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#1
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New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo Edition 1TB)
Hi everyone,
I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line, and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level. If its already switched on when my computer boots up, it adds nearly a minute to the boot time while its little light is flashing away doing unknown things, If I turned the drive on after boot up, FreeramXP reports my available memory dropping to below 10MB while the drive takes nearly a minute to introduce itself to Windows. Does anyone else have this problem or any idea as to what might be causing it? Thanks, Paul |
#2
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New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo Edition 1TB)
"Paul" wrote in message oups.com... Hi everyone, I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line, and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level. If its already switched on when my computer boots up, it adds nearly a minute to the boot time while its little light is flashing away doing unknown things, If I turned the drive on after boot up, FreeramXP reports my available memory dropping to below 10MB while the drive takes nearly a minute to introduce itself to Windows. Does anyone else have this problem or any idea as to what might be causing it? Restart your machine. (without the Maxtor). Do a `Ctrl/Alt/Delete` to open Process Explorer. Tab to Processes. Then switch on your Maxtor, and watch to Processes page to see what eats CPU time. |
#3
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New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo Edition 1TB)
On 24 Feb 2007 01:11:43 -0800, "Paul"
wrote: Hi everyone, I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line, and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level. If its already switched on when my computer boots up, it adds nearly a minute to the boot time while its little light is flashing away doing unknown things, If I turned the drive on after boot up, FreeramXP reports my available memory dropping to below 10MB while the drive takes nearly a minute to introduce itself to Windows. Does anyone else have this problem or any idea as to what might be causing it? I don't have the answer but would warn against FreeRamXP, as XP automatically frees ram as needed, any effort to free that ram ahead of this automatic process just wastes some of the caching XP does for performance increases. The ideal XP system has close to zero free memory, it is caching everything possible which significantly reduces HDD rereads. |
#4
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New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III TurboEdition 1TB)
Paul wrote:
I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line, and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level. And what hard disk might that be? You should realize that not all newsreaders display the subject line as part of the message. Include the identification in your article. Google is only a relatively poor interface to Usenet. -- Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net) Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems. http://cbfalconer.home.att.net |
#5
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New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III TurboEdition 1TB)
CBFalconer wrote:
Paul wrote: I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line, and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level. And what hard disk might that be? You should realize that not all newsreaders display the subject line as part of the message. Include the identification in your article. Google is only a relatively poor interface to Usenet. It is this box. Two disks and an Oxford 924 chip. "Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition Hard Disk Drive with 1TB Storage Capacity" http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...ch3-turbo.html It may not be this exact chip, but this would give you an idea. "FireWire800, 400 and USB 2.0 to dual SATA storage controller OXUF924DSb" http://www.oxsemi.com/products/storage/OXUF924DSB.html A little hard to understand how this would make demands on system RAM. Unless there is some driver installed for the thing, for the One Touch function. Paul |
#6
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New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo Edition 1TB)
On Feb 25, 7:43 am, Paul wrote:
CBFalconer wrote: Paul wrote: I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line, and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level. And what hard disk might that be? You should realize that not all newsreaders display the subject line as part of the message. Include the identification in your article. Google is only a relatively poor interface to Usenet. It is this box. Two disks and an Oxford 924 chip. "Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition Hard Disk Drive with 1TB Storage Capacity"http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/maxtor-onetouch3-tur... It may not be this exact chip, but this would give you an idea. "FireWire800, 400 and USB 2.0 to dual SATA storage controller OXUF924DSb"http://www.oxsemi.com/products/storage/OXUF924DSB.html A little hard to understand how this would make demands on system RAM. Unless there is some driver installed for the thing, for the One Touch function. Paul Hi guys, I have stopped using Freeramxp but the problem still continues. I also can't see how simply turining on an external hard drive would create such a drag on the system. I tried the Task Manager idea from meerket, and it was the System process that jumped when I turned the hard drive on. CPU usage went from 2% to over 40%. There is a driver running for the drive, as this enables the button on the front to work. I have tried running it without the driver (one time after I decided to wipe my system and start over from scratch), and altough the onetouch button obviously didn't work, the drive was still producing the same drag on the system. I've mentioned this to several IT instructors I know and everyone is at a loss. Paul |
