Cloned P/ATA IDE drive very slow to boot

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After getting hit with nasty malware at a hotel, then spending 10 hours rebuilding/updating XP-Home and apps/settings on my Asus netbook, I decided to try disk cloning. Acronis was recomended more than once, so I downloaded the True Image Home trial. I bought an identical SATA drive for my netbook, cloned the disc (using USB 2.0), and tried it. It worked flawlessly, and the clone target boots just like the source.

Next, I tried my older desktop, a home-built PC old enough to still require P/ATA IDE system drives. After a long, slow clone (USB 1.1), I tested the clone and it booted, but it did so at about 20% of the speed of normal. Literally, the clone took 5 minutes to do what the original disk does in less than a minute. (I tried booting three times - slow every time. The original boots just like normal, nice and quick, no issues.)

The source is a current model WD 250GB IDE drive, with two partitions - 150GB for WinXP Pro, and 100GB for Ubuntu. The target is a WD 160GB IDE drive, a bit older (maybe built 2004 or so) but it was never that slow to boot. (It was the master in this old machine, before I bought the 250 GB and rebuilt my O/S and apps a few months back.) I did an automatic clone, and True Image allocated 60GB to WinXP and kept 100GB for Ubuntu.

I doubt I'd ever use that 160 GB HDD again, except while waiting for a replacement, should my new 250 GB crash.

I am wondering this: Is this caused by the target drive being older and slower? If I use this slow clone as a source to create or restore another newer 250 GB drive, will it be fast again? Or am I in some kind of "copy of a copy" downward spiral that will get slower with every clone, or at best, stay as slow as the current image seems to be?

Thanks!

Darrin in Wyoming, USA

Sat, 08/14/2010 - 18:16
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It's not a "copy of a copy" problem.

Check the BIOS and in Windows Device Manager and see what DMA access mode is being used. Look for a difference between the 250GB drive and the 160GB drive. Ultra DMA 5 is normal. If it's dropping to a low Ultra DMA mode or to PIO mode, performance will be poor.

Make sure you're using an 80-conductor IDE cable. Slow speeds will result from using a 40-conductor cable with an Ultra DMA 3, 4, or 5 drive.

I assume you verified the jumpers are correct on the drive (Master/Slave). Is the drive the only one connected to that specific IDE cable/port? If not, what else is connected? Some drives perform slowly in certain configurations (Slave to a DVD drive, for example).

Sat, 08/14/2010 - 18:52