Hard Drive access

My Dimension 3000, is slow accessing the hard drives. I have for a long time
thought this was the case, but after using a HP Vectra recently with a 750
Pentium 3, less memory and a similar spec hard drive arrangement, than my
Dell, I am convinced there is something wrong with my machine.

Checking the bios, I have the original Samsung 80gig master hard drive and a
120 gig slave harddrive on a 80 wire ribbon cable, connected to the Primary
IDE and a DVD read writer connected as the master on the secondary ide lead.

Both hard drives are formatted as NTFS and the pc is running windows XP home
edition with all Microsoft updates.

I have attached a test of the drives as tested by HD tune,in the hope that
somebody can help identify any thing that may be wrong.

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP0802N Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 59.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.5 ms
Burst Rate : 70.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.9%


HD Tune: IC35L120AVV207-0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 42.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 71.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.1%

did you check that both drives are jumpered properly with cable-select
and that the bios is enabled for both drives to auto?
if this is not the case, drive performance may suffer.

also, you may have spyware or other malware running on that machine that
will hinder your performance.
what processes and how many are running in the background?

i usually tune systems to about 30 processes.
out of the box, dimensions come with as many as 70 or 80.
also recent versions of virus software like norton and mcafee have been
known to be very bloaty and choke resources.


Paul wrote:
My Dimension 3000, is slow accessing the hard drives. I have for a long time
thought this was the case, but after using a HP Vectra recently with a 750
Pentium 3, less memory and a similar spec hard drive arrangement, than my
Dell, I am convinced there is something wrong with my machine.

Checking the bios, I have the original Samsung 80gig master hard drive and a
120 gig slave harddrive on a 80 wire ribbon cable, connected to the Primary
IDE and a DVD read writer connected as the master on the secondary ide lead.

Both hard drives are formatted as NTFS and the pc is running windows XP home
edition with all Microsoft updates.

I have attached a test of the drives as tested by HD tune,in the hope that
somebody can help identify any thing that may be wrong.

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP0802N Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 59.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.5 ms
Burst Rate : 70.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.9%


HD Tune: IC35L120AVV207-0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 42.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 71.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.1%

I have now checked the jumpers and found that the Samsung (drive with the
os) is configured with CS and the IC35 was jumpered as a slave. However
changing it to CS has had no effect.

Interestingly swapping the drives on the ribbon cable so that the drive with
the os was on the plug labelled Drive 1 and putting the "slave" drive on the
plug labelled Drive 0 did not stop the PC booting, but again it did not
speed up the time to display the folder structure when I first load
explorer. This is around 10 seconds from hitting the explorer application.
This is quick the second time as I guess the structure gets cached.

I regularly check my system with an upto date version of spybot, and do not
hit sites which tend to load spyware and other malicious programs.

I am also very careful over loading so called helper toolbars and programs,
so the processors running currently 34 with taskbar and ol express running.
Norton 2006 accounting for a fair few of the other processors.

Thanks for the direction so far.



"Jay B" wrote in message
...
did you check that both drives are jumpered properly with cable-select and
that the bios is enabled for both drives to auto?
if this is not the case, drive performance may suffer.

also, you may have spyware or other malware running on that machine that
will hinder your performance.
what processes and how many are running in the background?

i usually tune systems to about 30 processes.
out of the box, dimensions come with as many as 70 or 80.
also recent versions of virus software like norton and mcafee have been
known to be very bloaty and choke resources.


Paul wrote:
My Dimension 3000, is slow accessing the hard drives. I have for a long
time
thought this was the case, but after using a HP Vectra recently with a
750
Pentium 3, less memory and a similar spec hard drive arrangement, than my
Dell, I am convinced there is something wrong with my machine.

Checking the bios, I have the original Samsung 80gig master hard drive
and a 120 gig slave harddrive on a 80 wire ribbon cable, connected to the
Primary IDE and a DVD read writer connected as the master on the
secondary ide lead.

Both hard drives are formatted as NTFS and the pc is running windows XP
home edition with all Microsoft updates.

I have attached a test of the drives as tested by HD tune,in the hope
that somebody can help identify any thing that may be wrong.

