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I have a desktop PC which for a couple of years has been running XP with no problems. A couple of weeks ago, I put some more RAM in it and put Windows 7 on. I used the Windows easy transfer tool to get my old files and settings on it and all worked fine. It took about two hours to transfer the files from an IDE hard drive and all worked perfectly.
Loved Windows 7 and after about a week I went to write a DVD, but none of the programs recognised blank DVD's in either DVD drive. I got a replacement SATA DVD drive from work, plugged it in, switched on and it worked fine and recognised the blank disc.
Then stupidity struck. I unplugged the DVD drive, put it in the 3.5" bay and plugged it in again with the PC still running.
The PC immediately died and restarted itself, but failed to start up, giving messages about missing files. I did the repair utility both from the hard drive and from the Windows 7 disc, but it kept failing, telling me that to continue could damage the PC.
So I formatted the drive and re-installed Windows. All fine until doing the Easy Transfer thing when it went very slow then stopped.
I assumed the hard drive was screwed (SATA) so got a replacement and last night re-installed Windows again. All seemed well, if a little slow, but the Easy Transfer has so far taken 11 hours and it thinks it needs another 6 - but it is still doing it! This is to transfer around 160GB.
So why is it so slow? What have I broken and is it fixable?
Thanks
Boris
Offhand,
Hot-plugging an IDE disk will almost certainly annihilate the controller. SATA, theoretically, should be more robust; the protocol allows for hot-swap, it's just the regular internal cables that don't.
That said, it does sound like you might have done "something" to the controller. Speculating, blown cache memory? Maybe. It's not the end of the world if you have; PCI-E SATA adapter cards can be had for buttons these days.
I'm assuming that there's no exclamation marks showing in Device Manager, of course. You need to make sure you've got the chipset drivers installed for your motherboard or it'll run like Heather Mills with woodworm. Oh, and check that EHCI is enabled in BIOS to get the best out of the SATA disks, I guess.