Config 2 HDs

[bsperry]

I have been playing with editing the miniDV movies from my camcorder on my PC and agree with the articles, it takes a lot of hardrive space. So I bought a second hardrive and dropped it in the PC and plugged it into the seconday IDE port on my controller card (ATA/66 I believe) because it was easy.

However, the throughput to the second drive isn't as good as I would expect. If I remember the benchmark from Studio 7, my primary hardrive has a throughput of about 24MBs and the secondary drive is only about 16MBs. They are both 7200RPM drives and both Quantum Fireball drives. Why such a difference in throughput?

Do I need to move the second drive to the slave drive on the first IDE controller to get better performance?

Any ideas anyone?

-----------------
Bret Sperry

 

[Lars_Coleman]

Try getting a hard drive bench mark that is made for the specific reason for benchmarking hard drives.

<A HREF="http://www.tcdlabs.com" target="_new"><font color=blue>HDTach</font color=blue></A> is the program that I would recommend for that task.

<font color=red>People and hard drives are like bandwagon fans and sports!</font color=red>

 

[camieabz]

Do you have nay other devices on the channels (CD-ROMs etc.)?

<b><font color=blue>~scribble~</font color=blue></b> <A HREF="http://www.ud.com/home.htm" target="_new">Help cure cancer.</A>

 

[bsperry]

I have a DVD-ROM and CD-R in the system too, but they are connected to the ATA33 IDE controller on the motherboard.

The HDs are the only things connected to an ATA66 controller in a PCI slot.

Haven't had time to try different configurations to decide what will work best. I am hoping someone has already experimented with different arrangements and could offer me some ideas on what they've learned.

-----------------
Bret Sperry

 

[camieabz]

Try another cable. Failing that, try swapping the drives to see the results.

<b><font color=blue>~scribble~</font color=blue></b> <A HREF="http://www.ud.com/home.htm" target="_new">Help cure cancer.</A>

 

[texas_techie]

I assume the mobo has 2 ide channels. One for primary, the other secondary. You said you have a IDE controller in a pci slot. That makes 3 channels.
If you do have 2 ide channels. What is plugged into the first channel? And whats in the second.
If you only have one channel on the mobo (hence why you got a pci controller card) then i have no idea why its slower.
Have you enabled DMA mode? Go to device manager, find your HD, then highlight it. Click on the properties tab at the bottom. THen you should see a box that says DMA. Check it, if it aleady isnt. Enablin DMA may help. But then again I think DMA is for 100/133. NOt sure.

 

[bsperry]

My system does have IDE ports on the MOBO, my DVD and CDRW are plugged into them.

In the PCI slot I started with a Promise UltraATA66 card with my orignal C: a Fireball+ LM (ATA66) in the Primary socket and put a Fireball+ AS (ATA100) in the Secondary port on the card.

Lots of lost sleep, reading and troubelshooting later I learned the the Fireball+ AS apparently has 2 modes it will run in, ATA100 or ATA33. Since ATA100 was not available went I first set it up, it has reverted to ATA33. The benchmarks confirm it.

So I spent $50, got an Maxtor/Promisw ATA100 controller card and plugged it in to match the drive and controller speeds. And tried all the cable arrangements and drivers I could.

The controller is recognizing the drive and putting the CFB+LM_ATA66) drive on DMA4 and the DFB+AS_ATA100) drive on DMA5. So it is recongizing the drives and their potiential, but the Fireball+ AS is still stuck at ATA33 speeds. Even when benchmarked with the latest SANDRA utility.

Downloaded a utility from Maxtor that will supposedly switch the FB+AS_ATA100 back to the ATA100 speeds, but the utility didn't find any drives when I ran it on to different occasions. I may have to make a different boot disk than the old Win98 one I had laying around to get it to work.

It appears the potential is there to get it to work, I just need the tool to get the HD back into ATA100 mode that it orginally reverted out of since it wasn't available.

Uhg! Now I've got to go find the disk that came with the hardrive, maybe it can switch it back to ATA100 mode . . . or at least act as a boot disk that will work.

:lol: From there to here - From here to there
Funny things are everywhere !

 

[bsperry]

Problem finally solved through brute force.
I repartioned the drive, and formated it and it is running Full Speed ahead.

Benchmarks quite well for my needs any way.

Thanks for the ideas on what to try. Last night a new driver for the Promise controller appeared in Windows Update, maybe I was battling a bug or lack of inteligence in the oringal XP Promise driver.

I will never know for sure.

My lesson learned, make sure you have a controller that can meet the speeds of the hard drive before you put it in or it will be very slow.



:lol: From there to here - From here to there
Funny things are everywhere !