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP0802N Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 59.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.5 ms
Burst Rate : 70.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.9%


HD Tune: IC35L120AVV207-0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 42.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 71.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.1%

what speed is your dim3000? also how much physical memory?
if you look at task manager, on the 3rd tab, what is the total commit
charge? is this more than the total physical memory?
then that could be another reason.
you can also try and right click norton in the systray and temporarily
disable it and see if it makes a difference.

Paul wrote:
I have now checked the jumpers and found that the Samsung (drive with the
os) is configured with CS and the IC35 was jumpered as a slave. However
changing it to CS has had no effect.

Interestingly swapping the drives on the ribbon cable so that the drive with
the os was on the plug labelled Drive 1 and putting the "slave" drive on the
plug labelled Drive 0 did not stop the PC booting, but again it did not
speed up the time to display the folder structure when I first load
explorer. This is around 10 seconds from hitting the explorer application.
This is quick the second time as I guess the structure gets cached.

I regularly check my system with an upto date version of spybot, and do not
hit sites which tend to load spyware and other malicious programs.

I am also very careful over loading so called helper toolbars and programs,
so the processors running currently 34 with taskbar and ol express running.
Norton 2006 accounting for a fair few of the other processors.

Thanks for the direction so far.



"Jay B" wrote in message
...
did you check that both drives are jumpered properly with cable-select and
that the bios is enabled for both drives to auto?
if this is not the case, drive performance may suffer.

also, you may have spyware or other malware running on that machine that
will hinder your performance.
what processes and how many are running in the background?

i usually tune systems to about 30 processes.
out of the box, dimensions come with as many as 70 or 80.
also recent versions of virus software like norton and mcafee have been
known to be very bloaty and choke resources.


Paul wrote:
My Dimension 3000, is slow accessing the hard drives. I have for a long
time
thought this was the case, but after using a HP Vectra recently with a
750
Pentium 3, less memory and a similar spec hard drive arrangement, than my
Dell, I am convinced there is something wrong with my machine.

Checking the bios, I have the original Samsung 80gig master hard drive
and a 120 gig slave harddrive on a 80 wire ribbon cable, connected to the
Primary IDE and a DVD read writer connected as the master on the
secondary ide lead.

Both hard drives are formatted as NTFS and the pc is running windows XP
home edition with all Microsoft updates.

I have attached a test of the drives as tested by HD tune,in the hope
that somebody can help identify any thing that may be wrong.

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP0802N Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 59.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.5 ms
Burst Rate : 70.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.9%


HD Tune: IC35L120AVV207-0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 42.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 71.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.1%

Did you confirm that both drives are listed as AUTO in the BIOS? If not,
they'll run SLOOOOOW.

Also, how much memory?

Tom
"Paul" wrote in message
news
I have now checked the jumpers and found that the Samsung (drive with the
os) is configured with CS and the IC35 was jumpered as a slave. However
changing it to CS has had no effect.

Interestingly swapping the drives on the ribbon cable so that the drive
with the os was on the plug labelled Drive 1 and putting the "slave" drive
on the plug labelled Drive 0 did not stop the PC booting, but again it did
not speed up the time to display the folder structure when I first load
explorer. This is around 10 seconds from hitting the explorer application.
This is quick the second time as I guess the structure gets cached.

I regularly check my system with an upto date version of spybot, and do
not hit sites which tend to load spyware and other malicious programs.

I am also very careful over loading so called helper toolbars and
programs, so the processors running currently 34 with taskbar and ol
express running. Norton 2006 accounting for a fair few of the other
processors.

Thanks for the direction so far.



"Jay B" wrote in message
...
did you check that both drives are jumpered properly with cable-select
and that the bios is enabled for both drives to auto?
if this is not the case, drive performance may suffer.

also, you may have spyware or other malware running on that machine that
will hinder your performance.
what processes and how many are running in the background?

i usually tune systems to about 30 processes.
out of the box, dimensions come with as many as 70 or 80.
also recent versions of virus software like norton and mcafee have been
known to be very bloaty and choke resources.


