Saving small documents take a long time

Here is the enviroment:

4 machines networked through a Netgeat Switch.

Machine "A" has a second drive (D:\) that contains folders and files for the company. All other machines have access to the particular folder on "D:\". All running Windows XP.

When someone modifies a Word Doc or Excell Sheet and then saves it, it takes about 30 seconds or so to save. WHich is not usual.

The D:\ drive was once in its own machine (HP Pavillion) on the network and they didn't have any delay in saving like this. Since that machine died (MB Problem) we took the drive out and made it the second drive in a new machine and gave it shared access to all other computers.

What can I look at to find out why it is so slow in saving?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

What type of drive is it? How was it hooked up? It may be a cable problem, or the drive is slow, or the ATA/DMA settings are wrong...

Does the machine that it's in also save slowly (even thought it's a local drive for this machine)? If so, it's a config problem, if not, then possible network problem with the machine hosting the drive.

Is any of the information here relevant?

It's a Compaq/HP IDE Drive connected as a SLAVE on the new machine. I believe the drive is a seagate 40gig.

The machine it is in is not acting slow when saving/opening things locally. I went on-site and tested the other day and I did not experience any slowness on any document on the drive or ones I created. I tried it from all the machines.

Platypus - I will review that doc and see if any of it relates to the issue.

Thanks for the information!!