SLee

HELLBRINGER, you need to check the Advanced Size Check option in HD Tach. Otherwise, it will only test the first 8GB of your hard drive. Still, looking at your burst speed, you're definitely in ATA100 mode. BTW, what's the model of your WD hard drive?

HELLBRINGER, why don't you try another benchmarking program? Sandra is not considered a very reliable or accurate benchmark for hard drives. You could try HD Tach for a quick and easy test to see whether your transfer rates, access times and burst rates are in line with what you expect. Get it from: http://www.tcdlabs.com The shareware version only works on Windows 9x OSes, but it should at least verify if there really is a problem with the hard drive or not.