SIIG Firewire 800 cardbus slow in XP

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Have a problem with my new SIIG Firewire 800 Cardbus card. System here is a
Toshiba P25 laptop dual-boot with XP home (SP2) and W2K. SIIG has just
released driver version 1.20 for this card but the problem persists.

On both XP and W2K, my external 200GB Seagate drive is recognized fine and
seems to work OK. However, I noticed the drive appeared to be working fairly
slow on XP, so I tried both DiskSpeed32 or HDTack to test the throughput.
The read speed of the drive with XP is always under 8 MB/s. On Windows 2000,
(driver version 1.01) the read speed is around 34 MB/s.

I contacted SIIG about this and they said they were working on a new driver,
which I assume is the new 1.20. Hasn't fixed the problem. To try to figure
out if it could be a problem with my system, I downloaded the demo version
of Unibrain's UBCore FW driver. With this driver, the speed results are
around 36-37 MB/s with XP.

If anyone is using the SIIG FW800 cardbus (NN-PC8312) with XP and an
external HD, I would be curious to know what read and/or write speed results
you are getting using SIIG's drivers (which are developed by Orangeware).

Thanks,

Cleiber

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Remember that your external device can only transfer data to the hard
drive as fast as the hard drive will allow it to. If the HD is
currently being used for other things while it is pulling in data from
the FW device, you will end up with lower speeds.

It seems that the driver update really helped a ton. Chances are that
they are still working on the driver to make it reach its full
potential. 1394b is a newer standard which means the drivers and
software dealing with them haven't had a chance to mature as much as
other external bus systems.

-----
Nathan McNulty

Cleiber wrote:
> Have a problem with my new SIIG Firewire 800 Cardbus card. System here is a
> Toshiba P25 laptop dual-boot with XP home (SP2) and W2K. SIIG has just
> released driver version 1.20 for this card but the problem persists.
>
> On both XP and W2K, my external 200GB Seagate drive is recognized fine and
> seems to work OK. However, I noticed the drive appeared to be working fairly
> slow on XP, so I tried both DiskSpeed32 or HDTack to test the throughput.
> The read speed of the drive with XP is always under 8 MB/s. On Windows 2000,
> (driver version 1.01) the read speed is around 34 MB/s.
>
> I contacted SIIG about this and they said they were working on a new driver,
> which I assume is the new 1.20. Hasn't fixed the problem. To try to figure
> out if it could be a problem with my system, I downloaded the demo version
> of Unibrain's UBCore FW driver. With this driver, the speed results are
> around 36-37 MB/s with XP.
>
> If anyone is using the SIIG FW800 cardbus (NN-PC8312) with XP and an
> external HD, I would be curious to know what read and/or write speed results
> you are getting using SIIG's drivers (which are developed by Orangeware).
>
> Thanks,
>
> Cleiber
>
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Nathan,

Thanks for your comments. No, the problem is not with the HD. It is capable
of around 37 MB/s max on several computers running W2K (depending on
interface chipset). I only have one computer with XP on it, so was wondering
about others' XP experiences.

The problem is, running at less that 8MB/s, this card's throughput on *my*
system is way under 1394a specs, let alone 1394b. The Toshiba has an Ilink
1394a interface on it, and when connected to that on XP, it runs normally at
around 36-37 MB/s (which is around normal 1394a speeds for this HD). Even
with XP's own 1394a drivers, the SIIG runs slow - which initially seemed to
point to a possible driver conflict within my system. However - since the
card works with UniBrain's ubcore driver set, it appears there is a way to
make it work at least at full 1394a throughput. It is quite odd to me that a
software company not related to SIIG could get a driver to work better than
SIIG's own, and therefore I still think there might be a conflict somewhere
in my system - unless others get the same results I am getting.

I didn't make it clear that my external HD is 1394a, not 1394b, so of course
I am not expecting improved performance even with full 1394b specs, since
the bus would be limited by any 1394a device. I haven't tried the SIIG with
a 1394b device since I haven't been able to find one yet to test it with.

If you have this SIIG cardbus card, I would be curious as to what your
results are like with XP.

Cleiber


"Nathan McNulty" <newsgroups@msn.com> wrote in message
news:u6FJooFvEHA.3416@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> Remember that your external device can only transfer data to the hard
> drive as fast as the hard drive will allow it to. If the HD is
> currently being used for other things while it is pulling in data from
> the FW device, you will end up with lower speeds.
>
> It seems that the driver update really helped a ton. Chances are that
> they are still working on the driver to make it reach its full
> potential. 1394b is a newer standard which means the drivers and
> software dealing with them haven't had a chance to mature as much as
> other external bus systems.
>
> -----
> Nathan McNulty
>
> Cleiber wrote:
> > Have a problem with my new SIIG Firewire 800 Cardbus card. System here
is a
> > Toshiba P25 laptop dual-boot with XP home (SP2) and W2K. SIIG has just
> > released driver version 1.20 for this card but the problem persists.
> >
> > On both XP and W2K, my external 200GB Seagate drive is recognized fine
and
> > seems to work OK. However, I noticed the drive appeared to be working
fairly
> > slow on XP, so I tried both DiskSpeed32 or HDTack to test the
throughput.
> > The read speed of the drive with XP is always under 8 MB/s. On Windows
2000,
> > (driver version 1.01) the read speed is around 34 MB/s.
> >
> > I contacted SIIG about this and they said they were working on a new
driver,
> > which I assume is the new 1.20. Hasn't fixed the problem. To try to
figure
> > out if it could be a problem with my system, I downloaded the demo
version
> > of Unibrain's UBCore FW driver. With this driver, the speed results are
> > around 36-37 MB/s with XP.
> >
> > If anyone is using the SIIG FW800 cardbus (NN-PC8312) with XP and an
> > external HD, I would be curious to know what read and/or write speed
results
> > you are getting using SIIG's drivers (which are developed by
Orangeware).
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Cleiber
> >
> >
> >