Increase Hard Disk Speed In Windows Xp/2003

[AdityaKar 0]

How can I increase my hard disk speed in Windows XP/2003?

First Common method is Defragment..

 

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:

 

1.Run SYSEDIT.EXE from the Run command.

2.Expand the system.ini file window.

3.Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called [386enh].

4.Press Enter to make one blank line, and in that line type

 

Irq14=4096

 

Note: This line IS CASE SENSITIVE!!!

 

5.Click on the File menu, then choose Save.

6.Close SYSEDIT and reboot your computer.

 

Done. Speed improvement will be noticed after the computer reboots.

 

Note: The most speed improvement is visible with IDE drives, however there are reports that this tweak also does good for SCSI disks. In any case, it won't harm your system, so why not try it yourself and let me know what you find.

 

test and post comments..

 

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[yeh 0]

Can someone elaborate on what Irq14=4096 means? Would appreciate it if there is a little bit more explanation on how it achieves the increase in disk speed. Thanks.

[Grafitti 0]

Ok, someone more knowledgeable feel free to correct me, but since i'm the first replying, we know what IRQ numbers are, right? and i don't understand why it's #14, but anyways, changing it to 4096 or larger causes it to cache more on the ram, which boosts performance somewhat because of reduced access time on the disk, but as far as i know 4096 is for machines with 512MB ram minimum. Anyone with Tweak XP please post, as there is a tweak in there that does this, and there's the full explanation along with it. Though i'm stuck on the 14, because i thought that IRQ 1 had the main priority, and so on down the line. ...i could be wrong.

[Alegis 0]

Are you referring to the following? Not sure if I got the right snippet:

 

from TWEAKXP help file

· Core System Performance:

 

On systems with large amount of RAM (512 MB or more) this tweak can be enabled to force the core Windows® XP system to be kept in memory and not be paged to disk.

 

· Optimize CPU and Memory usage:

 

The tweak can be used to force Windows® XP to optimize the CPU usage for applications or background tasks. The memory usage optimization is available for applications and system caching.

 

· Optimize 'Page-Table-Entry' settings:

 

Page Table Entries (PTEs) may become depleted or fragmented on systems that perform a large number input/output (I/O) actions. When they become completely depleted, the system may show a 'Stop' error and halt. This tweak allows you to increase the number of PTEs available on the system.

 

Attention: there is a known problem with this optimization on certain system configurations:

 

 

· System Memory greater than 512 Meg. (1 GB of RAM is common)

 

· Large NTFS disk volumes, or multiple large volumes. (60-100 gigabyte hard drives possibly in RAID arrays)

 

· AGP graphics with large AGP resource requirements (AGP aperture greater than default)

 

· Large file transfers

 

Please read this for further information, and how to fix the problem. Refrain from using this feature again if you have experienced a problem as described on the website mentioned above.

 

 

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

but isn't dangerous to do so, as u're pulling your RAM more whenever you're getting your HDD faster?xboxrulz

[Chesso 0]

I'd say with decent amount and brand of RAM it would be ok but is it absolute that IRQ 14 is for the main hard disk? what about other hard disks? You can't use the same IRQ for multiple devices can you....?

[HellFire121 0]

Personally I wouldn't do this, if you have a lot of ram then why do you need to make your hard drive faster? The only thing that would benefit (In my case anyways) is cutting off a few seconds on the loading time of applications.Overall I think waiting a few more seconds is much better than decreasing the overall performance of your system by using more ram than necessary, also if you change the wrong setting then there you have it, a possible non working windows copy-HellFire

[Chesso 0]

Well some games are surprisingly slow at loading data when you change maps and such, one game that comes to mind is Vampires The Masquarade Bloodlines, it takes forever to load just small places and the main areas are a real pain.Plus all they tell you is that you have to have a 1400mb swap file, yeah real great programming... anyway it's probably not worth it as others have mentioned, most of those silly tweaks don't see any visual benefit anyway.

