Help needed weird western didgital HD

[Airmail]

Sorry but this is a total noob question, id used IDE HD's before.....I just got a SATA one

its write speed seems really slow compared to my last one even though its the same RPM and better seek time

I noticed in device manager its got the drive labelled as a primary IDE drive? Then I noticed another weird thing, even though its got a sata connector its got an IDE style power plug as well as a SATA power plug. I have an IDE style one in at the moment, could that be the problem?

[GF_Mastiff]

does your moBo support the SATA and if so youshould have a plug in for it and check your Bios setting SATA dometimes is emulated on the MoBo as PATA and IDE.

[mondo]

Other than the previous suggestion, I'd check your motherboard drivers to see if theres any newer drivers for your onboard SATA controller. If its all plugged in and working (even badly) then your all ok for compatibility even though your using a molex connector (why would they provide the socket if it wasn't intended for use? ).

SATA drives also show up as different sorts of disc depending on the controller, on some board controllers they appear as SCSI discs for instance.

[Inadaze]

Is it a sata2 hd and can your mobo support sata2 or just sata1, if your mobo can only manage sata1 and it is a sata2 hd, then check the WD website in the FAQ section.

I upgraded a rig that had a sata1 capable mobo, but with a sata2 WD drive in it needed a jumper set on the hd to get it working at it's best. I had to rake through the WD support section on their website to find that out.

Also check the properties for your sata controller in device manager (it might be called SCSI and RAID controllers), make sure if you have the option that Native Command Queue enabled. That will help increase performance and help reduce the wear and tear on the drive.

BTW If you have a sata power plug on your psu, I'd use that, but I don't think it would cause performance problems if the drive has the option of a standard power plug.

[zapatista]

posting hardware support questions in a gaming forum is a bit off topic ;)

using a sata harddrive requires that you use the sata connector and cable, even if there still is an ide connector in the hd. check your bios setup to make sure the sata controlers are activated. during POST you should see the correct hardware, but if in doubt check in the bios that it is set to autodetect hard drives, or make your bios detect the drive manually.

once you are back in windows, go to device manager and check your hard drive is correctly listed, it should be identified under "disc drives" and under "ide/ata controllers". the sata drivers depend on the chipset used on your mb, and are usually updated with the ms-updates (or you can check for ex the intel website depending on the chipset type and brand)

if all looks correct and you still think it is accessing the harddrive to slowly, use a freeware program like "HDtach" to measure your harddrive read/write speeds (it will plot it out in a nice graph with comparisons of other hardware, and only takes a few min to run)

[Airmail]

Thanks guys, unlucily my PC is properly dead