Jamie, Double thanks for letting me know about the DMA thing. I looked on the WDC.com web site and saw that someone else is having a slow drive problem also. But they haven't given a cure yet. Have you disconnected one drive yet to see if that speeds things up? Any chance this is a RAM, virtual memory or vcache problem? I bet the cure is easy if you can just find it. Sorry I can't help. =++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Started a new thread on this since the other got archived...Anyway, I tried the disconnet of the other HD, Tried resetting the Vcache, and tried resetting the Vertual memory by way of the swap file. I course if someone has the appropriate settings for me mebe I could try THAT part again. I was always told that the vertual should be set 2 1/2 times the amount of full physical ram you have. This may be true but what about forceing the swap to use more of my 128meg instead of the HD? Surely ram would be much faster than the HD? Any other's will to try and answer this?

Howdy, I can't see your hard drive being that slow compared to 10yrs ago. It could be your motherboard causing the problem. When hard drive access time is measured in milliseconds which is 1/1000 of a second things are moving pretty damn fast. PIO and UDMA mode all depends on your mother board, if the hard drive is able to use UDMA but the M/B is not, then things just won't happen. If things are really that slow you might consider taking it to a tech to have them test the whole system. I'm not trying to be harsh, just honest. Laters, Kevin The Tech Dude.

If I could afford to go to a tech I would but that's the reason I am in here rather than at a tech's store. Could someone answer the questions I asked in the above reply? Like the size to set the vertual or swap file so the copmuter uses more of the ram rather than the HD? Is 2 1/2 times the ram too much or too little? I want to force the programs to use ram instaed of HD. I have a VCACHE program called CASH MAN and I have tried setting it any and all different ways with no noticable improvment. As far as the MB goes, the bios shows the use of UDMA AND PIO as PIO=4 and UDMA=2...Is this correct? Any other idea's to try?

My Windows Page http://pages.hotbot.com/arts/gorx/windows.html TheGorx

Are you using windows 95/98. If so it could be a matter of just defragging the hard drive. this is done by start programs accessories system tools defrag if your hard drive is more than 1% fraged on a large hard drive you will see an increase in speed good luck

I defrag 1-2 times a week. I'm very good at that little chore. But it has never brought my speed back to my problems with my hard drives. And yes I AM running win 98. GORX-you have helped me before so I have been running through all the LINKS on your page! I think when we figure this out it may be something very simple. But I've been looking for this simple problem for a long, long time. Thanks for any and all who've tried helping so far!!

There seems to be a number of things that most have forgotten. WD has flaws in their HDDs in certain years (same as all companies). Scandisk, Norton Disk Doctor, WDDIAG, Spinrite etc. "do not !!!" mark or block slow reading sectors/clusters on HDDs (they only mark bad parts of HDDs). I've been looking for an app. that does for the last 2 yrs. with no luck. The problems are as follows: - the Hardware companies want to make the money on new HDDs - most progammers do not know how to go about finding and marking slow sectors on HDDs as bad - the high (DOS) format of most HDDs is a fast one to facilitate our fast paced world (a more comprehensive thorough format with error checking would be an asset) - low level formats fall into the category as above - data relocation technology has taken over for slow sector reads (big mistake for problem drives) especially for UltraDMA models ... one slow reading sector will cause continuous data loss for the rest of the life of the drive and you will never know what's doing it. Well ... unless you sit there for the likes 500 meg to 10gigs of sector reads with a thorough diag. utility. Anyone smart enough to outwitt this problem? I'll even beta test the sucker :)