It could be any number of things. Is there another ide device on the same channel as the hard drive, if so, then the speed of the slowest drive on each channel will define the speed of the hard drive.
 
if thats not the case, do you have service pack 2, which has support for ata100?
 
If so, have u turned the option on in the device manager under the advanced tab of the primary and secondaryu ide controllers???
Are you using 80 wire/40 pin cables?
If not this will degrade down to ata33. The extra 40 wires are basiclly ground wire to eliminate cross talk.
 
If all these points are correct, i would check your mobo manufacturer for ide drivers.
 
ps: Have you done anybenchmarks with sandra??? Are you just 'feeling' the speed isnt up to snuff, or do you know??
 
Sorry if i cant be of any help, just droppin a few points across.

Lemme check all that and I will get back to you.
 
Only device on IDE. Just the HD by it self.
I remember installing SP2.
I know I have DMA enabled in advanced on pri IDE
I dont know. What is the diff between 40 and 80? I used the ribbon cable that was thin and fancier that came with the HD. Is that it?
It feels slow and I have checked it with SiSoft Sandra 2001 SE and 2001 Standard. Both report about 40MB transfer rates instead of the 100 that I should have.

Here is a pic of SiSoft Sandra. This is what it shows. Both versions.
 

High speed ATA cables have a blue motherboard connector - if it's not blue, it's the wrong cable...

It's blue.

Ok SP1 and SP2 are installed.
Setings in Advanced Options for DMA are ON
Using proper Ribbon IDE cable
 
So I went through everything. All I need is to check for drivers. I will now do that. And if that doesnt fix it I will come back here.

DAMN IT! I checked everything you told me and it is the way it should be.
 
Still getting sub 66 speeds around 50 I think.

Here's something that hasn't been mentioned... is ata100 enabled on the drive itself? This is something that must be done by booting up w/ a special WD disk and running their utility. This can all be downloaded on their site. You MUST use the WD utility I believe, as every manufacturer has their own. Go download and run it and see if the drive is set up for dma 5 (ata100).
 
-Anton

Maybe a stupid question, but have you defragged the drive ?
If no, do it and run the benchmark again.
 
/Toby

Hmmm. Yeah I have that disk but I though I enabled ATA100 when I transfered the data from my previous HD to my new one. I will check again though good idea!
 
And yes I have defraged the drive, 2 days ago as a matter of fact. Usually do about every 3 months or so or have a program do it for me when I'm not using it. But even if the drive was fragmented, it would not greatly slow it down. Especially for benchmarks sense SiSoft Sandra creates it's own cache file (which would be defragmented anyway, for the most part, unless it had to jump over clusters)

Hmmm..more and more i'm beginning to feel a distrust towards western digital. I mean come on ..i need to set UDMA 5 in some software program . That's odd to me at least. But they're drives are reliable, so I'll give them that.

Quote:
Hmmm..more and more i'm beginning to feel a distrust towards western digital. I mean come on ..i need to set UDMA 5 in some software program . That's odd to me at least. But they're drives are reliable, so I'll give them that.

This is not a WD thing. Every manufacturer provides this method as a way of enabling UDMA 5, at least every manufacturer I've seen. It's also not a full "soft"ware thing either; when you change the DMA setting on the drive you hear a distinct click and a full power cycle is required for the change to take effect. Point being, it's no reason to distrust WD

Hmm, this just *got* to be a WD thing even if it something I never heard of before. This pic shows the status of my IBM-drives. UDMA5 on the primary without the use of some crappy utility.
 

 
/Toby

Hmm well there is something about it. But I don't think it's anything to worry about.
 
Well I like the WD drives. They are very reliable as far as I am concerned. I have used Quantum drives, and I had lots of problems with them like spinning down for no reason and hardware damage. I used Maxtor, POSs died after 6 months to a year. Every friend I know that has had a Maxtor it ended up dieing after a while. I don't think any of them lasted over 2 years at all. They are just cheap material I believe.
 
But I have never had any hardware problems with WD like spin down, HD damage, or data loss for no reason. I like WD so I am sticking with them.
 
Now I have never used IBM. Although I hear they are very good as well and a lot like WD. I will need to try them some day.

Quote:
Hmm, this just *got* to be a WD thing even if it something I never heard of before. This pic shows the status of my IBM-drives. UDMA5 on the primary without the use of some crappy utility.

/Toby

It does indeed show the *status* of your drives, but from what I see it doesn't allow you to change that status (don't hold this against me for I've never used XP, which this looks like). Now... that being said... drives can be configured to run at ATA 100, 66, or 33. Assuming this is a ATA100 drive we're talking about. You change this on the drive through a utility provided by the manufacturer. Just for fun, I went out to IBM's site and Maxtor's and lo and behold... they have these utilities!

IBM - http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/hddtech/welcome.htm
IBM Feature Tool (version 1.20)........ Switch the Ultra DMA mode (replaces the IBMATASW utility)

Maxtor - http://www.maxtor.com/softwaredownload/Maxtor_Downloads.htm
UDMA Update --- Procedure for changing from UDMA/66 to UDMA/100 on
DiamondMax 60 and DiamondMax VL 30 drives

This is NOT a WD thing. Why is this done? I assume because some older mobos might not like it if you stick an ATA100 drive in when they don't support it. You might never have had to do this, or reason to check because your drives seemed to be operating as rated, but this feature does indeed exist.

Yeah I think you are right on. They have them too.
 
I don't have a floppy drive installed on my comp, and don't want to install one. I am going to go to the WD site and see if I can't get the install disk drivers.
 
Thanks again.

Well I ran the utility from the floppy disk to install ATA100. And it says it doesnt have ATA100! Or 66!!! WTF!?!?
 
What is wrong? How come I cannot install ATA100?

HELP PLEASE!!!!!
 
Sorry trying to get to top.

ATA 100 enabling is not an WD thing. every single drive has it. but coming to quality.
It used to be verry good when the largest drives were 13-15GB not anymore.
 
Cache handling of WD is verry sloopy although it does not spin down (actually it should) it can under no circumstance keep a constatnt data rate. and it does not spin down to recover errorsa either so it just keeps getting worst.
I find them to be higly unreliable. in a different sense. Usually they do not die straight ahead but your Bios starts reporting drive Fail. You can still access it and copy your data but actual High frequency cct is gone. I have seen bios wiped or cache memory blown reporting %60 failure
 
IBM and Quantum are actually the real deals. IBM is the one manufactered first HDD and still they have the largest, fastest drives (and most expensive). Quantum on the other hand licences technologies from IBM so it is always about a week behind on size and speed. And the drives are fab. generally. But I have started to come across more and more faulty quantums. it is usually a problem with their suspension or shock absorption which is caused by drive not fixed properly. This is because quantum drives have the quickest spin up and down. which puts stress on the mechanism. Frankly I do not see any other device worth mentioning.
 
I hope it helps.

well i payed a buttload for this driver a while back and it says ata100 on the box. I WANT IT TO WORK! How do I get it to work? It has to others are using it at ata100.