John B. Smith wrote:
On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 21:25:52 -0500, Paul
wrote:

John B. Smith wrote:
Forgot to mention both drives are SATA

On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 20:25:51 -0500, John B. Smith
wrote:

When backing up one logical drive today I noticed Drive Image was
taking a long time to 'scan' all the drives before it declared itself
ready.
(When I back up my system drive I use Macrium, but when I back up this
particular drive I use old Power Quest Drive Image because it allows
me to set a password).
Eventually I was able to back up the drive. It did seem to take longer
than usual though.
For some reason I later used HD Tune to ck my 2 drives, the 500g
system drive and the 1000g data drive. The 500 reported the usual
170Mb per second. The 1000 reports only 4Mb per second!
Otherwise HD Tune reports the drive healthy and working.
I'm pretty sure it really has slowed down from the above 2
indications. Anybody have any idea what's going on?
You're in PIO mode.

This shouldn't happen.

When there is a measurable error rate, the driver scheme
changes transfer rates, in an attempt to reduce the error
rate. But it doesn't take that many "gear down" attempts
by the driver, until it's in polled transfer mode,
a word is transferred at a time by the CPU. That
destroys transfer rate performance.

When you look in the appropriate dialog, you'll see
that DMA is no longer listed, and it's changed to PIO.
But I can tell just by your transfer rate, what just
happened. "4" is a popular number - that's what I'm using
as evidence.

*******

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/...-out-or-crc-er

devmgmt.msc

Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers node.

Double-click the controller for which you want
to restore the typical DMA transfer mode.

Click the Driver tab.
Click Uninstall.

When the process completes, restart your computer. When
Windows restarts, the hard disk controller is re-enumerated and
the transfer mode is reset to the default value for each device
that is connected to the controller.

Paul

Thank you much I didn't expect to zero in on this problem so quickly.
I booted into Win7 and when I finally managed to download an HD Tune
it said my suspect disk xfer speed was normal on the 1000g drive. That
certainly eliminates the drive from consideration.

In XP Device Manager shows:
2 Primary IDE channels,
2 Secondary IDE Channels
and 2 Serial ATA Storage Controllers (these being Controller 1 - 2920,
and Controller 2 - 2926)

The Secondary IDE controller does say it is currently in PIO mode.
But seems like the controllers I should be concerned
about are the SERIAL ones? and they don't give any
indication of their xfer mode.
So I wonder how I can determine which of these 6 listed controllers
are the one I should uninstall the driver on? I'm too chicken to start
deleting drivers without knowing which one is driving that 1000g
drive. The 500g drive has XP and Win7 partitions and that BCD stuff on
it I'd hate to disturb.

Let's take my current motherboard as an example.

If you put the SATA ports in Compatible mode,
it shows up as *IDE* in Device manager.

My machine uses a P5E Deluxe motherboard.

https://www.asus.com/media/global/pr...APcjm9_500.jpg

From lower left towards right in the picture.

6 x SATA connectors (3x2 tower connector stacks)
1 x IDE connector for two devices (red colored right-angle IDE)
1 x Floppy disk drive connector (black, vertical connector)

Southbridge (X48/ICH9R)

- 6 x SATA3.0 Gb/s ports (pure SATA Southbridge)
- 1 x UltraDMA133 IDE (Jmicron chip)
- 1 x Floppy disk drive connector (SuperI/O)

The motherboard BIOS supports "Compatible" and "Enhanced" modes
for IDE emulation on the SATA ports.

Now, let's look at Device manager. (The PostImage web site
sometimes inserts extra underscore characters as it sees fit)

https://s7.postimg.org/4hifp2ouz/my_...ulates_IDE.gif

The three plugged-in hard drives are in "pretend" UDMA5
mode. Actual transfers happen at cable speed, not UDMA5.

However, I *have* had one of the ports drop to PIO
several times, until I replaced the cable. I had to
follow the article I presented, as a workaround.

There is an error counter on the hard drive. The error
counter cannot be reset. It gives some indication of
cable damage, in the transmit direction, towards
the drive. You can use that counter as an advanced
indication of trouble. In the reverse direction,
towards the motherboard, cable errors could eventually
drop the interface to actual PIO mode. The PIO mode
is emulated, and the CPU is peeking some buffer,
a 32-bit word at a time.

And yes, you can even delete the boot drive, and it
will be re-discovered on boot. And the mode gets reset.
I know, because I've done it :-) More than once. Grrr.

Paul