Recently, I fitted a 3.5 500GB ATA100 Maxtor HDD on a friend's computer and noticed his main and only HDD in there is a 2.5 notebook-sized HDD. I told him I don't think the new Maxtor would work because of the size difference, but through force, the Maxtor was squeezed into the compartment. Anyway, testing the new Maxtor, it seemed when I tried burning a movie from the Maxtor, the burn speed was incredibly slow and capped at about 2x. I'm guessing the CPU couldn't handle it because not only is the seek time pretty bad when burning, but it eats up a lot of the computer's resources and memory, causing a massive slowdown. Could I get an explanation or a link on why it runs slow (always nice to learn something new)? Also, is it possible to use the Maxtor to house OS instead and get it the run normally? And anyone got a recommendation on what program I can use to make a quick log of the hardware specs? I can't list much besides it being a Foxconn motherboard with 1 GB of RAM under Windows XP.
Is this a desktop? That seems rather odd that a desktop PC would come with a 2.5" hard drive, although they are quiet. One of the best things I can suggest is to put the new drive in an external enclosure and run it over USB or Firewire instead. That would make far more sense. As for the slow read/write speed on the drive, I'm not sure to be honest, but maybe the drive's version of ATA isn't compatible with the PC's IDE chipset, certainly if it's very old.
Yeah, it's a desktop computer strangely. From what I've been told, the computer was originally bought and the guy who gave it to him 'might' have tamper with it but my friend is unsure. I know now it's a foxconn 661fx4mr-es motherboard if that helps. From here, it seems that it should work. Perhaps I installed it wrong.
check too make sure neither the dvd or new hdd arent running in PIO mode http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/260038
Thanks philraz. Also, before I can get my hands on the cpu again, what's the difference between a S IDE and P IDE? I noticed the embedded words as I was unhooking the hdd this morning.
