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#11
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate
I will try that Eric. I am away for a while but will get back.
Regards, ern. "AlmostBob" wrote in message ... set second drive as master on the secondary connector should not be on the same cable "a similar drive on the same cable/controller, set as master" for fastest throughput -- - Adaware http://www.lavasoft.de spybot http://security.kolla.de AVG free antivirus http://www.grisoft.com Etrust/Vet/CA.online Antivirus scan http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx Panda online AntiVirus scan http://www.activescan.com Panda online AntiSpyware Scan http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/spyware/test/ Catalog of removal tools (1) http://www.pandasoftware.com/download/utilities/ Catalog of removal tools (2) http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/n...aspx?CID=40387 Trouble Shooting guide to Windows http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/ Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts file http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm links provided as a courtesy, read all instructions on the pages before use Grateful thanks to the authors/webmasters _ "ernie" wrote in message ... Thank you Eric, yes, DMA is checked for the drive in Device Manager. The PC has 128MB of RAM and the swap file in-use figure is currently 8MB according to System Monitor. I am using the utility HDTach to test the "Read Burst" speed which is returning a figure 15.3MB/sec while a similar drive on the same cable/controller, set as master, returns 30.3MB/sec which is what I expected from both of them. I have a utility from Western Digital (Dlgudma) which does what I want but, obviously, this drive is a Maxtor and I find The Maxtor website so buggy that I thought I would check here to see if anyone knew if they offered a similar thing. Thanks for you help, ern. "Eric" wrote in message ... In the Device Manager, click on the drive under Disk Drives and make sure that the DMA setting, if available, is enabled. How much RAM does the PC have? It could be that the hard drive isn't slow, but appears slow because the system has to use the virtual-memory swap file intensely because of a shortage of available RAM memory or an inadequate setting for virtual memory under the Performance tab of System Properties (System in the Control Panel). Eric, PC Buyer Beware! http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/ "ernie" wrote: Not strictly a Windows 98 issue but here it is: I have a Quantum Fireball 541 which transfers data at a very slow rate according to HdTach. Is there a utility for turning the rate up to the expected rate that I can download, I have powermax but it does not include this function and neither does Maxblast according to the blurb. Regards, ern. |
#12
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate
If I may I will paste in some parts of your previous and deal with the
points all in one, I have to go away for a while so any configuration changes will be delayed but: No, the 30MB/sec was expected for both. I only get the first 8GB on the graphical display though the test continues over the whole drive to give the average and the processor usage figures. I included the facts about the SMART utility as I know these can alter the settings on drives. This one crashed so it may have caused this change without me being aware. It is an ATA 100 5400rpm 2MB buffer drive. I wanted to include a link to the spec in my first post but they have changed things at Maxtor and I cannot get anything sensible but the model no. is 2B020H1. The chipset is 440BX and rated at UDMA33 so 15.3MB/sec seems abysmal. I do want to try the machine with the controller card but wanted to solve this anomally first. You are a glutton :^) The cable is an 80 core jobbie as recommended by Maxtor even for UDMA33. When I return I shall try putting the drive as secondary master and reinstalling the SMART utility to see if it can throw any light on the issue. Thank you for your time and any further factors you may think of. Regards, ern. Rick wrote: 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 "Rick Chauvin" wrote in message ... ..and ps I also meant to say, if you are running ATA100 and also using it's 40 wire ribbon cable, and on top of it running the other HD off it as Secondary - that is a disadvantages way to do that. (you can't have two master in the stock environment anyway) The proper way is ATA133 with its 80 wire cable greatly enhancing data transfer, as well as running each HD as Master specifically off of the two master ports that the Promise ATA 133 PCI Controller Card gives you and that's the beauty of that - and in that way you have a fighting chance... Also, imho&e, Let Windows Manage Virtual Memory and make no changes there! |
#13
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate
ernie wrote:
