Computer Pauses often. Do I have a disk problem or a windows problem or something el

[riles]

Computer Pauses often. Do I have a disk problem or a windows problem or something else?

Just reinstalled all my programs on a new WD 120GB hard drive. Sometimes, the computer pauses for 30 seconds or so but sometimes it does not pause. I notice these pauses when finding or working with files in Windows Explorer, going to a different internet site on Int. Explorer, extracting from a zip file using Winrar or Winzip. These are times when the disk is asked to find something but maybe something else wrong and not the hard drive. My old drive is now a secondary drive on a different cable and did not have this problem. It was a Maxtor 20 GB drive.

WD 120 GB drive NTFS default cluster size 4k. Partitioned into C;\, D:\, E:\, F:\. Each is about 30 GB in size.
System: Athlon 1200, Via Kt133A chipset, 512 Sdram. Primary master drive is WD 120gb drive 7200 rpm, Primary slave is DVD reader. Secondary slave drive Maxtor 20 gb 7200 rpm, . Secondary master is DVD writer, Radeon 9200 video.
Scanned system for viruses with Kaspersky AV, for pests with Adaware, Spybot, Pest Patrol. Found nothing. Tried Hijack this, I do not think I found bad things.
Windows 2000 SP 4. Swapfile was default on C:\. Changed Swapfile to D:\ . No change at all.

What problem do I have? Is a large Hard Drive just slow or is it something else?
Thanks

[Cricket]

Would help if you posted the complete system specs...CPU, motherboard, RAM, etc...

What kind of IDE cable are you using? 80 wire or 40 wire? And how is the new drive jumpered?

Cricket

[riles]

More observations on what may be slow disk access for large folders on a large partition.

System mentioned above:

Athlon 1200, Mobo Soyo K7VTAPro Via Kt133A chipset, 512 Sdram generic tests good with memtest86.
HD Cable: 80 wire for all hard drives and cd drives.
WD 120GB jumpered as master. CD drive on same cable jumpered as slave.
WD 120 GB drive NTFS default cluster size 4k. Partitioned into C;\, D:\, E:\, F:\. Each is about 30 GB in size. ,
Primary slave is DVD reader.
Secondary slave drive Maxtor 20 gb 7200 rpm
Secondary master is DVD writer,
Radeon 9200 video.
300 watt PS sparkle brand.
D link 530+ network card, realtek chip.
On board audio
Fire wire card unknown brand.
Win 2000 SP4. Zone Alarm 5.1.011. KAV monitor.

More observations. Takes about 35 seconds to open one particular folder on D:\ that had all the files from my old Hard Drive's "MyDocuments" folder. After the old "My Documents" folder is opened once, it opens almost instantly afterward. Similar slowness with another large folder. No delay with small folders.

As a side note, I have the same issue with another computer in which I also installed a new hard drive and installed WinXP.

The second system is
AMD K6-2+, Mobo VA503+
256 Generic SDRAM tests good with memtest86
Voodoo3 2000 video
Dlink 550+ network card
Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 9? 80GB 7200 rpm drive as primary master, jumpered as master.
Maxtor Diamond Max 60 23 GB as secondary master.
Cables 40 wire since the controller on mobo is slow U33 type and would not make maximum use of 80 wire.
2 CD slave drives
SB 16 ISA sound

[glc]

Try using Cable Select on the 80 wire cable instead of master/slave.

[riles]

Quote:
Try using Cable Select on the 80 wire cable instead of master/slave.

Is Cable Select any faster than jumpering drives master/slave?

[glc]

By itself, not that you would notice. However, if you use master/slave, you still MUST have the correct connectors in the right places or you will have problems. Blue connector to controller, black connector on the other end to master, gray in the middle to slave.