FatBurger

Illustrious
A few days ago, I suddenly realized that under heavy file transfer, my system was rather sluggish (I don't do much transferring of large files, so I didn't really notice before). The obvious answer of course would be that my hard drives are running in PIO.

The problem is, my RAID 0 is running off an old Iwill ATA66 card (Highpoint chip). Now, in the RAID BIOS there's a DMA setting. This is on, of course (if I left my drives in PIO, I'd kick my own ass :tongue: ). The thing is, everything in a PCI slot has to go through the CPU to get to the RAM (i.e. PIO). So is it even possible for a PCI RAID card to run in DMA? I couldn't find any setting in Windows for this, only on the motherboard's IDE controllers.

This year I'll probably grab a couple of 60-80GB 120GXPs (or if something better shows up before then). At that point I'll go back to the onboard RAID on my TH7II-RAID (I know now that it was a driver conflict, and I know which driver version I need to fix it). But until then, I'd like to get my hard drives set up properly.

Can anyone shed any light on this? Is it possible for a PCI RAID card to run in DMA? If so, how would I set this up?

<font color=blue>Hi mom!</font color=blue>
 

OldBear

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Sep 14, 2001
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I would like to know also.

bump

:lol: <b><font color=blue> Welcome to</font color=blue> <font color=red>Fredi's</font color=red><font color=blue> place.</font color=blue></b> :lol:
 

blue_heart

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Oct 29, 2001
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i do not think the problem is pci and dma, even if you could make it pci/dma then you will still face the same problem. maybe it will become better but not good

the problem is the windows bad management, alot of people who are copying large files more than 500mb facing the same problem which the computer becomes toooooo slow and after that you have to restart to take your computer back as it was before copying.
i have amd tbird 1000 on soltek 75kav and 384mb sdram, and i have daily backup of 600mb + verify the back up and i have 2 ata100 7200 drives on master, so the computer goes to hell and after it finishs i have to restart.

this problem discussed n many forums and no one could get a solution but only blaming windows

wish if there was UnDo in the life
 
Perhaps some clever RAM/Disk cache tweaking would affect this?

As far as I was aware, RAID arrays don't get the option for DMA.

You mentioned "heavy file transfer" FB. What other device is used for the transfer? Or is it a partition to partition transfer?

<b><font color=blue>~ What do you mean "It isn't working!"...Now where's my sonic screwdriver? ~ </font color=blue></b>
 
I would suggest it's a bandwidth issue. The data is going down the cable to the mobo, into the RAM and back up to the drive again.

Unless you can test the speed of copying the same data to a seperate IDE drive?

<b><font color=blue>~ What do you mean "It isn't working!"...Now where's my sonic screwdriver? ~ </font color=blue></b>
 

kief

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Aug 27, 2001
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What are the rest of your specs? Are you drives fragged? RAID does indeed use DMA transfers so that should not be a problem. Depending on which highpoint controller you are using many are software based RAID chips and suck up CPU usage, but with a gig athlon it should not hurt. Are you using the best drivers avail for your board? Newest RAID drivers? I backup gigs at a time and dont have problems however I have SCSI RAID so thats a big difference. I am using win2k, how bout you? 9x always sucked alot no matter what you did =/



Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!
 
G

Guest

Guest
Windows sees the RAID array like it sees SCSI, so it doesn't give you DMA as an option. The RAID BIOS (as you noted) handles whether or not the drives are being used in DMA mode. I'm not sure about the difference between onboard RAID and PCI RAID cards.
 

kief

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I rather doubt this is the problem, but I have seen stranger things. Do you notice the same results when you are not overvlocked? If I am not mistaken a 1.6@2.5 puts the PCI bus outta spec. Or does that board lock it down at 33? RAID cards are gonna be fairly picky about that.....

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!
 

Flyboy

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Dec 31, 2007
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You bring up an interesting thought. Why wouldn't the operating system realize that the data is to be transferred from one partition to another, but yet both partitions belong to the same disk, so it would instruct the drive to do a read from the disk-to-cache (disk cache), and then a write from cache-to-disk? Why not go straight to jail without passing go?

hmmm...
 

Flyboy

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Hey Fatburger, when you say sluggish do you mean that your mouse will begin to stop responding or "stutter"? I've had this problem ever since I installed an ATA100 PCI card. I wondered if it was due to congestion on the PCI bus. I figured the onboard HD controllers wouldn't go through the PCI bus if using DMA so this would explain the problem. (just as you said)

Verrry interesting...

On a side note. How do you like your new system? I've been out for a while and when I left you were still waiting on some of the hardware (Radeon card I believe). Actually you don't have to answer this...I figure you've posted some info somewhere. I just haven't gotten around to looking for it yet. The reason I'm interested is because I considered building one very much like yours and now that I've landed a job I'm about ready for a major overhaul!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Flyboy on 05/20/02 00:58 AM.</EM></FONT></P>