ADALE Said- "Did you see the comment I made earlier about the drive acting normally when I did the benchmarking ? Is that a clue of any sort ?"[COLOR=/]
Adale- not that I can put a finger on, unless cmd is different, like booting from floppy- or it is looping on WriteVerify or SMART is doing something stupid at idle that is put to the side because of the demand the benchtest calls for. The Write Verify would slow it way down because everything it writes it reads. But not as bad as the specs you are showing.
ECC,CRC Errors?? CHKDSK should pick that up and it would have to be re-ocurring. But Powermax will prove that any way.
How about PowerMax? or the ATA utilities? Any luck there?
About PIO vs. ATA(UDMA)[COLOR=/]
I may have lead you a bit astray, and I may even be full of (@*&#%$. Lets think this through.
I am sorry I didn't (and can't)explain this better, and before anybody gets tense, this simple analogy is not exactly correct but it serves the purpose:
Imagine your HDD is a modem- 9600Baud would be about PIO Mode2(Modes are 1-4 I believe), and UDMA (ATA) is 14.4 and up(UDMA Modes 1-5). Your Controller is a switch at the phone company- and your data is coming / going beyond.
Data is like sending a fax- Both sides of the BUS "shake hands" and usually agree on 14.4- but if they have trouble talking they will AUTOREDUCE to insure they can understand each other. They talk slower. The problem is determining why. you don't know if your fax is broke, the other guy's is broke or the switch is broke. All you know is that you paid yer d**n phone bill and you ought to get better service than 9600Baud! And if there is static in the line WriteVerify turns on and slows it down sommore.
Now lets make it a little worse yet. You live on Maxtor Drive. You send your fax. It goes through the switch and into the phone company's Server (CPU), and right back through the same switch to be received by your neighbor across the street (Mr. N.T. Kernel)!!!
The bench you ran is still talking through the bus. You are sending the same fax.
Now, if you finally get fed up, you figger, Hmm I'll just walk on down to A Drive and stop off at that little DOS Boot repair and copy shop. I will send a fax from there over to my place to see if my machine picks it up ok.
This isn't quite as bad, but it's still the same phone company, and even though A Drive is on a different circuit it still needs to go through the same old switch to get to your house on Maxtor Drive.
So what can you do?
Well, if you are really sick of it I guess you could just pick up and leave. Just move. You hate it here anyway- It's much better over on West Erndigital blvd. The road there is brand new! But West Erndigital is on the same phone company and circuit- so how do you know you can fax from there? you might have the same problem... and the cost of the moving truck... and all that packing and unpacking...
Do you think Mr. Kernel would let you come over and fiddle with his fax to see if it is the problem? Not too likely! I know Mr. Kernel, and he is surely one grumpy old fart. He don't open his door to NOBODY! Besides, he's richer than anyone I know. He could probaby buy the phone company (mebbe he already did)! Surely he has the best fax you could possibly get!
Well what about the phone company or the sub-contractor who installed the switch? Nope. Union Shops. if you ain't got a card you can't do squat.
So heres yer choices:
You really gotta take your fax machine (HDD) to another town (box). You gotta find someplace where you know they got clean lines.
Then, if you find out your fax machine is broke, Go back home wrap that fax around a brick and lay in the ditch till Mr. Kernel comes out to go to work....
See what my thinking is?? Ain't it scary?
Logical progression (Process of Elimination)[COLOR=/]
Boot from a floppy and observe the drive if it winds up good and the light goes off... Good.
Run Powermax. if there is error, fix it, but don't yet assume that it is the drive or controller (or both)(or either). If it is fixed, yay. If the problem returns PROVE it.
Boot it from a floppy in another box if it shows the same behavior on a different MB there is problem with the drive. Repair it there. If it develops the same probem again (on the guest MB) then the drive is faulty and needs harder repair or replaced. If the repair sticks in the guest box, but returns when you bring it home then the controller (or something else) is wrong and causing the error to manifest on the drive.
If you are not fixed at this point you have proved the drive itself and the issue is in the board controller, OS or CMOS.
So...
With the rates you have there is NO WAY that HDD is in UDMA Mode5- or -the bench is losing data across the bus and giving you inacurate data -or a CMOS or soft setting is the culprit forcing low rates for some reason. Something is lying to ya (barring physical damage which I don't buy, worked good before install).
Try going back to the controller and choosing to DISABLE DMA (set it to PIO) /restart/ and choose DMA again. /restart/ If that don't fix it I will quit beating that dead horse. Look to see if you meet the specs to need the MINIPORT driver instead of the stock filter driver.
Nuther thought: with the earlier install probs- are you certain PNP is OFF and ASCPI is ON (if ALL are ASCPI compliant, otherwise PNP OFF ASCPI OFF) in CMOS? I believe that 2k failsafe needed CMOS set up that way. Not gonna cause DRIVE probs particularly, but can tend to spawn an occasional poltergiest... Please prove before action here- I don't know if XP is as picky. Also, I don't know that changing them now would fix it w/o re-install... ANYBODY ELSE?
Hope I didn't just muddy it up some more.
Sorry so long winded... and I did it all with just these two fingers...
Bruce
