slow HD to HD partition copies

[VikingColumbus]

Hello,

I'm scratching my head over the following problem in doing
total HD to HD copies via Copy Commander 9.

My source HD is a WD120GB and my destination HD is a WD80GB.

I have 512MB RAM, an AMD2200+ CPU, both drives are 7200 RPM.

While in Windows Millennium, I can copy 1GB of data from one HD
partition to another HD partition in 5 minutes!

Using Copy Commander 9 from diskette, It takes a combined 1 hour
to simply copy 2GB of data including time to scan a target space
on the 80GB.

????? This is not normal and I cannot figure out why this slow
copy speed presents itself.

My motherboard is a K7VTA Pro V1.0 with Award BIOS. PIO and UDMA
settings are all on AUTO.

Please advise me as to how to debug this problem.

VK

[Tuttle]

Disk caching -- Windows does it by default, but DOS needs a utility running. Run "smartdrv" from your boot floppy and it should speed data transfers up immensely.

[uart]

There are numerous reasons why disk transfer speed is slow when running from in a real mode "DOS like" environment. In Windows you have disk caching but you also have 32 bit drivers and UDMA drivers. I'm not familar with "Copy Commander 9" but it's possible that it has none of the above.

One other tip that might help is to check through all your bios setup screens and see if you find an option like "Bus mastering IDE" and set to "enabled". Now you'd think that such a setting would be enabled by default but often it's not. The reason for this is that it's not required in Windows which loads it's own bus-mastering UDMA IDE drivers. But if enabled this setting can often speed up disk transfers from environemnts that dont have there own UDMA drivers.

[VikingColumbus]

Greetings responders to my post

I'll look into both plausible conditions and report back
whatever the outcome of tackling my problem to a solution.

Thank you,

VC

[VikingColumbus]

Hello responders to my original post,

I've not had any success in getting Copy Commander 9 to
speed up HD to HD partition data transfer rates.

I backed up a 30GB FAT32 partition from a WD120GB SE HD to
a WD80GB SE HD. Took 13 hours! Data copy was validated
via scandisk so there is data integrity security in using that product.
But, the disappointment is that CC9 apparently lacks the necessary
drivers as for example Millennium uses to make rocket data transfers.

Tried suggestions offered by members. Thanks for the efforts

VC