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Offline garmonbozia

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Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« on: February 09, 2009, 06:54:07 PM »
Anyone here dealt with this or anything similar?

I put a second hard drive in my Windows box.  When I formatted it, it defaulted to be a "dynamic" disk instead of the more familiar "basic" disk that has partitions and all that.  I'm now copying its data back to the main hard drive in preparation to reformat this second disk as a "basic" disk.  It seems to be having speed and performance issues.  I tried to play a video clip that was stored on it and it kept stalling.  When I copied the same clip back to the Desktop (which is on the main hard drive) and played it from there, it worked just fine.

The computer's got a Pentium 4 chip with 512 MB RAM.  The main hard drive is 40 GB IDE.  The second hard drive is 320 GB IDE Western Digital in a removable drive caddy (Vantek EZ-Swap) in one of the front drive bays.


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Online renaeden

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2009, 03:39:25 AM »
I don't know but I will ask GA...
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Offline Phlexor

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2009, 08:47:40 AM »
Ditch the removable hard drive caddy setup, they cause nothing but trouble. You'd be better off with a USB2.0 hard drive enclosure. Plus ram is cheap as so get some more ram. If your mobo takes ddr2, then get a cheap 2GB kit (2x1GB) for dual channel. If its DDR1, also try and get a 2GB kit (2x1GB) or just 2 of the cheapest 1GB sticks if they don't sell them in kits where you are (getting harder to get these days).

You really don't want to run XP with anything less than 1GB of ram. And try and run your ram in dual channel mode for the speed boost.
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Offline DirtDawg

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2009, 09:13:29 AM »


Like Phlex said, max out your RAM no matter what else you do ... but about the issue ... Are you setting up a RAID array?  The "SWAP"  thing probably is fucking you up, if not. It likely has something that your system is finding by a new hardware search as "server side"  or RAID capable.


... or did you click something by mistake when you were installing the drive?


Either way, a Dynamic disc is not reallly a problem, but if it is not necessary and you are not using these functions AND you have one installed, your system will constantly search to support other drives and create error messages. With so little RAM, I can see how it would stimey your system.
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Offline garmonbozia

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2009, 05:43:39 PM »
Quote from: DirtDawg on February 10, 2009, 09:13:29 AM
Are you setting up a RAID array?

No, not this time.  I'd had the drive caddy lying around for the past few years and thought I'd found a use for it (temperature and hours-usage monitoring, cooling).  As far as I can tell, it merely acts as a connector and is not detectable by the computer.  It seems to have just enough circuitry of its own to provide monitoring and cooling.

I suppose I'll have to max out the memory.  It uses DDR-1, and yes I've noticed it's getting harder to find.

Does anyone see any reason not to convert it back to "basic"?  I'm trying one little thing first.  In the Device Manager, I checked its properties and saw the checkbox for enabling write caching.  I'll see if that does any good but most likely I'm going to end up reformatting it tonight.
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Offline garmonbozia

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2009, 10:39:44 PM »
Alright, I pulled out the drive caddy, put the second HD straight in, reformatted it as basic, and started copying the data back onto it.  It's been two hours and it's still going, I figure at about 10 GB / hr.  Does that seem right for IDE?  (For comparison, just yesterday at work, I moved a whole terabyte between a server and eSATA devices in less time.)  Both hard drives have the jumper on "cable select".  Could that have something to do with it?
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Offline Phlexor

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #6 on: February 10, 2009, 11:02:52 PM »
No, cable select is okay. One question I would ask though is do you have an 80wire IDE cable or ATA-66/100/133 IDE cable as they are sometimes referred as? Also check in Device manager under IDE CONTROLLERS to see if you are running in UDMA mode on your drives. Plus if both drives are on the same cable, that can slow things down a little.

Also, looking on Newegg.com, there seems to be plenty of DDR1 for you to choose from.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2009, 11:05:19 PM by Lord Phlexor »
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Offline garmonbozia

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #7 on: February 11, 2009, 07:14:01 AM »
They are on the same cable right now... but were on separate cables before I took out the drive caddy.  BTW, it took it more than three hours to move 26 GB of data.  And, the playback of video clips from the second drive is still sluggish.

I'm now wondering if it's too late to exchange it for an external drive.  Or, actually I've got an external box I'm not currently using, that takes an IDE device and has a bridge board with both USB and FireWire.  Maybe I could just put it in there.

This was supposed to be a simple solution to getting some more storage space on that computer.  Now it's just doubled the annoyance.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2009, 07:18:46 AM by garmonbozia »
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Offline garmonbozia

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #8 on: February 11, 2009, 05:51:50 PM »
Okay, I moved it into the external case that I mentioned.  I couldn't get the FireWire connection to work so I used USB.  It's almost finished doing the same data transfer again, and only took 30 minutes.
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Offline Phlexor

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #9 on: February 13, 2009, 04:36:42 AM »
Yay!  :clap:
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Offline garmonbozia

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #10 on: February 13, 2009, 05:23:48 PM »
Thanks.

Hopefully, this is the last time I have to fuck with IDE / PATA stuff.  Hopefully, it'll be SATA and eSATA next time.

What's with the whole Master / Slave thing in IDE, anyway?  Perhaps, while designing the IDE protocol, some computer engineer was thinking about S&M when he should have been thinking about work.

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Offline DirtDawg

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #11 on: February 13, 2009, 05:30:20 PM »
Quote from: garmonbozia on February 13, 2009, 05:23:48 PM
Thanks.

Hopefully, this is the last time I have to fuck with IDE / PATA stuff.  Hopefully, it'll be SATA and eSATA next time.

What's with the whole Master / Slave thing in IDE, anyway?  Perhaps, while designing the IDE protocol, some computer engineer was thinking about S&M when he should have been thinking about work.





:LMAO:

excellent!
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Offline Phlexor

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #12 on: February 15, 2009, 12:24:20 AM »
Quote from: garmonbozia on February 13, 2009, 05:23:48 PM
Thanks.

Hopefully, this is the last time I have to fuck with IDE / PATA stuff.  Hopefully, it'll be SATA and eSATA next time.

What's with the whole Master / Slave thing in IDE, anyway?  Perhaps, while designing the IDE protocol, some computer engineer was thinking about S&M when he should have been thinking about work.



You know, the the non geeky, it usually sounds like that. Some people have been offended I think.
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Offline garmonbozia

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #13 on: February 19, 2009, 11:59:45 PM »
The drive still seems to be doing fine in the external USB enclosure.  The IDE drive caddy is back in my supply of unused computer parts, and will most likely get culled out next time I fill a box with stuff to ditch at the local Salvation Army.

There is, however, a SATA version of that same drive caddy.  I was thinking it would be fun to some day build a RAID array using some of them.  Are SATA drive caddies as much trouble as IDE caddies?

IDE version: 

SATA version: 
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Offline Phlexor

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Re: Windows XP - basic disk versus dynamic disk
« Reply #14 on: February 21, 2009, 03:08:02 AM »
Not that I know of, but seeing as SATA drive are hot swappable, I'm, not sure a caddy really has to be that complicated.
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