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Thread ID: 27185 2002-11-16 04:24:00 Random disconnections... related to HDD access? crummy (2524) Press F1
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98893 2002-11-16 04:24:00 Alright . . . I have a big problem . Several, to tell the truth .

It started a while ago, when I decided that C: needed a defrag . So I left it on, while connected to the internet through my 56k and downloading to D: .

I woke up in the morning, to find the defrag done, and D: gone . . . WTF? Restart - ah ha, my BIOS recognizes it . Back into windows - WTF? Its gone again! Restart again - same thing . So I turned off the thing, swapped some jumpers, and traded some IDE cables - it works! Replaced jumpers, and turned my IDE cable around so instead of the first plug going into C: and second plug going into D:, the first plug went into D: and the second plug went into C: .

Aah, all my games back . Great stuff . Connect to the net - curses, disconnected . Reconnect, fine . Then, I boot up Trillian - disconnected . Hrm . . . Finally get everything opened that I like, and everythings fine . Until I load something else and I get disconnected .

Plus, now it seems that when I load something, it causes my Winamp to go laggy . If its a big program winamp will simply pause .

Another thing - now, in games (all I think) about 50% of the time, when I load a level or a savegame or similar, the game runs smoothly then pauses every second or so for about 50ms then continues where it left off . This goes on for aobut 10 seconds then the game runs fine .

After reading Mac Dude's fabulous article on IDE/ATA cabling, I changed my configuration so now my computer is set up like this:

PRIMARY MASTER: 20GB C: (capable of UDMA 5, running in PIO mode)
PRIMARY SLAVE: None
SECONDARY MASTER: CD-ROM (not sure about capabilities, runnning in UDMA 2)
SECONDARY SLAVE: 40GB D: (capable of UDMA 2, running in UDMA 2)

All these problems started after I "fixed" my 40gb . The reason I suspect it is HDD related is because previously, and on my friends computer, and large CD-ROM => HDD access (maybe just CD-ROM access) eg . when I install a game causes me to disconnect .

I can't think of what else to do, save a format . I thought seperating D: and C: on IDE cables would fix it, but it seems not to have . . .

Can someone help?
crummy (2524)
98894 2002-11-16 06:15:00 Firstly, just because you were saving to D: you cannot assume there will not be anything accessing C:

Caching etc will be occuring. Its not a good idea to defrag while the PC is actively using the disk. Best in safe mode.

Your C: drive should not be using PIO, it will be chronically slow I suspect.
With nothing on the primary slave, its a puzzle why it wont use UDMA.

You should try and force the drive to use UDMA, this will be the lag that you are seeing.
godfather (25)
98895 2002-11-16 08:22:00 ah, ok. well next time :P

how do i force UDMA? i've got "PIO Only" and "DMA if available" options. of course i've got the DMA selected.

btw, to get this i'm going device manager>IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers>primary IDE controller.

is there a way to turn it on on the HDD itself, instead of the IDE cable?
crummy (2524)
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