Paul wrote:
My Dimension 3000, is slow accessing the hard drives. I have for a long
time
thought this was the case, but after using a HP Vectra recently with a
750
Pentium 3, less memory and a similar spec hard drive arrangement, than
my Dell, I am convinced there is something wrong with my machine.

Checking the bios, I have the original Samsung 80gig master hard drive
and a 120 gig slave harddrive on a 80 wire ribbon cable, connected to
the Primary IDE and a DVD read writer connected as the master on the
secondary ide lead.

Both hard drives are formatted as NTFS and the pc is running windows XP
home edition with all Microsoft updates.

I have attached a test of the drives as tested by HD tune,in the hope
that somebody can help identify any thing that may be wrong.

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP0802N Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 59.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.5 ms
Burst Rate : 70.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.9%


HD Tune: IC35L120AVV207-0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 42.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 71.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.1%

It is a Pentium 4 with hyperthreading enabled using a 3gig processor. and it
has 500mb of ram.

The Physical memory total is 522220 and the commit is currently 293024, so
plenty spare there.

I tried disabling Norton but that only made a small difference if any.

The explorer window opens fairly quickly (within a second) displaying the C:
drive path down to the Start Menu, the My documents folder and My Network
Places. Then after the further 8 seconds or so the rest of the directory
structure appears for the c: drive and the D and E (dvd) drives appear


"Jay B" wrote in message
...
what speed is your dim3000? also how much physical memory?
if you look at task manager, on the 3rd tab, what is the total commit
charge? is this more than the total physical memory?
then that could be another reason.
you can also try and right click norton in the systray and temporarily
disable it and see if it makes a difference.

Paul wrote:
I have now checked the jumpers and found that the Samsung (drive with the
os) is configured with CS and the IC35 was jumpered as a slave. However
changing it to CS has had no effect.

Interestingly swapping the drives on the ribbon cable so that the drive
with the os was on the plug labelled Drive 1 and putting the "slave" drive
on the plug labelled Drive 0 did not stop the PC booting, but again it did
not speed up the time to display the folder structure when I first load
explorer. This is around 10 seconds from hitting the explorer application.
This is quick the second time as I guess the structure gets cached.

I regularly check my system with an upto date version of spybot, and do
not hit sites which tend to load spyware and other malicious programs.

I am also very careful over loading so called helper toolbars and
programs, so the processors running currently 34 with taskbar and ol
express running. Norton 2006 accounting for a fair few of the other
processors.

Thanks for the direction so far.



"Jay B" wrote in message
...
did you check that both drives are jumpered properly with cable-select
and that the bios is enabled for both drives to auto?
if this is not the case, drive performance may suffer.

also, you may have spyware or other malware running on that machine that
will hinder your performance.
what processes and how many are running in the background?

i usually tune systems to about 30 processes.
out of the box, dimensions come with as many as 70 or 80.
also recent versions of virus software like norton and mcafee have been
known to be very bloaty and choke resources.


Paul wrote:
My Dimension 3000, is slow accessing the hard drives. I have for a long
time
thought this was the case, but after using a HP Vectra recently with a
750
Pentium 3, less memory and a similar spec hard drive arrangement, than
my Dell, I am convinced there is something wrong with my machine.

Checking the bios, I have the original Samsung 80gig master hard drive
and a 120 gig slave harddrive on a 80 wire ribbon cable, connected to
the Primary IDE and a DVD read writer connected as the master on the
secondary ide lead.

Both hard drives are formatted as NTFS and the pc is running windows XP
home edition with all Microsoft updates.

I have attached a test of the drives as tested by HD tune,in the hope
that somebody can help identify any thing that may be wrong.

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP0802N Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 59.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.5 ms
Burst Rate : 70.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.9%


HD Tune: IC35L120AVV207-0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 42.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 71.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.1%

All 3 drives including the DVD writer are set to Auto in the bios. I fell
foul of that a few months ago, whilst adding drives to the secondary line.
I don't think the bios is the best one ever written, as you can't leave this
set to auto, as it fails if there is no drive in position. That is it can
not automatically detect there isn't a drive, and forget it, it has to bug
and tell you to change to None.

