Hi,
I had a Dell Dimension 3000 which came in with a 40GB Western Digital Hard Drive. I recently bought another one with 120GB Space so that I can store more stuff.

I notice that this new drive is significantly slow compared to my old drive. I was able to listen music on my computer when I used to burn DVD from my old drive but When I use this new drive, the music does not play fine..

Similarly I played music while trying to copy 4 GB of data from the new (120GB Drive) to (40GB) one and had the same problem with my music. Bottom line , I feel there is significant difference in speed of the drives

Any suggestions what I can do ?

Thanks

Get HD Tach and see if your drive is up to spec.

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public...request=HdTach

Also, did you format it using the NTFS protocol? If you used MFT I know it is much slower.

Probably running in PIO mode.

The settings are set to use DMA if Available but Current Mode is showing as PIO

Uninstall the IDE controller channel that the drive is on, and reboot.

If that works, then you might want to run checkdisc on the drive, or the full diagnostic from WD.

Both of my Hard Drives are on Primary IDE. Will it not cause my computer to not work at all if I do that.
Just to be clear, when I select the properties of my Primary IDE, I see Drive 0 using DMA when available option (I believe this is my primary hard drive with OS on it)
Drive 1 ( I think the new hard drive with which I am having problem) shows using DMA when available but Current Mode is PIO

Both of my Hard Drives are on Primary IDE. Will it not cause my computer to not work at all if I do that.
Just to be clear, when I select the properties of my Primary IDE, I see Drive 0 using DMA when available option (I believe this is my primary hard drive with OS on it)
Drive 1 ( I think the new hard drive with which I am having problem) shows using DMA when available but Current Mode is PIO

Did that and it shows the Read speed of 1.9 MBPS. Now I know that is the problem but how do I solve it ?

Won't hurt a thing, just reinstall the controller driver and re-set it to DMA. Windows sometimes installs new drives in PIO, or switches to PIO if there are errors....hense the advice to check the drive. When you reboot, you may also want to stop into BIOS and make sure the primary master and slave are both set to "auto" detect for DMA.

I already uninstalled and re-installed again but it came in PIO mode only.
How do I go to BIOS during startup. I have never done that before. A detail description of how to go about checking and changing (if required) would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,
Your suggestion helped. I just figured out to get into BIOS and change the setting to AUTO which allowed now to use my Hard Drive into DMA Mode..

Thanks and have a nice night.