[savagcl]

I've heard and seen references to seagate SATA drivers but cannot seem to locate
them anywhere. The seagate site has all kinds of tools, etc but no drivers.

Anyone know a site where i could find them?

thank you,
savagcl

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Is it for Xp you need them for

[Jye]

Is it for Xp you need them for

[savagcl]

Sorry, forgot to mention - drivers for a non-raid system.

savagcl

[Jye]

Did you configure the boot drive sequence in BIOS to actually use the
SATA ports to find a bootable hard drive? Is the SATA controller
enabled in BIOS? Did you install the SATA BIOS (it has its own BIOS
that loads after the system BIOS although it might share EEPROM space),
usually as part of the chipset driver package for your motherboard?

[savagcl]

Sorry, my system is a gateway P4, 3.0GHs, running WinXP Home (SP2).

Jye, thanks for replying.

A page from my BIOS is shown herein.
My main reason for asking for the drivers is that my System is getting very slow to
respond. When i first bought it, according to HDTach, my average read speed was
120MB per second with an 8ms response time. It has slowed down to 53.4 MB per
second and the response time is now at 13ms.

I havent added any new large apps, mostly some data files have been added.
I am bug, virus free according to avg, adaware, spybot, MS virus checker, etc.
I defrag a couple times a week and just to top it all off, i run reg supreme and spider.
These utilities give me a pretty clean system.

Seems like the only thing i can see is the speed reduction, everything works, just
slowly.

Here is my BIOS IDE Page: (Within parens is my comments).
IDE Config:
ATA\IDE Configuration: Enhanced
Hard Disk Pre-delay: Disabled
Intel RAID Techonology: Disabled

SATA Port 0 - ST3200822AS
SATA Port 1 - ST160023AS
Pata Primary Master - DVD
Pata Primary Slave - not detected (nothing there)
Pata Secondary Master - CD-RW
Pata Secondary Slave - not detected (nothing there)

Disabled - All IDE resources are disabled
Legacy - Up to 2 IDE channels enabled for OS requiring
legacy IDE Operations
Enhanced - All SATA, PATA resources are enabled

According to this info, it appears that my SATA drives are working but still sys is
getting slower.

Any help, suggestions you can offer will be appreciated.
thanks,
savagcl

[audioboy]

SATA drivers are only specific to a motherboard chipset. if the mobo uses a VIA chipset, then you need via sata drivers, intel for intel boards, etc. you could check around the gateway site, see if they have any mobo driver updates for your system, but I dont really think this is gonna help.
are your drives pretty full? this can slow things down. also, do you clean out temp files, cookies, temp internet files, etc. these can bog you down as well.
try out this free program, which will automatically clean up all that stuff...

http://www.spywareai...owsoftware&id=1

even if it doesnt help with this problem, its still a good tool to have.

[savagcl]

audioboy,

Always nice to have another cleanup program, thanks. It removed 49 meg of files,
mostly .bak files.
It didnt help with speed problem tho. I have checked gateway site and intel site. I do
have (and installed, the latest chipset for my PC). It uses the 875 chipset and no
updates are available. Was hoping for an updated set but its a nogo there.

Since the BIOS says the SATA drivers are installed (and i assume working/), what else
could be causing such a drastic slowdown? Again, my drives arent very full at all.

I did try moving everything over to 1 drive and un-installing (un-pluging_ the other one,
again no change in read speed. I also tried swapping from 1 drive to another, including
the OS but no change there either. One drive is original equipment (1.5 years old) and
the other is less than 6 months old.

So, once again, i'm hitting this brick wall with my head but not learning very much.

Still looking,
savagcl

[audioboy]

it sounds like you keep a pretty clean system, so this might not help much. the only other thing I can think of is if you have a lot processes running, programs that load into memory on bootup and stay there. check it out in task manager. look at the processes tab, and see how many are running, and what is taking up a lot if CPU time (if any), besides the system idle process.
you can do a search on anything you dont recognize- most likely you have all legitimate processes running, but you might have some toolbar plug in or something that could be eating up CPU ticks.

[Doby]

Hi,

Here's pretty neat site to run some tests maybe it will give you some idea's

PcPitstop

Let me know what it comes up with.

Rick

[savagcl]

audioboy, doby,

CPU time is running at about 2%.
Here are the processes from task manager:
3 largest are:
mozilla (31,068)
explorer (30,708)
svchost (21,404)

ALG - local service
gcasDtServ - savagcl
taskmgr - savagcl
jusched - savagcl (used for True Image backup software)
zlclient - savagcl (used by zonealarm)
gcasServ - savagcl (???)
avgcc - savagcl
schedhlp - savagcl
TrueImageMonitor - savagcl (used by True Image backup software)
explorer - savagcl
spoolsv - SYSTEM
svchost - LOCAL SERVICE
svchost - NETWORK SERVICE
svchost - SYSTEM
vsmon - SYSTEM
wdfmgr - LOCAL SERVICE
svchost - NETWORK SERVICE
svchost - SYSTEM
svchost - SYSTEM
Isass - SYSTEM (???)
services - SYSTEM
winlogon - SYSTEM
csrss - SYSTEM (???)
smss - SYSTEM (???)
mozilla - savagcl
isafe - SYSTEM
avgupsvc - SYSTEM
avgamsvr - SYSTEM
schedul2 - SYSTEM
System - SYSTEM
SystemIdleProcess - SYSTEM

Have no idea what the "svchost" is doing, and there are 6 running.
Some of these are unknown to me, I'll look them up.

If you spot anything please let me know.

I use PCPitStop at least monthly (no serious problems found) but i dont think
they are covering SATA yet.

thanks, guys,
savagcl
(clif)

[audioboy]

svchost is a generic windows host process, it is normal to see several of them running.
I believe the gcasserv is for microsoft anti-spyware.
I forget what the lsass process is offhand, bit its part of windows.
everything you have there looks normal.

[savagcl]

Ok, thanks, audioboy.
Thats one more thing i can check off as not being the problem.

Still looking, something has to be doing it.
savagcl
(clif)

[Doby]

Check the drive manufactuers website for tools to check the drive these are usually downloadable for free.

Rick

[savagcl]

Already done that. Seagate dont have tools for SATA (fully implemented yet).
I still check once in a while hoping for an update that will support SATA there drives.

Frankly, i would prefer drivers that are not on the MB. Would seem to provide more
user control.

thanks,
savagcl
(clif)

[audioboy]

the sata drivers are specific to the chipset of the mobo. only the SATA controller is integrated onto the mobo. from what I understand, this leads to higher throughput than using an external controller (such as a promise card).

here is a pretty good article explaining more about SATA. it is a little specific to their particular chipset, but it gives some good info all the same.

http://www.viaarena....=5&ArticleID=54


SATA is newer than XP, so we have to deal with extra drivers, etc. hopefully the next version of windows will be more sata friendly, so we dont have to jump through all the hoops to load onto them.