ernie wrote:

Rick, thanks for highlighting the logging function, but it ain't
working. I get:

HD Tach version 2.61
Drive: GENERIC IDE DISK TYPE47

Get yourself the correct and latest Free version for 9x which is v2.7 and
you can get it here - just press the blue download button on this page:
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public...uest=HdTach2.7
..btw, this v2.7 is the last version that will work for W9x...

...however this page has the correct screenshots showing the Read Burst
Speed in MB as it really is instead of the old way:
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public...st=HdTachUsage

and that's it. As I said in my reply to Eric, there is another drive on
the cable which gives more appropriate results (but also gives a blank
log) the figures being 15.3MB/sec for the duffer(slave) and 30.3MB/sec
for the master. Also, I got this drive out of my other computer where it
was attached to a controller card and was similarly slow compared with
the rate it should have achieved and was achieved by other drives.

If 15 & 30 MB/s are what you expected, and that may be about right for your
spec's if you have an older setup.

Mine is a new setup with all the latest hardware and I get quite a bit
better and I don't expect many people to match this unless they use the
same technology and setup - then yes they absolutely can; anyway here's a
screenshot of mine I just now took again and even though it's a 250 GB hard
drive it only shows the 8 GB C:\ partition of which as default whatever
partition the program is installed on is what it checks and so that's why
it's showing only 8 GB spread.
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/6607/mine5sg.gif ..I can see mine
is almost twice as fast even as what they show on their own test
screenshots shown in the second link above, but again that's mine and you
cannot expect your old setup to be like that at all.

I should say that I was trying to get this drive to do some reporting of
it's SMART status but had no luck but a worry is that the utility for
that changed something in the drive to cause this performance decrease.

These v2 versions do not check SMART status or have anything to do
with it really.
I suspect your 'drive itself' is just as fast itself as it always was,
either that or your OS installation itself now has issues with it and the
problem lies therein, but before you can give any kind of accurate
comparison of a before and after - you would of had to do a before test to
get the numbers of what they were when you thought it was faster. There
are many many things you can do to 'soup up' and make your system faster,
everything from updating your MB, System RAM, Processor, along with a new
ATA133 7200 rpm 16MB cache hard drive - and most importantly to run that HD
from is to use a modern pci Controller Card to run it, like the ATA133 one
that Promise makes - and then all coupled together you can achieve a very
fast setup that would rock your world.

...and so back to your original question ernie:

How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate

The truth is when it comes to your Quantum Fireball drive (what are the
listed specs of it anyway?) ...but if it's a new ATA 133 or even ATA 100
drive you cannot expect to do much with it unless you make the changes I've
outlined above, and certainly you cannot expect to come close to what the
Hard Drive can do unless you give it a full clear range to be able to let
it achieve near it's rated abilities; but realize ATA 133 is a marketing
spec and not really achievable in a real environment - I don't know of
anyone that can reach 133 ...but we came come close can't we vbg

I just was reading the newspaper and Staples today is having a sale for an
Ultra ATA133, 16 MB cache, 7200 rpm internal drive by Maxtor DiamondMax9
Plus, with an average seek time of about 9 ms This drive is excellent !!!
I have the same one only that it's a 250GB size; anyway this drive was $300
not even a year ago, but today's sale has it at only $99 !!! ..if I didn't
already have a pair of 250's I would surly get these too ...I just may
still

Rick

Regards,
ern.