hard drive hangs

IIMvideo wrote on 4/22/2003, 3:09 PM
Hi everyone, I'm having an issue with a maxtor 120gig/8megcache drive I recently put in my machine. It usually hangs up for 15-30sec will navigating through file folders within the windows environment. It's 1 of 4 drives in my machine and is the only one acting this way. I just recently upgraded my power supply to a 450w heavyduty thinking I was under powering it, but not the case. I've formatted it many times and did often defrag it, but still acted the same. One thing I noticed is under the drive's properties , there is not "enable cache for better performance ...." like on my other drives?? - no selection is allowed here. Often I have to 'ctrl-alt-del' to get out of it hanging. It's really frustrating! Any suggestions?

My system is this: MSI motherboard, athlon xp1800, 40gig/ata133 boot, 30gig/ata100 media, 80gig/ata100 video-1, 120gig/ata133-8megcache video-2!! 1gig ram, firewire card, ethernet card, audiophile soundcard, 32meg videocard, cd writer, dvd writer, floppy, cpu fan, 450watt(heavy duty) power suppy.

Thanks in advance!

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 4/22/2003, 3:29 PM
I would think the drive would be extremely slow without its cache enabled. You'll need to check if you can enable the cache from BIOS. Ususally you hold down the del key or another during a cold boot to drop into setup and access BIOS. Which key your press should appear on the screen as a message for a few seconds before the system enters Windows. While you're in BIOS check to be sure it is set to "AUTO" configure unless you're using some second IDE controller card that needs a seperate BIOS.