Disk Benchmark

[petersra]

Greetings,

I just replaced a 7200 rpm Western Digital disk with an IBM 120GXP 40GB. Both disks were driven through a Promise Ultra66 ATA controller. I was very pleased by the performance improvement shown with Winbench (from 2300k to 8600 bytes per second). Now here is the interesting part.

For the tests I had the WD as the slave on the same channel as the IBM drive. But when I moved the WD disk to the other channel on the Ultra66, the IBM performance dropped off, by about 2000k. Any ideas why?

Another question I have is should I upgrade to an ultra100? My system has a FSB of 100.

Thanks
Rob

 

[Napoleon]

Hmm. Odd. Putting IDE stuff to dedicated channels should improve performance, or at least keep it at the same level. In a way of explanation, cabling/jumpering springs first to my mind. ATA66 already requires 80-conductor IDE cables to function properly. Did you change your IDE cabling configuration / are all your IDE cables up to date? If not (sure), you can look for more details on IDE cables in the HDD FAQ in this forum.

As for updating to ATA100, I'd say it's not that critical. <A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/storage/wd1200jb/" target="_new">This review's</A> legacy performance benchmarks suggest that when drives have (dedicated) ATA66 channels, performance difference between ATA66 and ATA100 is negligible. Seagate Barracuda IV being a notable exception to that rule.

____
<font color=green><i>Work is the curse of the drinking classes. --- Oscar Wilde</i></font color=green>

 

[HammerBot]

Check that UDMA <i>still</i> is enabled for the drive.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>
<A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=655" target="_new">My systems</A>

 

[Ncogneto]

Check that UDMA still is enabled for the drive.

As the drive is run off a promise controller which is seen by the OS as a scsi device ( pseudo) this is a non issue and no such setting will exist.


It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!