Hi there!
I've been having problems with a slave HD ever since I installed it. Unlike the main drive (C: for these purposes), it has a tendency to be very slow and laggy when playing high-quality video files, or other large files. Sometimes the files freeze entirely for seconds or even minutes before they can play anymore.
This is confusing to me because the HD is a well known brand and is about equal with our main drive; is it possible that by being placed in the slave drive slot, it's been slowed down somehow? Here are its stats for anyone who wants to know...
Description: DiamondMax Plus D740X 40GB (Ultra ATA/133, 7200 RPM)
Manufacturer: Maxtor
Detailed Specifications
Capacity: 40 GB
Access Time: 8.5 ms
Interface: IDE (ATA/EIDE/ATAPI)
Interface Type: IDE - ATA/EIDE/ATAPI 40 pin Header
Internal/External: Internal
Number of Drives Supported: 1
Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM
Transfer Rate: 133 Mbps
Cache Size: 2 MB
I know the cache is pretty small in comparison to what's considered good these days, but the specs of the C: drive (non-slave drive) are almost equal. Seen here:
WD Caviar EIDE 40 GB WD400BB
General
Rotational Speed 7,200 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size 2 MB
Average Latency 4.20 ms (nominal)
Contact Start/Stop Cycles 40,000 minimum
Seek Times (Average)
Read Seek Time (Average) 8.9 ms
Write Seek Time (Average) 10.9 ms (average)
Track-To-Track Seek Time 2.0 ms (average)
Full Stroke Seek 21.0 ms (average)
Transfer Rates
Buffer To Disk 400 Mbits/s (Max)
Thanks very much for any help! ^_^