I have an old Compaq laptop that I have tried to revive... It is equipped with an INTEL i440BX chipset, a Pentium III (846 MHz), a 30 GB hard drive and a CDRW/DVD rom. The system initially experienced slow drive access under Windows Millenium but at the time, all diagnostic tools that were tried didn't detect any specific problem with the hard drive... I opted for Ubuntu to check if the same problem would occur.

After Ubuntu installation (I wiped the HD clean), the drive is still working very slowly... But the install worked fine...

hdparm -t-T gives me :
Cached reads : 275 MB/s
Buffered disk reads : 3 MB/s

I disabled the drive power management with no improvemwent...
I also tried to enable the 32 bit with no improvement...

I am quite new to Linux, and not very competent in hardware troubleshooting, so please be patient with me...

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

You might check to make sure you are using a 80 pin ide cable (just from memory). It really makes a difference on my asus p3fb (correct letters not sure about the order).

Lazlow

The easiest way to get a large speed boost is to enable DMA. I believe the switch is "hdparm -d1 /dev/...".

Though, leaving DMA off may allow your HD to run for many years longer.

The hard drive is mounted on a 40 (or 44) pin socket and the space in the laptop doesn't seem enough to fit a large cable...

tofm

The 80pin cables use 40 pin connectors. The wires are just smaller(something about crosstalk?). The overall cable size is the same. That being said, I did not notice the laptop part.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ATA_cables.jpg

Edit:

It occured to me that it could just be a pinched or damaged ide cable. Not bad enough to cuase a problem with bursts but enough to slowdown larger transfers. Just an idea.

According to hdparm -i, the drive operates under the UDMA2 mode...

Since it is doing this both in windows and linux it is highly probable that this is a hardware issue.

2.5 inch hard drives has a throughput of no more than 4 MB per second. Also their accessing times is 13 ms and higher, so you still have to wait for programs to load. You can try to upgrade the hard drive to Hitachi 80 GB 7200 RPM 2.5 inch hard drive. These are very fast notebook drives, but are noisy.

The best way is to buy a new notebook computer. It will provide more than two times the performance.

Oh shoot, you're right. I would have said the same thing, but I misread the original post.

Thanks for your help !

I opened the laptop (not an easy task with compaq Presario system), and it seems that there is no IDE cable, but the socket where the drive plugs in is mounted directly on the motherboard... So much for a pinched cable (I liked that idea)...


What should be my next move ?.. I'd buy a new drive if I was sure it is the cause of the problem, but what if I replace it and still have the same problem ? Is it possible to trace the origin of this problem specifically to the hard drive ?

tot

I will bow to electro on this one (I do very little with laptops). I would imagine that your current dirve is 5400rpm (or slower) so upgrading to a 7200rpm would gain a lot from just raw speed, as well as the technology being newer (faster). If power consumption is a concern you might want to be careful, as I would assume the increased rpm will draw a lot more power (mabe not since it is newer tech).

Good Luck
Lazlow

You could do the dangerous way by re-soldering the connections. The soldering iron that needs to be used is zero voltage, grounded, and temperature controlled. This type of soldering iron will cost about 100 to 200 US dollars. Since computer PCB boards are multi-layered, you will have to take extra steps than just re-soldering.

The steps at http://www.badcaps.net to remove capacitors from motherboards is about the same steps that are needed to fix the header on the notebook computer's motherboard.

The solder I suggest is 62/36/2 because it uses a lower temperature, so this minimizes adhesive from coming loose during reheating. Though you can go with the common 64/40 ratio solder, but you have to be careful how many times you reheat the PCB board. Use splatter shield and a gas mask while soldering.

I will repeat again notebook hard drives are not speed demons. Their maximum throughput is no more than 4 MB per second and the accessing times is 13 ms or more. New notebook hard drives are little better, but still does not match the performance of today's desktop hard drives.

Ultra-DMA mode 2 has a maximum throughput of 33 MB per second, so you will not get any higher performance using higher modes. The fastest optical drives uses Ultra-DMA mode 2.

Do not always think that the higher RPM of the hard drive is, faster the hard drive. This is not so. It is just a coincidence that 7200 RPM models are faster because the technology has improved since the 5400 RPM models and the hard drive manufactures are just keeping up what the computer industry has brainwashed the consumer about. There are a lot of benchmarks comparing 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM hard drives.

In conclusion, if you have a soft gut, I suggest looking for a refurbish notebook computer if you can opt for a newer notebook computer or can not speed 2000 US dollars. If you have a hard gut, take the dangerous route to fix your problems. I am not responsible of your actions when you attempt to modify your notebook.

Well, re-soldering the connections seems too involved for my skills level... Thanks anyway...

It seems I can just buy another drive and try it out... And what if it doesn't work either ?

But re-reading your post, it seems I'm getting from my hard drive almost as much as it can provide (3 MB/s)... Why then does it take almost 20 min to boot and tens of seconds to open a console window ?
That's the puzzling part with this problem: drive checkup programs have always given this drive the thumb up, but it takes forever to load anything into memory... Any advice about a drive troubelshooting program that could provide more information than hdparm ?

How much ram are your running? 20 minutes to boot is not right. There is a problem somewhere and I would guess it is not in the disk. Have you run memtest to check the memory. It almost sounds like you are running "slow" memory. Again I run desktops only.

Good Luck
Lazlow

Probably the drive has a lot of corrupted sectors, so the drive may have relink the good sectors from the area where the manufacture has set aside to the old sectors. The bad sectors are then noted to not to be use. Doing this does reduce performance of the hard drive because it is not efficient. A new drive should bring back performance. Also turn off scripts or services that you are not using.

lazlow, motherboards that has 440BX chipset uses SDRAM memory. The speed of memory does not have any effect when used in GUI environments. When the system is used for memory intense applications such as games, it will be sluggish.