If I may I will paste in some parts of your previous and deal with the points all in one, I have to go away for a while so any configuration changes will be delayed but: No, the 30MB/sec was expected for both. I only get the first 8GB on the graphical display though the test continues over the whole drive to give the average and the processor usage figures. I included the facts about the SMART utility as I know these can alter the settings on drives. This one crashed so it may have caused this change without me being aware. It is an ATA 100 5400rpm 2MB buffer drive. I wanted to include a link to That's a decent drive for its time a few years ago but is not a 133 @ 7200 rpm 16MB buffer where even with your old chipset would still be able to enhance data transfer 'a little' ..and moreso using a new pci controller card would even double that still; however, it is all still limited by the fact that you have the older MB specs using just 128MB of RAM. I think that your main HD doing 30MB/sec that you said 'may be' normal, and I don't give much credence with your second drive hooked up like that. What are you using it for anyway - just storage. imho, I don't care to run two ata drives at once 'live' like that. If you need a large drive for storage then buy the one on sale as mentioned, along with a new pci controller card - but again the new spec'd drive would be in many ways still limited by your older setups ability to use it fully, however you may be able to squeak out 40 - 65 MB/s read with it using it as your main HD. You have to realize you can only do so much with your current setup; yes you can soup it up to some degree but still will be limited by your Processor, RAM & limited MB specs ability to flow bandwidth. the spec in my first post but they have changed things at Maxtor and I cannot get anything sensible but the model no. is 2B020H1. The chipset is 440BX and rated at UDMA33 so 15.3MB/sec seems abysmal. I do want to try the machine with the controller card but wanted to solve this anomally first. The cable is an 80 core jobbie as recommended by Maxtor even for UDMA33. Yes but, it's not really going to do much in that situation. The 80 wire cable is used to eliminate 'crosstalk' interference between the wires which in effect slows data transfer rates, and now the 80 with its extra 40 wires used alongside paired with a ground each helping greatly to eliminate the crosstalk, where the old way with just 40 total wires only used 7 of those wires for grounding; anyway the new way greatly reduces the crosstalk therefore allowing greater bandwidth flowing at once - where yes even for your older setup it can be beneficial but only to a small degree 'in perspective' to what you have to push it = and so just guessing here, but in your case only translates to a few % at best - no it's not very much in 'your' situation, but technically it's still a forward motion. After babbling all that I have to say though that 80 wire cable in your situation is the Least of any given benefits comparatively to what else you can do that would be so much better.. but that 'what else' cost $ ..and is that $ cost effective for what you will get? Rick When I return I shall try putting the drive as secondary master and reinstalling the SMART utility to see if it can throw any light on the issue. Thank you for your time and any further factors you may think of. Regards, ern. Rick wrote: 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 "Rick Chauvin" wrote in message ... ..and ps I also meant to say, if you are running ATA100 and also using it's 40 wire ribbon cable, and on top of it running the other HD off it as Secondary - that is a disadvantages way to do that. (you can't have two master in the stock environment anyway) The proper way is ATA133 with its 80 wire cable greatly enhancing data transfer, as well as running each HD as Master specifically off of the two master ports that the Promise ATA 133 PCI Controller Card gives you and that's the beauty of that - and in that way you have a fighting chance... Also, imho&e, Let Windows Manage Virtual Memory and make no changes there! |
#14
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate
Rick,
I have tried the SMART utility but it gives no way to tweak this drive up, though it is reporting the UDMA as Mode 0, which is consistent with the HDTach result. Placing the drive as master on the secondary controller makes no difference. I was not sure what you meant by: I think that your main HD doing 30MB/sec that you said 'may be' normal, and I don't give much credence with your second drive hooked up like that. What are you using it for anyway - just storage. imho, I don't care to run two ata drives at once 'live' like that. but if you are talking about putting each drive on it's own controller, see above, if other would you explain in more detail. Maxtor's website search reveals that no utility exists to turn the drive down, LOL: http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/m...adp.php?p_sid= jw7oZh4i&p_lva=&p_li=&p_search_text=transfer%20rat e%20low&p_sp=dHJhbnNmZXIgc mF0ZSBsb3cmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD10cmFuc2ZlciByYXRlIGx vdw**&p_cluster=0000|10083 |20024&p_faqid=1100&p_created=1025649750&p_topview =1 which URL may wrap. I am using the drive for storage but the first partition (2GB) is the paging drive so I would like to get it as fast as possible. In absence of a utility from the drive manufacturer itself I shall try the Western Digital one and report back. Regards, ern. "Rick Chauvin" wrote in message ... ernie wrote: If I may I will paste in some parts of your previous and deal with the points all in one, I have to go away for a while so any configuration changes will be delayed but: No, the 30MB/sec was expected for both. I only get the first 8GB on the graphical display though the test continues over the whole drive to give the average and the processor usage figures. I included the facts about the SMART utility as I know these can alter the settings on drives. This one crashed so it may have caused this change without me being aware. It is an ATA 100 5400rpm 2MB buffer drive. I wanted to include a link to That's a decent drive for its time a few years ago but is not a 133 @ 7200 rpm 16MB buffer where even with your old chipset would still