**speed Up your Hard Disk**

[Abhimathur 0]

To speed up your hard disk speed we need to configure a special buffer in the computer's memory in order to enable it to better deal with interrupts made from the disk.This tip is only recommended if you have 256MB RAM or higher.Follow these steps:Run SYSEDIT.EXE from the Run command.Expand the system.ini file window.Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called [386enh].Press Enter to make one blank line, and in that line typeIrq14=4096Note: This line IS CASE SENSITIVE!!!Click on the File menu, then choose Save.Close SYSEDIT and reboot your computer.Done. Speed improvement will be noticed after the computer reboots.

[ghostrider 0]

Do you happen to know exactly why this works?

[gaea 0]

Ok, this is quite interesting. I've spent about the last half an hour trying to dig up information about this, and have only been very mildly sucessful.

 

As I understand it, this just enlarges the cache in which interupts sent from the harddrive(s) are stored. That probably didn't mean anything to you unless you're a hardware geek, so i'll try to elaborate on that quickly. The simplest way to sum it up would be to say that an interupt is a way for one piece of your computer to get the attention of another piece (the latter usually being the CPU). Origonally this was acomplished by a process called polling. In polling the cpu would ask the various other components "Hey, you got anything new for me?" a couple hundred times a second. Needless to say, this was a cosollal waste of resources. Interupts allow the various parts of the computer to tell the cpu (or other center components) that they need attention...which is a much more effecient way to do things.

 

That's about as far as I got. The weird piece is that IRQ14 differs depending on what sort of architecture (cpu build) you're running...so this hack probably wouldn't work for everyone. Still, it seems interesting enough. I'll give it a shot, and try to remember to post back in a day or two with my findings.

Edited July 5, 2006 by gaea (see edit history)

[ghostrider 0]

As I understand it, this just enlarges the cache in which interupts sent from the harddrive(s) are stored. That probably didn't mean anything to you unless you're a hardware geek

Haha, I'm one of those! I didn't know about the polling part however, that was interesting. Thank you for elaborating! I'm pretty sure IRQ 14h is the normal IRQ for the drive controller/drive, but I'd have to look.

[tdktank59 0]

well seems to be working fine lolmostly what happens is it makes the computer work more eficiently

[myrmidon 0]

i have SP2 SATA hard drive but i did not notice any changes ....IS it me or ?

[zach101 0]

hmm if your hard drive is 7200 RPM or more is it worth doing?

[DogEater008 0]

uh... if i spent that much money for my ram... i would rather use it for other purposes.... i wouldn't waste my ram (slowing down your computer) just to increase hdd speed. This is bad especially for people that usually run a lot of programs at a time.

[abu 0]

thaks, Great Job. for additional. in my experience (in order to have spee Hard Disk) I usualy make 2 partition C and D. and the space for C is 50% less than D. so Nowdays have 60GB HD. My C drive is 20GB and My d drive is 40Gb. and Its satisfied. further more its become so GREAT if you always Clean-Up your disk and Defrag it regurarely.

[Dooga 0]

Does this speed up the *computer* or the *harddrive*? (or both?)

[gaea 0]

Does this speed up the *computer* or the *harddrive*? (or both?)

I'd have to say the computer...though that isn't 100% correct. It'd be more acurate to say that it speeds up the communication between the harddrive and the computer.

i have SP2 SATA hard drive but i did not notice any changes ....IS it me or ?

Oops. I said i'd post back with my finding in a day or two...and that was almost a month ago. My apologies.

Anyways, I tried out this hack and at first it seemed to slightly improve the preformace of the harddisk. But it was so minute that I wanted to make sure it wasn't attributed to a psudo-effect. So I benchmarked it (both before and after) with SI Software's Sandra 2005 only to find out that the speeds were exactly the same. So that'd be a no for me...anyone else?

[khan11 0]

hmmm the tip you are giving is looking so good but i am afraid that i lose all my data from my harddisk ,because i have designed alot of websites,and made no backup on any disk because few days ago my cd burner stopped working,its giving me errors when it reaches 99%,i dont know what the damn problem is with it, i have seagate harddisk. will it work fine with it?also explain that which type of improvements will it make after applying that command?thanks

[FirefoxRocks 0]

It didn't work on my computer. Neither the computer or hard drive sped up.To speed up you boot time, download TuneXP.Click on Ultra-Fast Boot and it will rearrange your Boot Files so it boots a few seconds faster. That worked for me.

[gaea 0]

...i lose all my data from my harddisk ,because i have designed alot of websites,and made no backup on any disk because few days ago my cd burner stopped working,its giving me errors when it reaches 99%...

When what reaches 99%? When it checks the ram (when you first boot up), or something else?

 

As far as the tweak on this thread goes, it shouldn't do any damage to your drive...it just might not show any improvement.

[Gem 0]

This is pretty funny reading all this stuff but i dont think it will speed up your hard disk. My computer guy taught this and it works on Any computer with any OS1. Put all your files on a big external drive2. Delete all the files on your computer3. Copy all the files backThat is real easy but dont worry about system files or anything, all application and documents take up most of your hard disk so just do those and you dont even need to reboot it. Another way you can do this on Mac OS X is to reboot with a firewire cable to another computer in and hold down Apple button and you can see your computer as an external HD