SATA drives are SLOW

[bvd]

I have a recording studio and mainly process audio.
My older machine: Athlon 1.3ghz, 512 DDR333, Maxtor 40g 7200 IDE, Maxtor 40g 7200 IDE,
Win98SE.
New machine: P4 3ghz, 1g DDR400, Maxtor SATA 80g, Maxtor SATA 120g, Win98SE.
Fresh-full formats/installs of the same OS and software in both. No errors showing, DMA is enabled.

The P4 is WAY slower than the AMD when processing audio files. Night and day. I'm assuming
the hard drives are responsible because the P4 and 1g ram should smoke the older Athlon, right?

I've tried changing everything in the bios but no luck. These SATA drives are sluggish and they hestitate
and 'crank' on every command. Everything seems to basically run ok and apps jump around pretty
good. But try to normalize a wav file .. or transfer songs from one drive to the other and it's Snailsville.
The IDEs on the other hand are lightning fast by comparison.

So what am I missing .. how can these drives be so slow?
Isn't processing audio/video what they're touted for?
Thanx
Bill

 

[Rigit]

I'm not sure about your hard drive theory. I do know enough to know that SATA should be a little faster. The one thing I did notice was that you're running win98SE with 1GB of ram. Win98 was not designed to handle that much memory. It can only handle 512MB. I am not sure if that would cause the problem though. You might try posting the quetion to the memory board.

rigit

 

[jammydodger]

Is DMA enabled?

 

[RichPLS]

Did you install/update the chipset drivers?

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[RichPLS]

Remember, your hardware was made many years after that OS was retired.


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[bvd]

Thanx for the replies.
Yes DMA is enabled and the chipset drivers are up to date.
Another suspicious thing is that if I install and run the app (Cakewalk) on the 80gb C drive AND put the audio files on the same partition, every thing speeds up
dramatically. When I try to work with the audio data stored on the second SATA drive (120gb) everything is VERY slow and bogged down.

So maybe the issue is the way these 2 SATA drives are or ARE NOT talking to eachother. File transfer rate from one to the other also seems ridiculously slow.

I just used HD TACH to get a reference (thanx for the tip on that)and here's what it says:

80gb SATA:
Random Access Time=11.1
Read Burst Speed=113
Average Read Speed=59.3

120gb SATA:
Random Access Time=10.3
Read Burst Speed=112
Average Read Speed=59

40GB 7200RPM IDE:
Random Access Time=8.8
Read Burst Speed=119
Average Read Speed=41

So do I assume that's a fair indication of what's happening?

 

[jihiggs]

i blame win 98, just a guess.

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[jon_west_uk]

I do loads of audio and video editing and have 4 sata drives. Yet have never noticed any speed issues. I do use XP though so i'm guessing win98 is your problem!

Someone please unwire me...the gadgets are taking over!

 

[sparky853]

No offence, but what do you expect? You are running 2004 hardware on 1998 software...

As well, as said in a previous post, windows 98SE doesn't support more the 512MB of RAM. Seriously, try 2000 Pro or XP PRO, both would be way better for your system.

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[Starfishy]

Yeah, I was running 1Gb RAM on Win98 and noticed a very considerable speed increase after my switch to XP. So this would be my suggestion as well.