be able to enhance data transfer 'a little' ..and moreso using a new pci controller card would even double that still; however, it is all still limited by the fact that you have the older MB specs using just 128MB of RAM. I think that your main HD doing 30MB/sec that you said 'may be' normal, and I don't give much credence with your second drive hooked up like that. What are you using it for anyway - just storage. imho, I don't care to run two ata drives at once 'live' like that. If you need a large drive for storage then buy the one on sale as mentioned, along with a new pci controller card - but again the new spec'd drive would be in many ways still limited by your older setups ability to use it fully, however you may be able to squeak out 40 - 65 MB/s read with it using it as your main HD. You have to realize you can only do so much with your current setup; yes you can soup it up to some degree but still will be limited by your Processor, RAM & limited MB specs ability to flow bandwidth. the spec in my first post but they have changed things at Maxtor and I cannot get anything sensible but the model no. is 2B020H1. The chipset is 440BX and rated at UDMA33 so 15.3MB/sec seems abysmal. I do want to try the machine with the controller card but wanted to solve this anomally first. The cable is an 80 core jobbie as recommended by Maxtor even for UDMA33. Yes but, it's not really going to do much in that situation. The 80 wire cable is used to eliminate 'crosstalk' interference between the wires which in effect slows data transfer rates, and now the 80 with its extra 40 wires used alongside paired with a ground each helping greatly to eliminate the crosstalk, where the old way with just 40 total wires only used 7 of those wires for grounding; anyway the new way greatly reduces the crosstalk therefore allowing greater bandwidth flowing at once - where yes even for your older setup it can be beneficial but only to a small degree 'in perspective' to what you have to push it = and so just guessing here, but in your case only translates to a few % at best - no it's not very much in 'your' situation, but technically it's still a forward motion. After babbling all that I have to say though that 80 wire cable in your situation is the Least of any given benefits comparatively to what else you can do that would be so much better.. but that 'what else' cost $ ..and is that $ cost effective for what you will get? Rick When I return I shall try putting the drive as secondary master and reinstalling the SMART utility to see if it can throw any light on the issue. Thank you for your time and any further factors you may think of. Regards, ern. Rick wrote: 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 "Rick Chauvin" wrote in message ... ..and ps I also meant to say, if you are running ATA100 and also using it's 40 wire ribbon cable, and on top of it running the other HD off it as Secondary - that is a disadvantages way to do that. (you can't have two master in the stock environment anyway) The proper way is ATA133 with its 80 wire cable greatly enhancing data transfer, as well as running each HD as Master specifically off of the two master ports that the Promise ATA 133 PCI Controller Card gives you and that's the beauty of that - and in that way you have a fighting chance... Also, imho&e, Let Windows Manage Virtual Memory and make no changes there! |
#15
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate
ernie wrote:
Rick, I have tried the SMART utility but it gives no way to tweak this drive Of course it doesn't and I never personally said or suggested you use any SMART program at all, on the contrary. Most SMART monitors imo cause unneeded panic since they try to predict when SMART in the future will predict a failure. SMART conditions are in themselves predictions, and there's no need to monitor the predict of predictions - However, that said - if you even get any SMART prompts that the HD is in danger of failure, get the data off the drive, and buy a new one (or use SpinRite on it to see if you can recover any marked out bad sectors) ..but all this has nothing to do with making your HD faster in any direct way. You need New hardware. up, though it is reporting the UDMA as Mode 0, which is consistent with the HDTach result. Placing the drive as master on the secondary controller makes no difference. I was not sure what you meant by: I think that your main HD doing 30MB/sec that you said 'may be' normal, and I don't give much credence with your second drive hooked up like that. What are you using it for anyway - just storage. imho, I don't care to run two ata drives at once 'live' like that. My only suggestion previously or going forward to you is if you want better data transfer rates is to get new hardware, and in this order to get the ATA 133 Promise pci controller card I thought I had mentioned to you, as well a brand New ATA133 7200 rpm drive I also mentioned (as well if you can upgrade your RAM to at least 512) ..but as a result of the first two then you will be on your way near UDMA6 depending, and your HDTach will read at least triple than what you get now.. Rick |
#16
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate
On Sun, 9 Apr 2006 10:20:36 +0100, "ernie" wrote:
