well it has taken a while about a week! but i have finally sorted out my hard drive transfer speeds!
so here they are:

timing buffered disk reads: 64Mb in 1.59 seconds =40.25Mb/sec

timing buffered disk reads: 64Mb in 1.60 seconds =40.00Mb/sec

this is a whole lot better than:

timing buffered disk reads: 64Mb in (long time) seconds =6.xxMb/sec

without the upgraded kernel!

now i have one small problem to sort out.
with my new kernel in place
why can i not use the cdrom?
when i put a cd into the drive it used to automatically mount the drive i guess. I was able to see its contents through nautilus.

but with my new kernel it doesnt do that?

can anyone tell me how to get that sorted? or point me in the right direction

I feel obliged to buy all you guys a beer! with all the help you have given me!!

Did you compile cdrom support when you recompiled the kernel ? Also check to see if you can mount it manually from a command :

Will look something like this:

mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom

edited your thread title to make it more helpful

i tried to mount it manually with

mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom
and it says:
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

so then i tried:
mount /mnt/cdrom
and it said:
mount: /dev/cdrom is not a valid block device

im pretty certain i compiled my kernel with cdrom support

Try mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom. Also, run
ls -l /dev/cdrom and see what device it points to.

same thing
not a valid block device.
I have discovered something though
my other cd rom drive works
i think it has something to do with a few errors at boot up.

Did you recently add a new device? And move that to a new spot on the IDE chain?