Your PC may be running slow

Long story short, I bought a new second HDD, and while installing it I decided to reconfigure the way my drives were connected. In doing so, the HDDs ended up on the other IDE channel (I swapped the plugs over). I noticed a massive slowdown in my PC and measured it with some benchmark software. After putting the HDDs back on the secondary IDE channel the PC went back to normal (fast). Don't ask me why this is the case - I've checked the BIOS settings.

So, if you know what you're doing you mighht want to try swapping your IDE cables over ;)

I have 3 hard drives and my PC has always run fine O_o

Skitchy: how is Bus Mastering configured on your PC? It's in Device Manager, under Hard Disk Controllers. I suspect you only have it set for a single channel.

It could be that DMA isn't being used, and that a drive on the bus is running in PIO mode.

Check the tabs under Device Manager -> Primary/Secondary controller

Especially common issue when you have things like a ZIP drive or older CD-ROM in the mix.

Also, make sure that you actually have the IDE busmastering drivers for your motherboard installed. Without those, things mostly work most of the time, but you can see a *huge* performance impact in certain situations.

SATA 150, no slow downs here

wow useful post!