Help With Hard Drive

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

i baught a maxtor 200gb external hard drive today. i installed it correctly but when i try to copy my movies from cdrs to my new hard drive its does it very slow. like for a 700mb file it takes 30 min. i dont think thats right. do you guys know why its doing that. plz help

[4th gen]

how is the drive connected? usb or firewire?

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

usb

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 07:54
usb
usb1.1 or usb2.0?

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

i think 1.1 but how can i check

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 07:56
i think 1.1 but how can i check
do you know what motherboard you have?

check with Belarc advisor (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html) if you're not sure...

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

main circut board?

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. WMT-LE REV 1.xx
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 08:02
Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. WMT-LE REV 1.xx
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
i didn't get a lot of details from that description...
are we talking about a laptop here?
what are the system specs of the machine?

when transferring files, do you notice what the free resources are (i.e. how much cpu and ram is free? (you'll be able to see in task manager))

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

no its a desktop sony viao


Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 1 (build 2600
1.30 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache
243.87 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
205.59 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

_NEC DVD+RW ND-1100A [CD-ROM drive]
SONY CD-RW CRX160E [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

Maxtor OneTouch USB Disk (203.92 GB) -- drive 1
ST340823A [Hard drive] (40.02 GB) -- drive 0, s/n 7EF1C9H2, rev 3.11, SMART Status: Healthy
384 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'RIMM 1' has 128 MB
Slot 'RIMM 2' has 64 MB
Slot 'RIMM 3' has 128 MB
Slot 'RIMM 4' has 64 MB
c: (on drive 0) 17.15 GB 1.04 GB free
d: (on drive 0) 22.81 GB 711 MB free
g: (on drive 1)
Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. WMT-LE REV 1.xx
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software, Inc. ACPI BIOS Revision 1004 04/25/2001

[4th gen]

right click on "my computer" and go to "properties"

then go to the hardware tab and click "device manager"

double click on "ide ata/atapi controllers" and then double click on "secondary ide channel" and click on the "advanced settings tab"

what does it say for the current transfer mode on device 0?

edit: are there two drives listed under secondary ide channel?

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

Ultra DMA Mode 2

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 08:15
Ultra DMA Mode 2
did you read the above edit?

sorry, i was a little late there...

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

device 0 and 1

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 08:17
device 0 and 1
ok, what does it say for device 1?

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

Ultra DMA Mode 2

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 08:19
Ultra DMA Mode 2
ok, that's good

it doesn't sound like the cd drive is the problem then...

have you made a note of what portion of the resources (cpu and ram) are used when you're transferring files?

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

a note?, i dont think so

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 08:21
a note, i dont think so
just try transferring a relatively small file and see what resources are used (you'll need task manager open for this)

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

howdya see what resources are in use

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 08:25
howdya see what resources are in use
open task manager (by pressing ctrl+alt+delete) and move task manager over to one side of your monitor.
if you look at task manager, you'll be able to see what percentage of the cpu is currently being used and how much ram is being used (called "commit charge")

then put in a cd into your cd drive and open the contents up into a small window and open the destination drive up into a small window

then you should be able to transfer files from the cd drive to the external hard drive and keep a look out on the cpu and ram situation...

here's (http://www.arap78.dsl.pipex.com/transfer.JPG) an example of a transfer on my own computer

you can see the two windows i have open (simulating the cd drive and the external hard drive) and task manager

you can also see that approximately 20% of my cpu is being used for this transfer and that approximately 270MB of ram is being used...

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

6% of cpu usage
155 mb ram

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 08:52
6% of cpu usage
155 mb ram
ok, that's good aswell...

usb1.1 is rated at 13Mbps max. that should mean it would take around 7 minutes or so if it were working at 100% efficiency.
of course, in the real world it won't work at 100% efficiency and might not even get to 85% or so
if it were running at 85% efficiency, it would take closer to 9 minutes, but nowhere near the 30 minutes you're talking about...

how long does it take to copy a 700MB file from your cd drive to one of your other hard drives? how long does it take to transfer a 700MB file from one of your hard drives to the external drive?

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

700mb file from a cd drive to a hard drive takes like 4 min but when i try 700mb files from cd drive to external hard drive it estimates times of 25 min+ [same with hard drive to external hard drive transfer] .

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 08:58
700mb file from a cd drive to a hard drive takes like 4 min but when i try 700mb files from cd drive to external hard drive it estimates times of 25 min+.
do you know what file system the external drive is running?

if not, just go to the external drive from "my computer" and click on a blank area within the drive, then look at the left hand side of the window in the "file system" category...

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

NTFS

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 09:01
NTFS
well, i think i've exhausted my admittedly very limited knowledge bank on this problem... :(

[Rock Tonic Juice Magic]

think i should uninstall the softwar and start over? :(

[4th gen]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 09:05
think i should uninstall the softwar and start over? :(
i suppose it's worth a try...

[kazaa2002]

Originally posted by Rock Tonic Juice Magic@11 January 2004 - 08:52
i baught a maxtor 200gb external hard drive today. i installed it correctly but when i try to copy my movies from cdrs to my new hard drive its does it very slow. like for a 700mb file it takes 30 min. i dont think thats right.  do you guys know why its doing that. plz help
ok rock, 4th gen gave you was just trying to get some
data for your system to try to answer why it was so slow.
it looks ok...it probably is your usb connection.

you have a maxtor one touch 200gig hd
I believe your Sony viao has usb 1.1

your maxtor has the ability for usb 2.0 and firewire
my suggestion is if you have a open pci slot , get
a product like a adaptec usb 2.0/1394 combo card

1.1 usb = 12MBps
2.0 usb = 480 MBps
firewire 1394= 400 MBps

for your purpose...recording/viewing movies from this drive
you should go with firewire, then you can daisy-chain additional
external hard drives and your system will treat them as internal ones. :rolleyes: