Hard-drive speed not at maximum?

[teken894]

Hey,

I was looking through device manager and when looking at the IDE controllers both the primary and secondary channel show as using "Ultra DMA 2" as the current transfer mode...

But, from looking at the SIS (my chipset) IDE_Utility, I find that my DVD+RW drive works at udma-2 and the harddrives work in udma-6...Both the harddrives are on their own IDE channel but are currently using UDMA-2 as their transfer mode...

Why isn't windows using the higher-speed modes? I plan on backing up my harddrives and don't want to waste time backing-up in a slower speed..

Some feedback would be appreciated..

 

[teken894]

erm...cancel that

I found that my harddrives were connected with a 40-wire cable instead of an 80-wire one...My DVD+RW drive was connected to the 80-wire one, so I switched the wires and now windows sees my harddrives as capable of fast udma speeds..

Now a dikspeed utility shows my HD as tranferring around 80MB/s compared to around 30MB/s before..

Still, I don't know why the speed is not closer to the full 133MB/s?

 

[paparazi]

teken894
Good to see you sorted the problem.
Just a couple of things:
Some DVDRW drives also need the fine 80 core "ultra cable" My Pioneer 110D for instance, check to see if yours is one that also needs the faster cable.
ATA100/ATA133/SATA150/SATA300 etc are all just interface speeds.
As an example: it's like having tires on your car "CAPABLE" of 150mph when the car itself will only reach a ton (100)and then the owner complaining to the salesman "well it's says 150mph on the tires!!"

Most modern ATA drives have a sustained max transfer around 70MB/s with momentary burst touching 100MB/s if your lucky, so if you are seeing transfers around 80MB/s your systen is running very well.
Incidently, even SATA2 "300" drives are only marginally quicker despite their even faster interface.

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[cdogg]

paparazi is right. Most ATA/100/133 and SATA hard drives can only average around 40-45MB/s, though newer drives can often be found in the 50-55MB/s range. These are "averages" based on the transfers of both sequential data (contiguous data stored in clusters right next to each other) and dispersed data (usually smaller files positioned in various areas of the drive).

Your 80MB/s is rather impressive. It might have been a test to transfer sequential data which is often much higher than dispersed transfer rates. Without the use of a RAID array, anything over 70MB/s is considered above average.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884