Slow writes to physical Windows disk

dillz

Distinguished
Jan 11, 2004
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I've been doing some video capture for a while now. My specs are:

ASUS P4S8X
P4-2.4Ghz (FSB/etc I can't be bothered)
512MB no-name
"80" (74.5) GB Western Digital WD800JB-00CRA1
80GB Maxtor 6L080J4
etc.

My problem in as few words as possible:

The good ol' days: Both disks working together in WinXP dynamic disks (80+80=160). Windows on WD disk. Able to sustain 9mb/sec write.

Then all of a sudden: WD disk can't sustain huge transfer rates anymore (write 9mb/sec).

Format, install WinXP on Maxtor: Now WD disk is fine, Maxtor disk can't sustain huge transfer rates anymore.

I am in UDMA5 on both disks. I have tried re-arranging IDE components, taking off CD drives, etc. I have tried enabling and disbling write caching.

SiSoft tests (which I never tried before this problem) show 30000kB/sec on the drive that Windows is not on, 18000kB/sec on the drive that Windows is on. These values were the same, but flipped, when I switched what drive Windows was installed to.

It also told me that write performance was substantially slower than read.

I'm out of ideas, resorting to asking around.

A more detailed account of my problem, attempts to fix it is at: http://tinyurl.com/338tt
 

HammerBot

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Jun 27, 2002
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Why do you want to use dynamic disks? Have you tried to benchmark the drives independently? (i.e. as basic disks)

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>