500 meg is what the machine is running which is 250 meg more than the HP I
was using 2 days ago. My Del is a far superior spec to the HP but there is
no significant performance that I notice.



"Tom Scales" wrote in message
. ..
Did you confirm that both drives are listed as AUTO in the BIOS? If not,
they'll run SLOOOOOW.

Also, how much memory?

Tom
"Paul" wrote in message
news
I have now checked the jumpers and found that the Samsung (drive with the
os) is configured with CS and the IC35 was jumpered as a slave. However
changing it to CS has had no effect.

Interestingly swapping the drives on the ribbon cable so that the drive
with the os was on the plug labelled Drive 1 and putting the "slave"
drive on the plug labelled Drive 0 did not stop the PC booting, but again
it did not speed up the time to display the folder structure when I first
load explorer. This is around 10 seconds from hitting the explorer
application. This is quick the second time as I guess the structure gets
cached.

I regularly check my system with an upto date version of spybot, and do
not hit sites which tend to load spyware and other malicious programs.

I am also very careful over loading so called helper toolbars and
programs, so the processors running currently 34 with taskbar and ol
express running. Norton 2006 accounting for a fair few of the other
processors.

Thanks for the direction so far.



"Jay B" wrote in message
...
did you check that both drives are jumpered properly with cable-select
and that the bios is enabled for both drives to auto?
if this is not the case, drive performance may suffer.

also, you may have spyware or other malware running on that machine that
will hinder your performance.
what processes and how many are running in the background?

i usually tune systems to about 30 processes.
out of the box, dimensions come with as many as 70 or 80.
also recent versions of virus software like norton and mcafee have been
known to be very bloaty and choke resources.


Paul wrote:
My Dimension 3000, is slow accessing the hard drives. I have for a long
time
thought this was the case, but after using a HP Vectra recently with a
750
Pentium 3, less memory and a similar spec hard drive arrangement, than
my Dell, I am convinced there is something wrong with my machine.

Checking the bios, I have the original Samsung 80gig master hard drive
and a 120 gig slave harddrive on a 80 wire ribbon cable, connected to
the Primary IDE and a DVD read writer connected as the master on the
secondary ide lead.

Both hard drives are formatted as NTFS and the pc is running windows XP
home edition with all Microsoft updates.

I have attached a test of the drives as tested by HD tune,in the hope
that somebody can help identify any thing that may be wrong.

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP0802N Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 59.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.5 ms
Burst Rate : 70.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.9%


HD Tune: IC35L120AVV207-0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 42.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 71.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.1%

Try disconnecting the DVD drive and turning it off. Also, how much main
memory? If I recall, you have 512MB, which is borderline on a machine with
integrated video.

For most apps, you won't tell a difference between a P3-800 and a P4-3.6

"Paul" wrote in message
...
All 3 drives including the DVD writer are set to Auto in the bios. I fell
foul of that a few months ago, whilst adding drives to the secondary line.
I don't think the bios is the best one ever written, as you can't leave
this set to auto, as it fails if there is no drive in position. That is it
can not automatically detect there isn't a drive, and forget it, it has to
bug and tell you to change to None.

500 meg is what the machine is running which is 250 meg more than the HP I
was using 2 days ago. My Del is a far superior spec to the HP but there is
no significant performance that I notice.



"Tom Scales" wrote in message
. ..
Did you confirm that both drives are listed as AUTO in the BIOS? If not,
they'll run SLOOOOOW.

Also, how much memory?

Tom
"Paul" wrote in message
news
I have now checked the jumpers and found that the Samsung (drive with the
os) is configured with CS and the IC35 was jumpered as a slave. However
changing it to CS has had no effect.

Interestingly swapping the drives on the ribbon cable so that the drive
with the os was on the plug labelled Drive 1 and putting the "slave"
drive on the plug labelled Drive 0 did not stop the PC booting, but
again it did not speed up the time to display the folder structure when
I first load explorer. This is around 10 seconds from hitting the
explorer application. This is quick the second time as I guess the
structure gets cached.

I regularly check my system with an upto date version of spybot, and do
not hit sites which tend to load spyware and other malicious programs.

