Super Slow SATA--HALP!!

[hamburgers]

I've got a Seagate ST3250410AS that I've been using on an old MSI 865PE Neo2 mobo. I'm running a 3.0Ghz P4 Northwood with 2 gigs of Corsair RAM at 2-2-2-6 across 4 channels, an x1650pro (AGP, of course), 2 IDE CD/DVD drives, and a 420W PSU. I've got the jumper put in to limit the drive's speed to 1.5gbit/s, since the board can only handle the first SATA standard, and am using the SATA/150 cable that was packaged with my motherboard.

When I first plugged the SATA drive in, I couldn't boot at all. I was getting a lovely kernel error {STOP: 0x0000006F (0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000,0x00000000) Session3_Initialization_Failed} when I tried to boot using my Windows disk, just before I could get to the disk partitioning screen (when 'setup is loading windows'). Plugging in an old 10-gig IDE hard drive as a master allowed me to solve that particular problem, and I was able to partition my SATA drive successfully and install Windows XP Pro with no problems. The problem I'm facing is a boot-up time that is literally 5 minutes, ±30 seconds. I've yet to do a write/read speed check, since I don't know what utility to use to check that, so I'm unsure if the loading problem is limited to the boot sector, if that's even possible.

I've really got no idea what is wrong at all, since I'm 95% noob. HALP!!

edit: The HDD in question is a 2-week-old, OEM product from Directron.com

 

[Old Hippie]

Plugging in an old 10-gig IDE hard drive as a master allowed me to solve that particular problem, and I was able to partition my SATA drive successfully and install Windows XP Pro with no problems

Follow this link and check your BIOS settings.

Good Luck!

 

[DonDon]

I use HD Tune to check drive speed. Link

You can also go HERE and get the DOS version of Seatools and run the complete test with only the problem drive connected.

Find a different SATA cable and try that also.

Go into the Bios and reset the settings to default.

Good luck.

Don

 

[Nenu]

Check the CMOS is set to autodetect hard drives, it may be configured for another drive.
(I too recommend a CMOS reset, remember to write down settings you dont want to lose)

Go into Device Manager and find the IDE controller the drive is on.
You should be able to see what DMA mode it is using and perhaps change it if set wrong.

Can you boot off another hard drive and run HDTune and then boot off itself and run HDTune.
If booting off the other drive makes it run better, we know windows can be configured to improve things.


Another possibility is if you are overclocking...
If the PCI bus speed hasnt been locked, it might be clocking up with the FSB overclock.
One drive might be able to handle the speed where another cant, this could explain why one drive works and one doesnt, but we dont know if you are clocking.