Hard Drive Reads Slow @ 3.7MB/s

Well, that explains some of it!!

Dale

 

Dale: Despite Rockster's apparent lack of approval and Johanna's remarks in the background, I do have a goal I'm trying to reach. Not that Rockster and Johanna have not been a great deal of help in the past, because they have. Understand I'm not doing what I'm doing to win someone's approval, nor to be grandstanding or hot dogging, just trying to make my own way in the world. And, just like most people I need some help from time to time.

You see, I set out to establish a sort of utopian world, computer wise. I first bought an IBM Aptiva running Windows 98 in 1998. After spending as much as the machine cost in long distance support calls to IBM (no 800 number) I was able to keep it running for a day or two between crashes. Of course that did involve using their recovery disc about ever 6 weeks or so and starting over from scratch.

I decided then that I would build my own machine and since then I have built 6, 3 of which, including this one are currently working and on a home LAN. I am very proud of these machines.

Catastrophe consists of cannibalized parts from the first two machines I built, along with some new upgrades. For this machine I bought a Soyo Dragon Ultra Platinum MOBO. It has the capacity to run 8 drives. 4 drives on the IDE channels and 4 drives on the RAID controller.

My utopian computer dream world consists of a machine that does three things. That is, It will run programs that it was designed to run or that were designed to run on it without crashing, that it has enough hard drive space to store the AVI movies that I make of my kids playing sports, and it have a redundant automatic backup (I am 71 years old and tend to be absent minded) so that in the event of a hard drive failure (I have had several) or a program crash (I have had hundreds, maybe more) it could be restored to a working state without the loss of data or functionality. (especially like the pictures of my kids from kindergarten up to 3rd grade or the four years of financial records that disappeared with one of those drive failures)

It seems that in my innocence of all things computer, I failed to realize that this dream would be difficult if not impossible to achieve. But, being the stubborn and tenacious person that I am, I intend to persevere. I am doggedly determined to continue to attempt to achieve these goals.

There are some who advise me to start over, wipe the slate clean as they say, and begin again at the beginning. Well, I did that any number of times with the IBM machine and the first machine I built, only to shortly to find myself out to sea again in that same leaky boat, bailing furiously, but sinking all the same. I am disinclined to wipe out years of hard work, only to find myself again in that same boat.

Besides, I am ever the optimist, believing that the next tweak, the next registry edit, the next SFC or the next bit of advice from somebody on this board will magically make the problem disappear.

So Dale, if you are still inclined to help, I will answer your questions to the best of my ability.

Yes

Yes, Artec 48X CD R/RW

Primary: Pioneer DVD-R\RW
Slave: Generic DVD ROM

VIA Hyperion 4 in 1

Yes, works like a charm.

First noticed time out error when looking to find cause of slow write speed. Write speed problem cured, but error continues to show up 4 times on each boot. Two times, then "Information SNMP started successfully" then two more times. Always the same, IDE\IDE\drive 0.

Continues to appear even after drive 0 disconnected. But I guess that kind of makes sense. If it's not there, it can hardly respond.

Tonight it appears 9 times between 6:57 and 7:05 PM, I have no idea what I or the machine was doing at that time.
The next entry is "Logical disc management service entered the stopped state "

That's about it. I will greatly appreciate any help you may be kind enough to render.

Martin

 

No Lack of Approval from these quarters - 100% Admiration.

And, don't ever change, my friend ..........

 

I have just joined and was reading this thread. The easiest way to correct this is to go into the device manager, IDE ATA\ATAPI controllers and for both primary and secondary, go to Drivers and update the driver. I know this seems wierd, but it happened to me when I installed a DVD burner. I couldn't even burn a CD or DVD because the drives ran soooo slow.
Hope that helps.

 

Hey Kbucky: Welcome to the board. But, I been there, done that, no help.

Thanks for chiming in though, your help is always appreciated. If you have any other ideas, let 'em fly!

Martin

 

Maybe you were trying to update with a different driver than XP will select. When you see that part that you were talking about in the beginning of this thread about xp trying to do dma, and if you still see that, your drive will run that way. Just select to update and let xp find that driver. I spent a week on this problem before I noticed that in device manager. Why it changed I have no idea, but I do know it was done during my install of a DVD burner.

 

Kbucky: After updating the drivers and getting a message that the best were already installed, what I did was uninstall the controllers (except RAID) which included all drives, reinstalled them. That got drive working DMA mode 5, fastest drive on machine now, but still get those confounding "the drive did not respond" ATAPI errors in Event Viewer, System. MSFT Knowledge base seems to think this is a SCSI error. I do have SCSI through High Point RAID controller, but this drive is not on that controller. In general, machine is running excellent, detect no other symptoms except trying to load "Computer Management ", "Drive Management" in Management Console, sometimes loads in 90+ seconds, sometimes times out.

Is it possiible I'm looking at the wrong drive, that the culprit drive is the boot drive on the HighPoint controller? You gave me an Idea, I'll see if I can update those drivers. Will post back.

Thanks, Martin

 

Maybe you turned off a service?

 

Proceed with caution Martin. XP wants to put its own drivers in for the Highpoint controller and if that happens or once that happens you will have to rebuild your main squeeze. Almost impossible to overwrite or rollback.