I am also very careful over loading so called helper toolbars and
programs, so the processors running currently 34 with taskbar and ol
express running. Norton 2006 accounting for a fair few of the other
processors.

Thanks for the direction so far.



"Jay B" wrote in message
...
did you check that both drives are jumpered properly with cable-select
and that the bios is enabled for both drives to auto?
if this is not the case, drive performance may suffer.

also, you may have spyware or other malware running on that machine
that will hinder your performance.
what processes and how many are running in the background?

i usually tune systems to about 30 processes.
out of the box, dimensions come with as many as 70 or 80.
also recent versions of virus software like norton and mcafee have been
known to be very bloaty and choke resources.


Paul wrote:
My Dimension 3000, is slow accessing the hard drives. I have for a
long time
thought this was the case, but after using a HP Vectra recently with a
750
Pentium 3, less memory and a similar spec hard drive arrangement, than
my Dell, I am convinced there is something wrong with my machine.

Checking the bios, I have the original Samsung 80gig master hard drive
and a 120 gig slave harddrive on a 80 wire ribbon cable, connected to
the Primary IDE and a DVD read writer connected as the master on the
secondary ide lead.

Both hard drives are formatted as NTFS and the pc is running windows
XP home edition with all Microsoft updates.

I have attached a test of the drives as tested by HD tune,in the hope
that somebody can help identify any thing that may be wrong.

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP0802N Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 59.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.5 ms
Burst Rate : 70.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.9%


HD Tune: IC35L120AVV207-0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 42.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 71.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.1%

I have the DVD disconnected now but there is still the delay in discovering
the full directory structure.



"Tom Scales" wrote in message
...
Try disconnecting the DVD drive and turning it off. Also, how much main
memory? If I recall, you have 512MB, which is borderline on a machine with
integrated video.

For most apps, you won't tell a difference between a P3-800 and a P4-3.6

"Paul" wrote in message
...
All 3 drives including the DVD writer are set to Auto in the bios. I fell
foul of that a few months ago, whilst adding drives to the secondary line.
I don't think the bios is the best one ever written, as you can't leave
this set to auto, as it fails if there is no drive in position. That is it
can not automatically detect there isn't a drive, and forget it, it has to
bug and tell you to change to None.

500 meg is what the machine is running which is 250 meg more than the HP I
was using 2 days ago. My Del is a far superior spec to the HP but there is
no significant performance that I notice.



"Tom Scales" wrote in message
. ..
Did you confirm that both drives are listed as AUTO in the BIOS? If not,
they'll run SLOOOOOW.

Also, how much memory?

Tom
"Paul" wrote in message
news
I have now checked the jumpers and found that the Samsung (drive with the
os) is configured with CS and the IC35 was jumpered as a slave. However
changing it to CS has had no effect.

Interestingly swapping the drives on the ribbon cable so that the drive
with the os was on the plug labelled Drive 1 and putting the "slave"
drive on the plug labelled Drive 0 did not stop the PC booting, but
again it did not speed up the time to display the folder structure when
I first load explorer. This is around 10 seconds from hitting the
explorer application. This is quick the second time as I guess the
structure gets cached.

I regularly check my system with an upto date version of spybot, and do
not hit sites which tend to load spyware and other malicious programs.

I am also very careful over loading so called helper toolbars and
programs, so the processors running currently 34 with taskbar and ol
express running. Norton 2006 accounting for a fair few of the other
processors.

Thanks for the direction so far.



"Jay B" wrote in message
...
did you check that both drives are jumpered properly with cable-select
and that the bios is enabled for both drives to auto?
if this is not the case, drive performance may suffer.

also, you may have spyware or other malware running on that machine
that will hinder your performance.
what processes and how many are running in the background?

i usually tune systems to about 30 processes.
out of the box, dimensions come with as many as 70 or 80.
also recent versions of virus software like norton and mcafee have been
known to be very bloaty and choke resources.


Paul wrote:
My Dimension 3000, is slow accessing the hard drives. I have for a
long time
thought this was the case, but after using a HP Vectra recently with a
750
Pentium 3, less memory and a similar spec hard drive arrangement, than
my Dell, I am convinced there is something wrong with my machine.