Not strictly a Windows 98 issue but here it is: I have a Quantum Fireball 541 which transfers data at a very slow rate according to HdTach. Is there a utility for turning the rate up to the expected rate that I can download, I have powermax but it does not include this function and neither does Maxblast according to the blurb. Ernie, I have just read this thread so far and one thing that hasn't been mentioned is that the BIOS may be setting the drive to its max UDMA and this is faster than the chipset can support. I had problems on a PC with a 430TX chipset because the Award BIOS set the drive to UDMA 5 and the controller was max UDMA 2. For W98 I got UDMA to work by disabling it in the BIOS setup and then enabling it in W98. I could get close to 30MB/s reading large defragmented files. I eventually patched the BIOS (Award 4.51) to limit it to UDMA 2 but this is a bit geeky and risky without a PROM burner and removeable BIOS chip. I think Quantum used to have a utility where you could reduce the max UDMA the drive would report. I have some Maxtor utilities here for limiting the UDMA on fireball drives (e.g. cr, cx, lct) but I'm not sure which one is appropriate for your drive. Can you check the Maxtor site and see if they are still available ? -- Steven |
#17
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate
"Steven Saunderson" wrote in message
... On Sun, 9 Apr 2006 10:20:36 +0100, "ernie" wrote: Not strictly a Windows 98 issue but here it is: I have a Quantum Fireball 541 which transfers data at a very slow rate according to HdTach. Is there a utility for turning the rate up to the expected rate that I can download, I have powermax but it does not include this function and neither does Maxblast according to the blurb. Ernie, I have just read this thread so far and one thing that hasn't been mentioned is that the BIOS may be setting the drive to its max UDMA and this is faster than the chipset can support. I had problems on a PC with a 430TX chipset because the Award BIOS set the drive to UDMA 5 and the controller was max UDMA 2. For W98 I got UDMA to work by disabling it in the BIOS setup and then enabling it in W98. I could get close to 30MB/s reading large defragmented files. I eventually patched the BIOS (Award 4.51) to limit it to UDMA 2 but this is a bit geeky and risky without a PROM burner and removeable BIOS chip. I think Quantum used to have a utility where you could reduce the max UDMA the drive would report. I have some Maxtor utilities here for limiting the UDMA on fireball drives (e.g. cr, cx, lct) but I'm not sure which one is appropriate for your drive. Can you check the Maxtor site and see if they are still available ? -- Steven Hi, Steven. The drive is a Maxtor Fireball 541dx which may be one of those specifically excluded in the Maxtor article at: http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/m...adp.php?p_sid= jw7oZh4i&p_lva=&p_li=&p_search_text=transfer%20rat e%20low&p_sp=dHJhbnNmZXIgc mF0ZSBsb3cmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD10cmFuc2ZlciByYXRlIGx vdw**&p_cluster=0000|10083 |20024&p_faqid=1100&p_created=1025649750&p_topview =1 I found the list of UltraDMA 33/66/100 Change Utilities, I won't give the horrible URL, it is the link at the bottom of the above page called "Archived Software and Utilities for Quantum Hard Drives", but my drive is not there, probably because it's a Maxtor. I am going to look at Maxblast one more time but if you think/know that one of those utilities would work please let me know. Regards, ern. |
#18
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate
I hooked the drives up to my CMD controller card and got a gratifying
increase in read burst speed on the master, a Quantum Fireball lct10, up to 57.9MB/sec. That is fab. Sadly the Maxtor did not budge from 15.3MB/sec. Thank you for your advises, I guess the drive may be fubared except that it passes all other tests and I paid good money for it, I am unwilling to chuck it out. Regards, ern. "Rick Chauvin" wrote in message ... ernie wrote: Rick, I have tried the SMART utility but it gives no way to tweak this drive Of course it doesn't and I never personally said or suggested you use any SMART program at all, on the contrary. Most SMART monitors imo cause unneeded panic since they try to predict when SMART in the future will predict a failure. SMART conditions are in themselves predictions, and there's no need to monitor the predict of predictions - However, that said - if you even get any SMART prompts that the HD is in danger of failure, get the data off the drive, and buy a new one (or use SpinRite on it to see if you can recover any marked out bad sectors) ..but all this has nothing to do with making your HD faster in any direct way. You need New hardware. up, though it is reporting the UDMA as Mode 0, which is consistent with the HDTach result. Placing the drive as master on the secondary controller makes no difference. I was not sure what you meant by: I think that your main HD doing 30MB/sec that you said 'may be' normal, and I don't give much credence with your second drive hooked up like that. What are you using it for anyway - just storage. imho, I don't care to run two ata drives at once 'live' like that. My only suggestion previously or going forward to you is if you want better data transfer rates is to get new hardware, and in this order to get the ATA 133 Promise pci controller card I thought I had mentioned to you, as well a brand New ATA133 7200 rpm drive I also mentioned (as well if you can upgrade your RAM to at least 512) ..but as a result of the first two then you will be on your way near UDMA6 depending, and your HDTach will read at least triple than what you get now.. Rick |
#19
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate
ernie wrote:
