Old Disk - Slow Boot

[Anonymous]

I have in what is a modern PC an old 4GB drive. The boot time on this PC is longer than on any of my other machines which do not have any old equipment in them.

Could this old 4GB be the cause of the boot lag ?

It currently takes me around 1 Minute 30 Seconds to boot up my XP Professional Box with a 1.2 GHz Pro, 384 MB RAM, 20GB Primary Disk Drive with a 4GB Secondary Drive.

Note the 20GB is the boot drive (aka C:) and Windows XP is also installed on that disk.

[rdc]

I once heard that ,if you have a fast and a slow drive on one ide slot , it slows down the fast drive .They have to be on different ide slots . I\'m not sure if  this is still the case . If you have scsi drives , it seems a reasonable time to boot up .

[The_Flames]

As far as I can folow you are correct. a ide bus will work as slow as the slowest  item being accessed on that bus ,  IE when I\'m burning a cd, I never access my zipdrive that is on the same cable, as it creates buffer under runs, I dont know if the drives are running at the same ata speed tho. my cdrw drive runs at ata 33 while my zip drive is stuck on pio 4

[Anonymous]

The 20GB according to the device manager is on the Primary IDE Channel, the 4GB is on the secondary IDE channel, note this is info from Windows 2000/XP Device Manager.

[Anonymous]

Confirmed the correct direct hardware setup, the 20GB drive is the Primary Master while the 4GB is the primary slave. Does that mean they are on the same IDE (you will have to forgive me, im a software man not a hardware man)

[rdc]

Better not activate a screen saver or power monitoring items neither when burning a cdrom , Some people even turn off the virusscanner , but that\'s a bit far fetched .

[The_Flames]

yes that means they are on the same IDE bus, you would want the 4 GB drive on the secondry bus if there is space

[Anonymous]

Currently my DVD ROM drive is the Secondary Master, but there is no Secondary Slave, should I swap the DVD ROM (Secondary Master) connection with the 4GB drive (Primary Slave) or put the 4GB Drive as the Secondary Slave ?

[Bill\'s Buddy]

To avoid buffer under runs while burning, try not run any application, unless you CDRW drive with burn proof.  Another way try to burn at low speed as possible if you have old pc or slow pc.

[Anonymous]

Well, to the best of my knowledge, you should have your faster HDD as primary master because this sets the speed of the other disk.

[Anonymous]

I have two hdd both on primary IDE one on master and second on slave i am able to boot. It boot fine from secondary IDE.I also have cdrom which is on secondary slave.