Checking the bios, I have the original Samsung 80gig master hard drive
and a 120 gig slave harddrive on a 80 wire ribbon cable, connected to
the Primary IDE and a DVD read writer connected as the master on the
secondary ide lead.

Both hard drives are formatted as NTFS and the pc is running windows
XP home edition with all Microsoft updates.

I have attached a test of the drives as tested by HD tune,in the hope
that somebody can help identify any thing that may be wrong.

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP0802N Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 59.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.5 ms
Burst Rate : 70.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.9%


HD Tune: IC35L120AVV207-0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 42.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 71.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.1%

Well, that's not particularly surprising. I have a machine that has
millions of log files. The directory structure takes about 15 minutes to
come up.

XP's method is horribly inefficient
"Paul" wrote in message
...
I have the DVD disconnected now but there is still the delay in discovering
the full directory structure.



"Tom Scales" wrote in message
...
Try disconnecting the DVD drive and turning it off. Also, how much main
memory? If I recall, you have 512MB, which is borderline on a machine
with
integrated video.

For most apps, you won't tell a difference between a P3-800 and a P4-3.6


"Paul" wrote in message
...
All 3 drives including the DVD writer are set to Auto in the bios. I fell
foul of that a few months ago, whilst adding drives to the secondary
line.
I don't think the bios is the best one ever written, as you can't leave
this set to auto, as it fails if there is no drive in position. That is
it can not automatically detect there isn't a drive, and forget it, it
has to bug and tell you to change to None.

500 meg is what the machine is running which is 250 meg more than the HP
I was using 2 days ago. My Del is a far superior spec to the HP but there
is no significant performance that I notice.



"Tom Scales" wrote in message
. ..
Did you confirm that both drives are listed as AUTO in the BIOS? If
not, they'll run SLOOOOOW.

Also, how much memory?

Tom
"Paul" wrote in message
news I have now checked the jumpers and found that the Samsung (drive with
the os) is configured with CS and the IC35 was jumpered as a slave.
However changing it to CS has had no effect.

Interestingly swapping the drives on the ribbon cable so that the drive
with the os was on the plug labelled Drive 1 and putting the "slave"
drive on the plug labelled Drive 0 did not stop the PC booting, but
again it did not speed up the time to display the folder structure when
I first load explorer. This is around 10 seconds from hitting the
explorer application. This is quick the second time as I guess the
structure gets cached.

I regularly check my system with an upto date version of spybot, and do
not hit sites which tend to load spyware and other malicious programs.

I am also very careful over loading so called helper toolbars and
programs, so the processors running currently 34 with taskbar and ol
express running. Norton 2006 accounting for a fair few of the other
processors.

Thanks for the direction so far.



"Jay B" wrote in message
...
did you check that both drives are jumpered properly with cable-select
and that the bios is enabled for both drives to auto?
if this is not the case, drive performance may suffer.

also, you may have spyware or other malware running on that machine
that will hinder your performance.
what processes and how many are running in the background?

i usually tune systems to about 30 processes.
out of the box, dimensions come with as many as 70 or 80.
also recent versions of virus software like norton and mcafee have
been known to be very bloaty and choke resources.


Paul wrote:
My Dimension 3000, is slow accessing the hard drives. I have for a
long time
thought this was the case, but after using a HP Vectra recently with
a 750
Pentium 3, less memory and a similar spec hard drive arrangement,
than my Dell, I am convinced there is something wrong with my
machine.

Checking the bios, I have the original Samsung 80gig master hard
drive and a 120 gig slave harddrive on a 80 wire ribbon cable,
connected to the Primary IDE and a DVD read writer connected as the
master on the secondary ide lead.

Both hard drives are formatted as NTFS and the pc is running windows
XP home edition with all Microsoft updates.

I have attached a test of the drives as tested by HD tune,in the hope
that somebody can help identify any thing that may be wrong.

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP0802N Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 59.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.5 ms
Burst Rate : 70.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.9%


HD Tune: IC35L120AVV207-0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 10.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 54.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 42.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 71.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.1%