 

Hey Rockster: Your warning came a little late, by the time I read it I had already updated the drivers. As a matter of fact I was kind of surprised that Windows found updated drivers, I have no idea of where they came from, but in checking in Device Manager, see that it has one High Point driver and one from Windows. So somehow Windows found an updated High Point driver and installed it.

Now for the good news. The ATAPI error is gone from envent viewer.

Now, I'm still not sure what fixed it, because after rebooting with new drivers installed, the error was still there. On the third reboot, gone. And rebooting again, no error.

Unfortunately, Catastrophe will not leave me alone, still pestering. Now getting an error on shutdown: "dwwinn failed to intialize" I had this error some time ago and don't remember the fix. I'm going to post on XP board.

Of course if you know a quick and dirty fix, let me know.

Again, thanks to everybody who contributed to this post. I really appreciate your help. Like I said in a post, I can't do this alone.

Martin

 

Martin, you are never alone...Catastophy lurks in a dark cloak behind a doorway...and that sip of wine she is offering is either ambrosia or poison, but make no mistake, your Lady takes things to the extreme.

For all you youngsters out there, beware of Ladies like Catastophy. Yes, the nectar is sweet, and the pleasure intense, but so is the pain when she leaves. When you flirt with a siren, the dance is sweet, but the price is always high. Martin knew this from the start, and he succumbed to her charms and his lust anyway. But hey, he's a grown man, and he has enjoyed every thrilling minute of his waltz with the Lady Catastrophy.

Johanna

 

Darn - Martin, to hear Johanna tell it - you could probably advertise Catastrophy as a mail-order bride and clear enough cash to replace her 4-5 times over. After that description, your "Main Squeeze" will probably command top dollar - maybe not quite as valuable as a 10 year old grilled cheese sandwich with a bite out of it, but nothing to scoff at either.

On the serious side, I hope you fair better than I have when your native Highpoint drivers get bumped by XP's own. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. My experience re: this problem is not isolated - have had it happen in four different machines and it crippled the ability to run 2 HDD's on the secondary (#4) RAID header. Repair install may or may not permit you to over-ride what just got installed should the problem (I hope not) happen to you. Just remember F4 and have your native drivers ready - I've had mixed results - only sure fire solution I have found is an image restoration or a clean install. If there is a magic quick fix, I'd sure like to hear about it too.

 

Well Rockster, it appears that Johanna in her eloquence is right about my dear girl, even though she doesn't seem to be able to remember how her name is spelled,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Sell her????? You gotta be kidding. Sell one of my kids first.

Unfortunately my report of the problem being solved was premature. Seems that in order to avoid the ATAPI error, I must have a disc in the Primary master IDE channel 1 slave CD drive. With disc in drive, no error, no disc = ATAPI error. Accidentally discovered.

So, instead of one less problem I have one more that I mentioned before, on shutdown, Error: dwwin fails to initialize because the workstation is shutting down.

AARRRRRRGH!

I guess I should be thankful that the RAID controller still works with the updated driver. Like I said, I don't know where Windows found it, but I let it go on line to search, so maybe from the web.

Martin >

 

Martin,
The name of my computer is FudderMucker. (Christer, can you translate that?) LOL

I give up. Adding "catastrophy" to the spell checkers. Even I'm getting confused any more- they both look right to me!

both from this thread...
Johanna

 

Your point being that I am confused too? Not surprised are you?

Martin

 

What light, through yonder Windows XP, breaks? 'Tis the East and Catastrophy is the sun.

Sorry, just thought I'd add that.


Matt

 

At least, you spelled her name right, which is more than I can say for myself!

Martin

 

Hi All.

Not only do I not know how to spell, seems my computer skills are minimal as well. I am posting this to admit how stupid I can be, creating errors where none should exist.

That simile is supposed to convey embarrassment, but I don't think it is adequate under the circumstances.

Latest blunder. When the Plextor drive arrived, I moved and reconnected the Artec CD-R/RW drive as a slave drive. It previously had been a master drive. Did I change the jumper? I did not. Stupid!

The fact that the error disappeared with a disc in that drive gave me a clue.

Pulled the drive, changed the jumper, reconected the drive, error gone, and I'm sure it will stay gone. (That is until I move a drive and not the jumper.)

Any chastisement you send in this direction is well deserved.

Martin

 

Martin

Stuff happens, I wouldn't beat myself up over it. Look on the bright side, you were smart enough to recognize it, found it, got it corrected and the rest is history.* Now, if Johanna would send you some of those worms she's been eating, you could go fishing and leave Catastrophy alone for a while.

I only wish I could join you - now that Surferdude2 enrolled me in remedial ESL class along with the extra homework Admin assigned for Diplomacy 101, I'll be lucky if I can find time to knock out a couple of one liners in a post card to Santa attesting to my "good behavior ". All my stockings have holes in em', the chimney is filled with soot and my dog loves milk and cookies - it could be a long winter down here.



* Yes, recognizable grammatically incorrect used of mixed tense, but you get my drift, huh?

 

Great to see it all works now!!!!!!!!!!!!

Always back to the basics. But not too far back.

Dale