I hooked the drives up to my CMD controller card and got a gratifying increase in read burst speed on the master, a Quantum Fireball lct10, up to 57.9MB/sec. That is fab. Sadly the Maxtor did not budge from 15.3MB/sec. Thank you for your advises, I guess the drive may be fubared except that it passes all other tests and I paid good money for it, I am unwilling to chuck it out. Regards, ern. Great then, and nice work ernie. Actually I didn't mean to focus just on promise, although they are the best, but any decent pci controller card will offer inherent benefits in this area. Also I wanted to mention of the three things I suggested to do yesterday that I unintentionally left out one other very Important thing - and that of course is the main Processor engine (MB specs too, etc) which are as important as # 1 & 2 - and is the driving force behind faster data transfer rates; and you can see those combinations offer great possibilities as my previous screenshot earlier showing my own 112 MB/s @ 8 ms readings. I'm not sure what you did with or what else happened to your Maxtor 2B020H1 drive to cause it to perform at 15 which does seem verrry slow. I imagine today you also tried hooking it up "singly" all by itself onto the pci controller card - and it still gives you that reading? Here's the link to your 2B020H1 that you wanted, not that it will help: http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...reball%20541DX Your current lct10 seems even less capable than your older 541DX so you would expect the 2B020H1 to be even better, but here's your older drive. http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...reball%20lct10 But as I mentioned before you can get a 300GB DiamondMaxPlus Ultra ATA133, UltraMB cache, 7200 rpm internal drive by Maxtor this week on sale for only $99 and so... ...but the only thing would be is if your CMD controller is new enough to support it like the Promise card is. Rick "Rick Chauvin" wrote in message ... ernie wrote: Rick, I have tried the SMART utility but it gives no way to tweak this drive Of course it doesn't and I never personally said or suggested you use any SMART program at all, on the contrary. Most SMART monitors imo cause unneeded panic since they try to predict when SMART in the future will predict a failure. SMART conditions are in themselves predictions, and there's no need to monitor the predict of predictions - However, that said - if you even get any SMART prompts that the HD is in danger of failure, get the data off the drive, and buy a new one (or use SpinRite on it to see if you can recover any marked out bad sectors) ..but all this has nothing to do with making your HD faster in any direct way. You need New hardware. up, though it is reporting the UDMA as Mode 0, which is consistent with the HDTach result. Placing the drive as master on the secondary controller makes no difference. I was not sure what you meant by: I think that your main HD doing 30MB/sec that you said 'may be' normal, and I don't give much credence with your second drive hooked up like that. What are you using it for anyway - just storage. imho, I don't care to run two ata drives at once 'live' like that. My only suggestion previously or going forward to you is if you want better data transfer rates is to get new hardware, and in this order to get the ATA 133 Promise pci controller card I thought I had mentioned to you, as well a brand New ATA133 7200 rpm drive I also mentioned (as well if you can upgrade your RAM to at least 512) ..but as a result of the first two then you will be on your way near UDMA6 depending, and your HDTach will read at least triple than what you get now.. Rick |
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate
Found a floppy with a utility called Udmaupdt.exe which I must have used to
turn down the drive, a re-run to de-restrict the drive has solved the problem. ern. "AlmostBob" wrote in message ... set second drive as master on the secondary connector should not be on the same cable "a similar drive on the same cable/controller, set as master" for fastest throughput "ernie" wrote in message ... Thank you Eric, yes, DMA is checked for the drive in Device Manager. The PC has 128MB of RAM and the swap file in-use figure is currently 8MB according to System Monitor. I am using the utility HDTach to test the "Read Burst" speed which is returning a figure 15.3MB/sec while a similar drive on the same cable/controller, set as master, returns 30.3MB/sec which is what I expected from both of them. I have a utility from Western Digital (Dlgudma) which does what I want but, obviously, this drive is a Maxtor and I find The Maxtor website so buggy that I thought I would check here to see if anyone knew if they offered a similar thing. Thanks for you help, ern. "Eric" wrote in message ... In the Device Manager, click on the drive under Disk Drives and make sure that the DMA setting, if available, is enabled. How much RAM does the PC have? It could be that the hard drive isn't slow, but appears slow because the system has to use the virtual-memory swap file intensely because of a shortage of available RAM memory or an inadequate setting for virtual memory under the Performance tab of System Properties (System in the Control Panel). Eric, PC Buyer Beware! http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/ "ernie" wrote: Not strictly a Windows 98 issue but here it is: I have a Quantum Fireball 541 which transfers data at a very slow rate according to HdTach. Is there a utility for turning the rate up to the expected rate that I can download, I have powermax but it does not include this function and neither does Maxblast according to the blurb. Regards, ern. |
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How to "turn up" my Maxtor HDD transfer rate | ernie | General | 19 | May 24th 06 09:02 PM |