2nd E: hard drive runs slow,lags

[Joshwa79]

I recently bought a western digital 250gb ide hard drive.I made this my slave drive.The problem i have is all music or movies that i have downloaded to that drive jump,or play just a little slow.I have bought a new faster ide cabel.I have tried running from the motherboard to the c:drive and my new E:drive in the middle as the slave and also tried the same way with the cd burner ide cabel.The C: drive works perfectly,it's 40gb with about 10gb free.I have also tried my 250gb hard drive in a friends computer and it works fine!Any help would be great,and i'm not very computer litterate so try and keep it simple please.Thanks!!

[soybean]

I think more info about your system might be helpful.  Processor, motherboard, RAM, video card, etc.?  Your OS?  What protections are you using for viruses and spyware?  If you play music or movies from an optical (CD/DVD) drive, does it play smooth?

[stones]

My slave drive once got really slow and also noisy, I thought it was dying but it passed all tests except for the speed tests. At the same time I had to reinstall my OS for other reasons, the reinstallation of the OS fixed the problem somehow.
I think one of the default settings for the drive got changed somehow and reloading the OS reset everything to default operation.
Here is some links to similar problems-  http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=slow+harddrive&meta=

This could be it- http://www.overclockers.com/articles1161/

[patio]

Right click both IDE controllers in Device Manager and make sure that HDD has not dropped back into PIO mode...it should be DMA or Ultra DMA.
This is caused by consecutive system errors...

[Joshwa79]

I have a 1100 celeron d processor325 (2.53ghz, 256k cache)
512mb memory
windows XP
I checked and i'm running in DMA mode, although on my primary C: where it says "Current transfer mode" it says PIO mode and there's no option to change it! I also played a movie on my C:drive and that also seems to be running slow now!Should  i uninstall the primary and re-install?Or should i throw my PC of my balcony?

[patio]

To enable DMA mode using the Device Manager

1.
      

Open Device Manager.

2.
      

Double-click IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers to display the list of controllers and channels.

3.
      

Right-click the icon for the channel to which the device is connected, select Properties, and then click the Advanced Settings tab.

4.
      

In the Current Transfer Mode drop-down box, select DMA if Available if the current setting is "PIO Only."
If the drop-down box already shows "DMA if Available" but the current transfer mode is PIO, then the user must toggle the settings. That is:
•      

Change the selection from "DMA if available" to PIO only, and click OK.
•      

Then repeat the steps above to change the selection to DMA if Available.

[Rollie]

same thing happens to me but this happens with one of my cd rom drives. i have a dual core 3.2 gig and if i install games or transfer anything, my computer slows down to a crawl. or even if i listen to music in the background while i browse the web its all crunchy and slows down. ive tried that device manager thing but even if i select "DMA mode if available" the box below it which is current is stuck in PIO mode no matter what i do. is this some kind of driver or hardware problem?

[patio]

The other option to repairing this is a bit more involved...

Start a new thread and supply info on your system, OS etc.....