Slow Western Digital disk drive

[nyip12 at netscape.net]

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, the manual doesn't say anything about the drive being slow at first and then speeding up. I've been using the drive now for over a week and it's just as slow.

The emails from Western Digital Tech. Support doesn't say anything about changes in access speed as you use your drive.

I'm beginning to think it's the drive cable, but I can't replace the cable unless I can find an 80 pin cable of the same configuration as what's in the iMac now (see below). The other option would be to buy a firewire case for the drive.

>
>Message-ID: <3DFD80F4.10A260A8 at attbi.com>
>Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 23:29:56 -0800
>From: David Crandon <tdc at attbi.com>
>Subject: [HM] Re: Slow Western Digital disk drive
>
>Theres something about new HD from certain manufacturers that will be
>pretty slow for the first few hours/days of use and then will speed up....
>
>See if the instruction manual says anything about that.
>
>David
>
>nyip12 at netscape.net wrote:
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I have an iMac 400 Mhz (summer 2000?) with 64+512 MB memory. I recently replaced the original 10 GB disk with a 100 GB 7200 rpm Western Digital drive.
>> 
>> The new disk is noticeably slower than the old one (which is a Quantum drive presumably running at 5400 rpm).
>> 
>> I ran FWB DriveTest on it and it shows an average of 0.3 MB/sec.
>> 
>> I emailed WD tech. support and they suggested changing the disk jumpers from cable select to single drive. I did and FWB drive test shows the disk access speed improving (?) to about 0.5 MB/sec.
>> 
>> Surely it's got to be faster than this?
>> 
>> More info re: disk cable. The new drive comes with its own 80 pin cable. But inside the iMac, the disk cable goes from the motherboard to the CD-ROM drive and then to the disk drive. The part that goes from the motherboard to the CD-ROM drive is wider than the part that goes from the CD-ROM to the disk drive (and looks like a 40 pin cable). This means that I can't use the cable that comes with the new drive.
>> 
>> Any ideas to get faster disk access than 0.5 MB/sec.?
>> 
>> TIA.
>> Tony
>> nyip12 at netscape.net


__________________________________________________________________
The NEW Netscape 7.0 browser is now available. Upgrade now! http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp 

Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/