Windows 7: Windows 7 slow performance with ide HD

Hi

I got a IDE HD in my PC which is a storage drive, when ever i copy or move files from that IDE HD it take a long time as like 10GB of data for 3 hours and it eats up my processing power too.

Does anyone has a same issused as me mind giving me some tips? Thank in advance



Specs:
Motherboard: Asus P5QL Pro
RAM: 2GB
Graphic Card: ATi Readon 5770

Are your other drives SATA?

Have you run scandisk, etc?

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Try opening the device manager (right click "computer" and select "manage", then "device manager" in the left pane). Open the IDE ATA Controller category, double click each entry and make sure DMA is enabled. Also open the "Disk Drives" section, double click the hard drive and make sure "write caching" is enabled (on the Policy tab). See the screenshot. Hope this helps.

Excellent advice...

I just wanted to add there might be a cabling issue with the IDE drive. Depending on the drive's age you may find that you need a new "double wired" IDE cable to get DMA to enable reliably. The older 40 wire cables won't work above DMA 2.

I have a question about "write caching" with USB storage drives. Mine are set for quick removal even though they are connected all the time. I've always kept them that way due to my lack of knowledge on the warning for the write caching option "but you must use the Safely Remove Hardware notification icon to disconnect the device safely". My question, is turning off the laptop with the disks usb cable still plugged in, considered as disconnecting the device as it pertains to the warning? My guess is that it's not but have never researched it and have always went with the default of quick removal since the drives have always performed well enough to suit me. On the other hand, if I can enable the write caching, then why not do so.

No. The risk is that you will copy a file onto the thumb drive then pull it out before windows purges the write cache to it... an interval of about 5 seconds.

There should be a little icon near your clock for safely removing hardware... if you click it and select your device you can force windows to flush it's cache for that device so it can be removed without risk of data loss. (It's kinda like the eject function on a CD burner)

With write caching off (quick removal) the risk is eliminated because windows writes all data immediately.

So, shutting down the laptop, usb drive still connected, write caching enabled, windows would purge the cache prior to shutdown? I guess what I'm asking is, would I have to safely remove hardware prior to shutting down the laptop? Can I leave them continously connected as they are now with write caching enabled?

Yes you can leave them connected. No need to "safely remove" before shutting down.

Thanks, is there any noticeable performance increase by enabling the write caching?