Harddrive accessing causes stutter (1 Viewer)

computer

Portal Member
December 10, 2005
20
0
Hi,

I have a brand new 200Gb 7200rpm IDE harddrive with 8Mb cache. I believe it's a Seagate. I can't remember exactly. I had a big of difficulty getting LBA working but that's sorted now, the partitions are NTFS with one used for Windows, Programs, etc and some recordings and the other used for some recordings and music files. The drive is master on it's own IDE channel.

Basically I've got Mediaportal runnig to a satisfactory level and it's fine except as soon as something access the harddrive it throws Mediaportal off and makes it stutter for a few seconds. This could be as simple as opening a networked folder from the harddrive in Windows Explorer on a different machine.

Is there any reason why this shouldn't be happing or should it be regarded as 'normal'? Is there any tool that will tell me about the performance and usage of my harddrive so I could maybe tell what else is accessing the drive and causing problems?

Thanks
 

Marcusb

Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • February 16, 2005
    1,995
    29
    Melbourne
    for the most obvious first, make sure the disk is using DMA and that you have an 80 pin IDE cable.

    Also, you may need to post the support template so we can see your MP settings. For example, are you using VMR9 and have you applied all the tweaks in the tips and tricks forum for DTV? There are quite a few, which basically address a lot of Microsoft shortfalls.

    To give you an example, I have the exact same drive as you and I can record two DTV streams while timeshifting at the same time.
     

    jawbroken

    Portal Pro
    August 13, 2005
    706
    0
    Home Country
    Afghanistan Afghanistan
    You can check that your drive is running in DMA mode by going to Device manager, expanding IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, opening the properties of the IDE channel your hard drive is on (probably Primary) and going to the Advanced Settings tab. The Current Transfer Mode should be Ultra DMA Mode 5 or similar.

    If it says PIO anywhere, then that is most likely the problem.
     

    computer

    Portal Member
    December 10, 2005
    20
    0
    I've checked and the drive is running Ultra DMA 5. It's using the 80pin cable that came with the harddrive and seems to be running fine.

    I think I've got all the Windows patches but I'll make sure.
     

    fpouels

    Portal Member
    April 16, 2005
    27
    0
    Bennekom
    Home Country
    Netherlands Netherlands

    jawbroken

    Portal Pro
    August 13, 2005
    706
    0
    Home Country
    Afghanistan Afghanistan
    Some people have fixed this problem by defragmenting. I would check your drive and see if it seems overly fragmented. (Just throwing out ideas here, hard to tell exactly what is going on)
     

    computer

    Portal Member
    December 10, 2005
    20
    0
    Hi,

    I've checked, this is the drive I have.

    According to the Windows Defragment tool neither partition is particularly defragmented and doesn't need defragmenting.
     

    fpouels

    Portal Member
    April 16, 2005
    27
    0
    Bennekom
    Home Country
    Netherlands Netherlands
    As MarcusB said before, please post the support template so we know your MP settings. Does this "stutter" apply to all sections of MP (music, movies, tv) ?

    I was having this issue as well, but it was only visible in myTV. When an EPG update ran, or I used the MP webinterface, the TV stuttered for a couple of seconds. I solved this by turning of timeshifting.
     

    computer

    Portal Member
    December 10, 2005
    20
    0
    Area: Media Portal Program
    MediaPortal Version: 0.2.0.0 RC2 (2005-12-16)
    MediaPortal Skin: mce
    Windows Version: Windows XP (SP2)
    .NET CLR Version: 2.0.50727
    DirectX Version: 4.09.00.0904 (9.0c)
    Audio Codec: MPEG/AC3/DTS/LPCM Audio Decoder
    Video Codec: Mpeg2Dec Filter
    CPU Type: AMD Sempron 2600+
    Memory: 511 MB
    Motherboard: K7S741MG (Winfast)
    TV Card Model: Hauppauge Nova-T
    TV Card Type: Hardware
    TV Card Driver: -
    Video Card Model: Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis (128 MB)
    Video Card Driver: -
    Video Card Resolution: 800x600
    Video Render Type: VMR9
    Audio Card Model: Realtek AC'97 Audio
    Audio Card Driver: -
    Synopsis:: - Only a problem in MyTV.

    Turning off timeshifting would mean you can't just pause when you want though? It's a problem that only seems to occur when something else does some harddrive accessing.
     

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom