Thanks, Curt and Paul, for your comments. I didn't see your posts
until today. For some reason this post was not showing up in my news
reader, so I posted it again at this link:
http://groups.google.ca/group/micros...5b4af1cdb2397f.
It was a DMA issue.

Cheers,
Marcus

On Mar 8, 9:31 am, "Curt Christianson" <curtchrist...@NOSPAMyahoo.com>
wrote:
> Paul,
>
> I've never tried that configuration myself, but I can just imagine the
> performance. It would be hard *not* to notice. <g>
>
> --
> HTH,
> Curt
>
> Windows Support Centerhttp://aumha.org/
>
> "Paul Randall" <paulr...@cableone.net> wrote in message
>
> news:eqFeGzZYHHA.4264@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>
>
>
> > <holysmoke...********.com> wrote in message
> >news:1173338439.816158.98870@v33g2000cwv.googlegr oups.com...
> >> Lately my computer has been having real trouble playing videos
> >> (extremely jerky), and even scrolling through a long list of files in
> >> a directory in windows explorer (jerky scrolling). I ran some tests
> >> using HD Tune and HD Tach to see if it was a hard drive issue, and low
> >> and behold the read speed is terrible. I am getting a maximum read
> >> rate of about 4MB/Sec. My drive is a 120GB Maxtor 4R120LO. Is there
> >> anything I can do to fix this? I defragged it but no difference. Can
> >> it be saved?
>
> >> Thanks
> >> Marcus
>
> > I once had a similar problem. I had set up my PC with two CD drives and
> > two hard drives. I thought I would get better hard drive access if I put
> > one CD and one hard drive on eaxh of the IDE cables. With their locations
> > in the PC case, it seemed best to make the CDs the primary and the hard
> > drives the secondary devices. Big mistake. It was sooooooo slow.
> > Changing the hard drives to primary device on both IDE cables solved the
> > problem.
>
> > -Paul Randall