R40e hard drive chkdsk VERY slow

[simonbrew]

I'm trying to improve the performance of my son's R40e T/p
2684-5AG with 20GB hard drive & XP SP2.
I have gone though disk cleanup and disk is now about 50% full.
I have also defragged the disk a few times even though analyse said it wasn't required. Overall, performance has improved slightly but is still AWFUL.

I'm now running a full CHKDSK via My computer/right click on c drive/properties/tools/check now.. choosing both options.
There are 5 stages to this checkdisk and stage 4 checks first the data then the free space. Stage 4 is currently running UNBELIEVABLY slow, at about 10 minutes for each 1% of file data checked, so on this basis it will take some 15HOURS to complete! CHKDSK is not showing any errors (so far).

I also tried PC doctor diagnostics but it did not come up with any problem.

For comparison, I tried chkdsk on my own 40GB T41, and the whole job took less than 45mins.

Any ideas?

Is the fault in the actual drive or maybe in the connecting circuitry, in which case replacing the drive won't help. I think a new 40GB drive is part no 08K9687 - does anyone agree?

[GomJabbar]

Verify that your hard drive is using Ultra DMA and NOT PIO. Go to Device Manager and check: IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > Primary IDE Channel > Advanced Settings tab. However if you are booted up in Windows SAFE MODE, your hard drive will be using PIO. Apparently DMA is not supported in SAFE MODE.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/i ... /udma_fix/

Note that if your hard drive is beginning to fail, this can lead to slow operation. Check in Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer, for SMART or ATAPI errors.

[simonbrew]

Verify that your hard drive is using Ultra DMA and NOT PIO. Go to Device Manager and check: IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > Primary IDE Channel > Advanced Settings tab. However if you are booted up in Windows SAFE MODE, your hard drive will be using PIO. Apparently DMA is not supported in SAFE MODE.

Note that if your hard drive is beginning to fail, this can lead to slow operation. Check in Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer, for SMART or ATAPI errors.

Many thanks to Gomjabber - VERY helpful...but I still have a problem...

Yes in normal non-safe mode, primary IDE channel device 0 is using UDMA mode 5


Event viewer does not seem to show any SMART or ATAPI errors in any of the 4 categories Application, Security, System & IE. . I assume they should appear in System, but in which column will I find the words SMART or ATAPI ? View/Find of SMART / ATAPI yields nothing.

I cancelled the CHKDSK after 5hrs 20 mins, by which time it had only managed to check 65% of the data (and none of the free space!). The disk light is on all the time during CHKDSK operation.

I'm really puzzled why it's not showing any errors - I suspect that if I restart CHKDSK it will eventually get through to the end and show no errors (like PC doctor result) , but something is obviously seriously wrong somewhere!

[GomJabbar]

Try running checkdisk in SAFE MODE. Even though your hard drive will be operating in PIO mode, checkdisk should finish in less than an hour or two. This will reduce the possibility of other drivers or software causing a conflict. If checkdisk is still very slow, or even slower, then I suspect your hard drive is about to fail. I have experienced the same thing when trying to format a drive that was about to fail. Make a backup immediately and look to purchase a new hard drive. Newegg is a good source. Any PATA notebook drive should work.

Here are a couple of other diagnostic utilities you can run if you wish.

Hitachi Drive Fitness Test

Fujitsu Diagnostic Tool

[simonbrew]

FIXED IT!!!.. but not in the way I expected.

CHKDSK in safe mode was indeed using PIO and ran slightly slower as you would expect, so I was about to get a new hard drive, until I tried the Hitachi DFT.
To my amazement, the DFT advanced test whizzed through in 40 mins flat and showed NO DISK ERRORS at all.
Control panel/admin tools showed no errors.
Given that PC Doctor also showed no errors, overall it was hard to believe that there was a hardware error.

I next tried Partition Magic which showed a solid error "1608 File record mark used 30695" which to me sounded like software corruption of my NTFS drive, so I reran Windows chkdsk. It ran as slowly as last time, at about 8 minutes for each 1% of file data checked. I started at 15:30 and it was only 60% complete by 21:30. However overnight it ran through to a successful conclusion, and this morning, a fresh run of CHKDSK took less than one hour to complete. I now find that the Partition Magic test also runs through without errors .

So, XP somehow must have corrupted the data on the disk, which caused it to slow down. Only XP CHKDSK was able to detect the problem and fix it - I don't think there was ever a problem with the actual hard drive (though as it's only 20GB, I may now change it anyway).

Thanks to all for advice...

[simonbrew]

In case anyone is interested, here is what happened after I thought I had finally fixed my disk problem.
Despite several runs of CHKDSK /F, the disk continued to perform appallingly so I decided to get a new 40GB drive 08K9687 from Impact Computers. I thought about getting 60GB drive but worried that bios might not support it because original max drive size was 40GB. WAS I TOO CAUTIOUS?

My only remaining problem, which took me nearly a week to solve, was how to get DOS Ghost 2003.793 (the final release) to support my USB2 hard drive attached to the USB1.1 port on the R40e. When booting from the MS-DOS It should have worked, but I always got error messages about ASPIUHCI.SYS (which is a USB1.1 driver) being corrupted.

After downloading DOS LAN & USB drivers both from lenovo site and from the site of my desktop supplier, I managed to get Ghost peer networking to function using direct LAN cable. I was hoping if absolutely necessary to be able to connect USB2 drive to desktop and then restore R40E across the network.

But then I found out that standalone DOS Ghost could be booted direct from the CD and it DID support my USB2 drive attached to USB1.1 port - relief!

So now everything is back to normal - and I'd like to offer many thanks to the various contributors above.

Learning point 1: DOS Ghost 2003 .793 doesn't support USB2 drives attached to USB1.1 port, but fortunately standalone Ghost on Ghost CD works well.

Learning point 2: Make sure your restore strategy actually works BEFORE you take any irrecoverable steps during any upgrade!