[brianhot 0]

How can I increase my hard disk speed in Windows XP/2003?

test and post comments..

 

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are you kidding with that tweak ???

thats the old system.ini nic card tweak from speedguide.

and you just modifyed it for use as a harddisk tweak !!!

this tweak does NOTHING in XP, as XP does not use those settings from system.ini/386 enh

if we were talking 98 or ME, then that would be a different story.

common... dont modify tweaks/think them up, with out a little more understanding.

 

 

 

 

System.ini IRQ Tweak

Windows 9x/ME

 

The following tweak is not documented by Microsoft, and it is controversial whether it works at all. We have tested numerous times and it shows anywhere between 0 and 10% performance gain, which we consider inconclusive. We have received 100s of responses saying this tweak worked great, and 100s saying it's crazy, or it does nothing at all. We feel we should leave the information posted on the site in order to present our readers with all possible options for optimizing their throughput, however keep in mind we haven't been able to prove the validity of this particular tweak, and are not fully confident in the following information. Feel free to send us mail with your feedback. With all that said, it will not degrade performance of your system, and if you're willing to try and see how it works, here are the instructions:

 

 

 

In Windows 9x, you might be able to reserve a certain amount of RAM for specific IRQs (Interrupt Requests), which serves as a buffer to allow more stable operation of your device. Adding a 4Mb buffer to your Network Card's IRQ would ensure good overall performance and increase throughput with broadband Internet connections, such as DSL and Cable Modems.

 

Reserving RAM for your Network Adapter might prove very useful, especially during CPU intensive tasks, or while gaming online. For those with 500MHz or slower processors and 128Mb or less RAM, this tweak might show noticeable results at all times, including faster displaying of web pages and higher throughput. Even with fast processors you will get better overall performance, including smoother stream video, better transfers anywhere from 0 to 10%, with more noticeable results during faster transfers. Another good reason for using this tweak would be if you have a PCI NIC sharing IRQs with another device.

 

 

 

Step 1 - Find your Network Card's IRQ

 

In order to add the entry to your System.ini file, you'd first have to find your NIC's IRQ.

 

Right-click on My Computer icon on your Desktop, then left-click on Properties (a shortcut for that would be to press the 'Windows' + 'Pause' keys). Navigate to Device Manager and double-click on Computer. Under "View Resources" you will find a list of IRQs, each with description of the device that's using it. Note the IRQ number used by your Network Adapter.

 

 

Fig. 1.1 - Device Manager ('Window' + 'Pause' keys)

 

Fig. 1.2 - Finding the IRQ of your NIC

 

 

 

 

Step 2 - Adding the entry to System.ini

 

Once you've found the IRQ of your Network Card, you need to reserve some RAM for its use, by adding an entry to the System.ini file. You can edit the file in any text editor, however the easiest way is to use Windows' built in "System Configuration Editor".

 

Navigate to Start > Run and type sysedit . Find the [386enh] Section in the System.ini file and add Irq[n]=4096 under it, where [n] is the IRQ number of your NIC and 4096 is the amount of RAM you want to reserve in Kbytes. We recommend using 4096, however you can experiment with different values if you want. Save changes in the file, exit and reboot for changes to take effect.

 

Note: If you choose to try different values, keep in mind that reserving too much RAM for your NIC will decrease the amount of RAM available for applications, while reserving too little might not give the desired effect.

 

 

Fig. 2.1 - Editing System.ini

 

 

 

Additional Thoughts

 

The only negative effect of the System.ini IRQ tweak is that it will reduce the amount of RAM available for running applications a bit, by reserving some specifically for your Network Card's use. The gain in performance usually outweighs the negative effect by far, considering any Computer with 32Mb of RAM or more.

 

Keep in mind that if you add hardware to your system the IRQ of the Network Adapter might change, in which case you will need to modify the setting in System.ini.