#7
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New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III TurboEdition 1TB)
Paul wrote:
I've mentioned this to several IT instructors I know and everyone is at a loss. Perhaps it's building a RAID or something - have you tried leaving it for a few hours? I suspect, as is the case with the vast majority of consumer grade RAID kit, this is actually a software RAID device using a Windows driver to emulate a hardware RAID solution. If that is the case, the driver will probably initialise the array at some point before you use it, and if all that disc IO has to happen over USB then it is likely to cause some kind of slowdown - how much that is depends entirely on the spec of the machine, but all of that IO has to be handled directly by the CPU. If that turns out not to be the case, you have to start troubleshooting from first principles. ie. Is the USB/Firewire connection working properly with other peripherals? Does the drive perform as expected when connected to a different PC or by the USB vs Firewire connections. Is the drive properly formatted? Are the cables known-good etc. Cheers Alex |
#8
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New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo Edition 1TB)
"Paul" wrote in message
oups.com... Hi everyone, I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line, and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level. If its already switched on when my computer boots up, it adds nearly a minute to the boot time while its little light is flashing away doing unknown things, If I turned the drive on after boot up, FreeramXP reports my available memory dropping to below 10MB while the drive takes nearly a minute to introduce itself to Windows. Does anyone else have this problem or any idea as to what might be causing it? Thanks, Paul As a shot in the dark, here are a few things that might help. Verify that your PC's FireWire interface is actually a full 9 pin FireWire 800 device and not an older FireWire 400 device. Try another cable, making sure it's up to the FireWire 800 specifications. And like someone else suggested, leave the system running for a while and see if the problem irons itself out as the raid system levels out. |
#9
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New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo Edition 1TB)
On Feb 25, 12:07 pm, "GlowingBlueMist" wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message oups.com... Hi everyone, I've recently purchased the hard drive mentioned in the subject line, and for some reason it slows everything down to a ridiculous level. If its already switched on when my computer boots up, it adds nearly a minute to the boot time while its little light is flashing away doing unknown things, If I turned the drive on after boot up, FreeramXP reports my available memory dropping to below 10MB while the drive takes nearly a minute to introduce itself to Windows. Does anyone else have this problem or any idea as to what might be causing it? Thanks, Paul As a shot in the dark, here are a few things that might help. Verify that your PC's FireWire interface is actually a full 9 pin FireWire 800 device and not an older FireWire 400 device. Try another cable, making sure it's up to the FireWire 800 specifications. And like someone else suggested, leave the system running for a while and see if the problem irons itself out as the raid system levels out.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Hi, Thanks for all the answers, you've been great. There's probably some things I should have mentioned earlier. Firstly, I've got the drive set up as RAID 0 so I can have full access to the entire 1TB. As this problem has been occuring every time I've turned the computer on for the past month, I don't know if that would have any impact on building the RAID. Second, I've got it connected via USB 2.0 (in its own port, not through a hub). I have tried Firewire 400 which actually improved the performance and cut the 1 minute lag I mentioned down to a few seconds. Unfortunately the Firewire connector on my laptop is on the side and right near the front of the case. I discovered that even a gentle knock caused the drive to disconnect from the system and sometimes it wouldn't reconnect unless I pulled the plug out and put it back in. Not good if I'm accessing the drive at the time. As much as I've love to go with the Firewire options, the position of the connector on my laptop doesn't really make it practical to have something permanently connected there. Paul |
#10
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New hard disk makes my computer slow (Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo Edition 1TB)
I forgot to mention that I'm also using the cable that came with the
drive, it is pretty good when it gets up to speed, and my two other external HD's seem to work fine. I'm starting to lean towards the idea that it something to do with the RAID and the fact that there are two disks inside it. Paul |
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