hard drive problem with capture

mvpvideos2007 wrote on 12/14/2003, 10:01 PM

I just bought a new dell XPS it came with a main drive, or the c: drive with 120 gig. I added a western digital 250 gig drive as a second drive and I believe I have it as a cable select drive.

When I capture footage to the c: drive, everything is fine. When I capture to the other drive, WD, it drops all the frames. Can someone tell me what is wrongs? Thanks:)

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 12/14/2003, 10:32 PM

DMA enabled for that drive? Look at the FAQ ID=685 on this site (sorry... you have to go to the knowledgebase page to put that code in).

Also... run a speed test on the drive to make sure it is working properly for video capture. Download the simple and free drive test EZDVTEST.exe from canopus

Also... are you <certain> the drives need to be configured as "CABLE SELECT"? Are you sure the new drive should not be set to secondary/slave and teh first one setup to be primary/master?

DGrob wrote on 12/15/2003, 5:16 AM

What's your connection to the external? Firewire? USB 2? Running XP? Are you SURE it's not USB 1? I once had a Dell I8200 with a "proprietary" firewire port that would consistently cause a whole list of problems. Finally got a Belkin PCI firewire 2-port card and hooked my external through that. Got that to work.

Many, many of us run similar setups as what you've got with no problems. DGrob

Liam_Vegas wrote on 12/15/2003, 8:14 AM

I don't think this is an external drive (as he didn;t say it was external).... but I could be wrong

mvpvideos2007 wrote on 12/15/2003, 1:03 PM

The drive is an internal one. I called western digital and they said I needed to to download an intel application accelortation patch to get a better transfer rate. They seem to think that is the problem. So we will see:)

johnmeyer wrote on 12/15/2003, 1:22 PM

You didn't answer the earlier question about DMA. If DMA is not enabled, it will almost certainly drop frames, even on a very fast system. Right-click on My Computer, select Properties, and then Hardware -> Device Manger -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Check the settings for both the primary and secondary controllers. Look under Advanced Settings. Transfer mode should be set to "DMA if available" or something similar. It should NOT be set to PIO.

mvpvideos2007 wrote on 12/15/2003, 9:46 PM

john meyer, the DMZ was enabled, but I found out what the problem was, a bad ata cable. After going through hell with this new computer, I pulled out the cable and put in a new one and now it all works. Thanks for everyones suggestions. I would have been nice, if DELL would have tested the cable before they shipped the computer. All the systems and hardware managment said the drive was fine, and it was, but there was nothing to test the serial cable.

johnmeyer wrote on 12/15/2003, 10:21 PM

Thanks for writing about the cable problem. I had forgotten that some cheap computers use the standard ATA cable instead of the Ultra cable, and this can cause problems (even though the drive is supposed to sense the older cable and adapt accordingly).