS (BOTH) IN DEVICE MANAGER ("[+]IDE ATA/ATAPI CONTROLLERS" > FIRST TWO) THEN RESTART, SHOULD AUTO. REINSTALL THEM.
5-REINSTALL STORAGE CONTROLLER DRIVER FROM MOBO DISC A.K.A CHIPSET DRIVERS THEN RESTART, IF NOT FIXED REPEAT NO4
6-USE "HD TUNE" TO CHECK HDD HEALTH

7-*REMEMBER THAT HARDWARE HAS 0.34% FAILURE ANNUALLY AND SOFTWARE HAS 99% FAILURE!!!

IF ANYONE HAS ANYTHING TO ADD TO THE LIST PLEASE DO SO NEATLY AND REMEMBER IT IS ABOUT SLOW HDD TRANSFER RATES AS REPORTED BY HD TUNE E.G. 3mb/s WHEN IT SHOULD BE 120mb/s (I GET ON MY 1000GB 32MB CACHE DRIVE(£70))

FORGOT TO SAY, STEP 4 WAS THE WINNER FOR ME LIKE THE PREVIOUS GUY BUT I TRIED 1,2,3 FIRST!!!

THANKS

20 /M /UK /LONDON

IT TECH WORKING IN SCHOOL
BSC COMPUTER SCIENCE
JAVA PROGRAMMING
HTML / CSS WEB DESIGN

Hi, I also have the similar problem, I guess my HDD speed is very slow, when ever I transfer data from one partition to another or int he same partition Vista shows the data speed to be near 2Mb/s. Which I guess is very slow.

I have a SCSI HDD of 250 GB on my laptop with Vista installed. I checked in the Resource Monitor, the disk section lists PID, so I guess I also have a PID mode running.

Please suggest what to do, till now I haven't done any of the steps mentioned above as the script says it's for XP and was written in 2007.

Thanks n Regards
Tarun