hard drive troubles

Orwell · Post by **Orwell** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:40 pm

im a huge fan of amvs and my collections shows it. i ran out of room so i bought a new hard drive and transfered some of my collection over to it. now, those files either jump around when loaded, are discolored beyond recognition, and usually both. i checked the drive, i whined at the company, the people i bought it from, even tried the call line although i just cant understand a word they are saying, crappy phones lines and the persons accent left me more confused than before. anyways, can anyone tell what changes i should make so that the files will play properly from the new hard drive, which is a western digital internal hard drive with 7200 rpm. i have windows xp and the player i use is winamp, i cant think of anything to include beyond that. everything works fine until i try to play a file from the new hard drive, which i was careful not to do anything and took care putting it in. checked the cables, cleaned the dust, ran scans that say everything is fine. anyone have any ideas, and thanks in advance for reading through everything irrevelant.

madmallard · Post by **madmallard** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 8:43 pm

UDMA may not be enabled.

Orwell · Post by **Orwell** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 8:54 pm

could anyone inform on how to check that, or a clear definition of what it is?

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 9:05 pm

Try this, copy a video to the new disk from the old disk. Then copy it back to a different folder on the old disk. See if it still plays properly. This will verify that the hard drive/cables are not corrupting the data. If it doesn't play properly then something may be wrong with the drive or the cables.

Ofcourse the basics apply here to:

Get the latest motherboard BIOS.
Get the latest motherboard drivers.

Check UDMA, it'd be in the Device Manager, under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, under Primary/Seconday IDE Channel, on the Advanced settings tab. Make sure it says "DMA if available" and the Current Transfer Mode says "DMA Mode". It may say N/A if there is no drive on the channel.

Delete the partitions and reformat them.

Try a different cable.

If the drives copy data back and forth without causing problems and you've done all the above, re-install windows. If that doesn't fix the issue then try another hard drive, if that hard drive works then replace the new one.

madmallard · Post by **madmallard** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 12:33 pm

don't forget, on some systems, the DMA box is actually in the HDD's properties, not the IDE controllers. Don't forget to check both Klinky's info, and this.

I've noticed it depends on the type of controller drivers being used. . . .

Orwell · Post by **Orwell** » Fri Jul 09, 2004 6:18 pm

Im pretty sure its the controller drive because after checking klinkys?(sorry if i got that wrong) information, and more running around the products site, it talked about having a controller card to have it run at its full capacity. i found one that at least sounds good, although to my dismay i just realized that i didnt book mark it and now its gone, and i was wondering if anyone could make any recommendations on a good controller card.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 1:03 am

Well, that site probably was suggesting you needed a controller card to run the drive @ maximum performance. I doubt it would cause corruption of the drive.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 1:03 am

Errm and actually what kind of computer do you have? Do you know the motherboard model?

Orwell · Post by **Orwell** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 11:17 pm

i figured id post the answer to my own problem just incase anyone else had a similar problem and to thank those who helped although it had nothing to do with what they were saying. i talked to a friend who had the problem and he said what you do was restart it and hit f2 or whatever button for the operating system to go to the boot menu. look at the devices and it will list the drives. my problem was that it recognized that it was there but it was turned off in the boot menu. after settling that, both of my drives, new(western digital) and the original. work great and the original now runs at a faster speed than before.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 7:57 am

Well the only thing I can think of is that you went in to the BIOS and told it to find the drive. Maybe the incorrect information was in the bios for that drive. Perhaps from another drive previously?? I dunno... odd...