very slow hd on xl-201

[Imrahil]

I recently purchased a xl-201
after the initial shock at the sheer ammount of cr*p pre-installed and the fact more than half the ram was already in use I got around to copying some of my media files onto the unit.
Copying via the network was noticably slower than my other machines but I blamed the network.
when copying stuff around locally I noticed it was VERY slow - compared to my workstation which takes about 15 secs to copy a 700mb file from one partition to another (on the same physical drive) the xl-201 takes 50 seconds!!

is anyone else finding this and is the drive simply that slow? Or is this abnormal?

thanx,
Elco

[Blencogo]

Hi Elco and welcome to Club Vaio.

I'm afraid it could be lots of things but it is worth checking that DMA (Direct Memory Access) is enabled on your hard drive and DVD drive.

Start -> right-click My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware -> Device Manager

Expand IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers and double-click on your Primary IDE Channel -> Advanced

Make sure 'DMA if Available' is selected for both devices and check that a DMA Mode is shown in 'Current Transfer Mode'. If PIO mode is shown, right click on the Primary IDE Channel and choose Uninstall and then re-boot your Vaio to try to start DMA Mode.