 

In systems with multiple NICs, you might want to add the setting for both IRQs. Also, you could reserve RAM for other IRQs if you wish, just use common sense and don't forget it reduces the amount of RAM available for running applications.

 

If you are using an USB device, it does not have a specific IRQ, however you can try adding the entry using the IRQ of the USB Controller.

 

For internal Cable Modems, you'd have to add the entry using the IRQ of your modem, rather than the IRQ of a Network Card.

 

 

regards Brianhot.

 

 

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Post content copied from http://www.speedguide.net/articles/systemini-irq-tweak-168 - use the QUOTE tag!

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

also tweaking with the IRQ is like for me to do hdparm -U (unregister IDE) on Linux on my primary hdd.xboxrulz

[wutske 0]

I realy doubt this is going to help (either on Win9x as on XP). A HDD is slow, and RAM is fast.If the computer has to work hard and can't process all data that comes from a HDD, then the small amount of data is saved in the RAM, afterwards it's read a tad faster, but 4Mb @ 3GBs is not even a second.If the CPU or chipset can handle all data, the buffer is practicaly useless, since data is read right after it's written in the buffer.It's the same for HDD's with 2, 8 or 16Mb cache. It hardly improves speed, maybe only when it comes to smaller files, but the improvements are small.The only way to improve HDD speed isa) tweaking the filesystem (but the improvement is again very small, and sometimes even not noticable) getting a faster HDD (more recent model, faster spinning, ...)c) creating a (decent) (hardware) RAID array

[brianhot 0]

I realy doubt this is going to help (either on Win9x as on XP). A HDD is slow, and RAM is fast.If the computer has to work hard and can't process all data that comes from a HDD, then the small amount of data is saved in the RAM, afterwards it's read a tad faster, but 4Mb @ 3GBs is not even a second.

If the CPU or chipset can handle all data, the buffer is practicaly useless, since data is read right after it's written in the buffer.

It's the same for HDD's with 2, 8 or 16Mb cache. It hardly improves speed, maybe only when it comes to smaller files, but the improvements are small.
The only way to improve HDD speed is
a) tweaking the filesystem (but the improvement is again very small, and sometimes even not noticable)
getting a faster HDD (more recent model, faster spinning, ...)
c) creating a (decent) (hardware) RAID array

cant agree more

btw, was looking around the other day when i came across these interresting tweaks.

take a look, and let me know what you think.

will need alittle more ram myself, to try em out, but sure looks interresting if you ask me.

look here.... http://kadaitcha.cx/xp/performance.html

[wutske 0]

cant agree more
btw, was looking around the other day when i came across these interresting tweaks.

take a look, and let me know what you think.

will need alittle more ram myself, to try em out, but sure looks interresting if you ask me.

look here.... http://kadaitcha.cx/xp/performance.html

#3; ok, this is great, much more easy than changing it in the registry
#5; must have for everybody (programs are less dependant on explorer)
#6; Avoid this tweak, altough foreground applications get higher CPU priority, background application could hang while doing cpu intensive tasks (gaming, encoding/decoding, ...). You can also forget doing some heavy multitasking on a single or even multi core (if the amount of tasks > the amount of cores).

Most tweaks online are more or less useless (not to mention that most tweaks are to be found a billion times on the net). The only good tweaks are those that disable load on the system (disabling luna/glass/...) or those that change hardware settings (memory timings, FSB, overclocking, ...).

[iGuest 3]

This line:Irq14=4096Will do absolutely nothing in XP or 2003.In Windows 3.1 the system.Ini file was the major location for system settings. In Windows 9.X most of these settings were moved to the registry but system.Ini was still used for a few settings. But on the NT platforn (NT, Windows 2000, Server 2003, XP, Vista, etc.) this file had one purpose only: to support old 16 bit applications that knew nothing of the registry. This file contains NO system settings. Any and all tweaks involving the system.Ini file will do nothing.Larry MillerMicrosoft MCSA-reply by Larry Miller