Extremely slow file transfers

[R Lucas]

Hello Anyone

I am currently running a 550MHz Pentium III with 384MB
RAM and 80G hard drive (2 actual 40 GB drives), with
windows XP installed.

The two drives are each split into two 20 GB partitions.
They are both 7200 rpm ATA 100 drives on a Maxtor ATA 100
PCI controller. I am running SP1 and the latest
controller drives from Maxtor and each of the drive
partitions is formatted NTFS.

Whenever I transfer large amounts of data (100MB or more)
it takes an extremely long time to copy those files
between drives. Copying on the same drive is faster but
is still slow. I tried copying 2GB of data from one
drive to the other and it took over 5 hours! Surely it
should not take this long. Both of the drives are
enabled Ultra DMA as the Maxtor documentation says any
drives connected to their card are automatically Ultra
DMA and you don't have to activate it in the operating
system. The drives are both configured as master and
they are both on their own channel on the Maxtor card.
They are connected with 80 line ATA 100 EIDE cables and
the machine is in good shape all around. I also have the
primary controller on the motherboard disabled in windows
and the secondary controller is handling my CD RW and my
DVD ROM, there are no other devices on the same channels
as the ATA 100 drives.

If anyone as any idea why this might be happening please
email me and let me know, I can't seem to find any
information about this problem on microsofts website or
maxtor's website.

Thank you in advance!

Cheers

R Lucas

[Bob Linford]

I don't have the answer for you. I have noted similar behavior on two of my
XP Pro SP1 machines. Both are Dell Dimension 8100 1.8GH P4 systems that
have a 7200 rpm 60GB NTFS system disk on the motherboard controller and 2
7200 rpm IBM 180GXP 120 GB NTFS disks set up as masters on separate channels
of Promise Ultra 100 Tx2 PCI controllers. For 200MB to 400MB file transfers
from one IBM disk to the other, the data moves at about 30 MB per second.
When I attempt to move 2 to 4 GB files, the transfer rate slows to 4 to 8 MB
per second with pronounced head traffic noise audible. Often after copying
a large file (2 to 4 GB) from one disk to the other, disk head traffic
continues after the file transfer. When that happens, attempts to delete
the source or destination file report an error because another program has
the file open. Disk compression is not enabled nor is file indexing. DMA
is enabled. Transfers from one of the disks on the Promise controller to
the system disk on the motherboard controller or visa versa, also
demonstrate the same behavior.
It seems like XP or my hardware is having a problem moving large files. If
you find the answer, please let me know.
Bob L.

"R Lucas" > wrote in message
...
> Hello Anyone
>
> I am currently running a 550MHz Pentium III with 384MB
> RAM and 80G hard drive (2 actual 40 GB drives), with
> windows XP installed.
>
> The two drives are each split into two 20 GB partitions.
> They are both 7200 rpm ATA 100 drives on a Maxtor ATA 100
> PCI controller. I am running SP1 and the latest
> controller drives from Maxtor and each of the drive
> partitions is formatted NTFS.
>
> Whenever I transfer large amounts of data (100MB or more)
> it takes an extremely long time to copy those files
> between drives. Copying on the same drive is faster but
> is still slow. I tried copying 2GB of data from one
> drive to the other and it took over 5 hours! Surely it
> should not take this long. Both of the drives are
> enabled Ultra DMA as the Maxtor documentation says any
@unbc.ca