[pmattf]

Using Windows XP, service pack 2, all updates. P4 2.8ghz.

I just made two changes to my system -- I installed a second internal drive for data, and I upgraded to Downloader Pro 1.7

C drive is the old drive, 3 year old Western Digital 120 GB Caviar. D: drive is the new one, 320 GB Western Digital Caviar. I just ran this disk speed utility -- http://www.snapfiles.com/get/rkdisk.html -- on both disks. D: drive shows up as being slightly faster.

When I put CF card in my USB 2.0 card reader and download NEF files from my Nikon D200 (7 to 9 meg each), it runs smooth and steady at around 4.7 to 5 megs per second (just like it used to before I changed the system).

When I download to my D: drive it does the same for about 5 to 10 files, then it will stop for maybe 3 to 10 seconds, download a few more, and do the same thing, ad infinitum until all files are downloaded. I have repeated numerous times, trying it immediately after a reboot etc. and it is always the same thing.

There are no other problems I have seen with the D: drive. After I downloaded 930 megabytes from the card to the C: drive, I can use windows explorer to copy it over to the D: drive in about 20 seconds (which also means it won't be too hard to work around this issue, but still, it is weird and annoying).

For one more test, I downloaded to an external USB 2.0 hard drive, and got the same smooth performance as the C: drive.

Any thoughts on what could be going on?

[Chris Breeze]

I'm sorry I don't know what could be causing this. I regularly download from a USB 2.0 card reader to various drives on my system, some serial ATA drives and some USB 2.0 external drives and have never noticed much difference between them.

[pmattf]

Thanks for your reply. I tried copying files from the card reader to my drives directly in Windows File Explorer, and I am seeing the same thing -- they appear on the C: drive at a smooth and steady pace, and it stops/starts when copying to the D: drive. So obviously it is not a BreezeBrowser issue after all.

FYI, I just posted the following question to Western Digital technical support. I will post a follow-up if I get this resolved. I am starting to suspect it may have to do with support for very large drives (my D: is 320 gig).

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My C: drive (system) is a three year old WD1200JB-75CAO. I just installed a new D: drive for data -- a WD3200JB-22KFAO. I am finding that when I transfer files for a USB 2.0 external compact flash card reader, it goes at a smooth steady rate when transferring files to the C: drive, but when transferring to the new D: drive it will go for a while, then pause for 5 or 10 seconds, then continue. It does this numerous times until the transfer is finish.

On the other hand, if I download them to the C: drive, and then drag the files from there to D:, it seems to copy quite quickly. And I have not seen any other problems with the D: drive either. However I am concerned there is something wrong with the drive, or my drivers etc.

I downloaded a simple drive speed test utility, and it shows the D: drive as being slightly faster than the C: drive. I downloaded the Western Digital Diagnostics software and it did not show any problems. I downloaded and ran WD Data Lifeguard, and at start up it said drives over 137 GB are not fully supported, so I installed the patch. After doing that, it seems like the problem improved a bit -- less stopping and starting, but downloading to the C: drive is definitely still much faster.

Do you know what is going on here?

[pmattf]

FYI, the problem was my relatively old mother board (Asus P4PE) combined with very new giant 320 gig disk. The IDE driver I was using was the "Intel Application Accelerator" v2.2, that came with the motherboard. After downloading and installing version 2.3 the problem cleared up.

This issue also caused major issues with I had set the D: drive as the temp disk for Photoshop.

Still have not heard a response back from Western Digital.