Low transfer rate (6 Mbyte/sec)

[jokke]

Ive got a WD 800JB and a Maxtor maxline 9 200Gb disc on my first IDE-controller, the WD as master with my operativesystem on it and the Maxtor as slave for storage...

my problem is that i never get higher transfer rate then 6 Mbyte/sec from the disc's, if i burn a DVD it never goes up more then 5x ... ive tried with via updates, new ide-cable, checked the jumper settings twice, the disc's are in ultra-dma 5 and 6...

the disturbing thing is that i get great transfer rates in benchmark programs and such things...

my mobo MSI kt3 ultra 2

[mashie]

Put the drives on separate IDE channels (one device per cable) and you should get a nice boost in speed.

[Ice Czar]

from the disc's, if i burn

the optical being limited to UDMA mode 2 plus whatever internal limitation it has
and would be the area of concentration, as in is it actually at UDMA or PIO
( that rate fits nicely with PIO mode 2 for the DVD)
some of the reasons a device might default to PIO
DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/tech/storage/ide-dma.mspx)
IDE ATA and ATAPI Disks Use PIO Mode After Multiple Time-Out or CRC Errors Occur (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472) (added below in context)

the drives sound fine, you can test with a transfer to another HDD
and you can use ATACT for cable testing cut and paste 101
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Integrity Testing

USING ATACT

well this is how I did it, and it was only employed on my PATA onboard channels
so for IDE Cards or RAID Channels, SATA ports, youll have to blunder around yourself :p

download ATACT (http://www.ata-atapi.com/atact.htm) demo
extract and change the .ug files to .txt files and read them
Download Dr DOS (http://www.bootdisk.com/)
run it and it will extract to a new floopy
access the floppy and remove the CONFIG.SYS file
(if you employ an MS-DOS boot disk you also need to remove the AUTOEXEC.BAT)
then add the ATACT.EXE file to it

reboot and change your boot order to floopy first if it isnt already
I was prompted to enter the Date and Time (???)
and then given an A:/ prompt
I always check the directory at that point (just to be sure)
A:/DIR which looked OK so
A:/ATACT P0 = runs on Primary Channel Device Zero (Master)
A:/ATACT P1 = runs on Primary Channel Device One (Slave)
A:/ATACT P01 = runs on Primary Channel Both Devices
A:/ATACT S0 = runs on Secondary Channel Device Zero (Master)
A:/ATACT S1 = runs on Secondary Channel Device One (Slave)
A:/ATACT S01 = runs on Secondary Channel Both Devices

there are lots of other switches, troubleshooting and modes
but I havent tried them, so Good Luck

another way to test data integrity is to copy and transfer it between partitions, drives, arrays, and computers, then run a checksum on the both sets of files to compare them, they should match
a very good freeware checksum is Fsum by slavasoft (http://www.slavasoft.com/fsum/)
Possibility to calculate a file message digest and/or a checksum using any of the 12 well-known and documented hash and checksum algorithms: MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-2( 256, 384, 512), RIPEMD-160, PANAMA, TIGER, ADLER32, CRC32;

however since IDE covers up errors and resends them, while this will reveal if the data has been transfered without error, it wont verify that the data signaling is optimized, actual errors are pretty rare, so even a few are a sign something is wrong, in my personal experience various compressed archives seem to be more suceptible to corruption than a normal file, data corruption can strike any backup or redundancy strategy, so its important to test, and on occassion retest, when you need to restore important data isnt the time to find out its corrupted ;)

Good Luck, and have fun.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

alternately Id quiz TechHead in the optical forum about any issues or firmware

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
cut and paste 202



Optimizing Physical Configuration
being on the same channel there are a few considerations

IDE\ATA\ATAPI is sequential
meaning first the HDD reads a part of the file until the HDD's Cache is full then writes it to the Second HDD,
then that repeats each taking its own turn
then its unlikely its reading the file from a single location, its probably fragmented, and when it writing it, its also writing it to multiple locations, that introduces the latency and access times of both drives into it

if your going to be transfering alot of data inbetween two HDDs on a regular basis, its best if they are on their own channels, writing from a HDD to a Optical drive is alot better, the optical can only deal with a maximum of 33MB/s Burst (UDMA mode2) whereas the HDD is probably at UDMA mode5 100MB/s burst (50>30MB/s Sustained), in short the sequential issues arent enought to effect the burn speed with modern software (and reads arent really an issue either) both cant saturate the bus

of course those are just interface speeds and are not the sole consideration of HDD performance > As the Disc Spins (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=699246) @ Lost Circuits

there is a myth about putting optical drives on the same channel as HDDs, it is just that a myth, but it keeps getting reinforced by the way Windows deals with ATA\ATAPI issues
basically with Independent Device Timing (http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if/ide/confTiming.html) two devices (master\slave) both transfer their data at their own highest speed, but, they both either have to be PIO (which is glacially slow) or UDMA, if one defaults to PIO because of some issue, Windows will default the other as well. There was a time when CDROMs where only PIO, and HDDs where DMA, for that period of history you didnt want to share a channel, but modern opticals are UDMA mode2 so there is rarely any issue

some of the reasons a device might default to PIO
DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/tech/storage/ide-dma.mspx)
IDE ATA and ATAPI Disks Use PIO Mode After Multiple Time-Out or CRC Errors Occur (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472)

however if possible it is ideal
(for data integrity if nothing else)
to have each device as a master on its own channel

whenever possible consider from what source to what target the large files are being transfer on a regular basis,
and try to adapt your physical configuration to accommodate that ;)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good luck ;)

[jokke]

well i threw out my cd-burner so now im only using my WD800JB as system drive on EIDE-0 as master ... on EIDE-1 im using my Maxtor disk on master and the BenQ dvd-burner as slave ...

its getting some better speed but i dont know ... the most strange thing is when i burning or transfering a large file and for example surfing the webb or reading e-mail's the transfer rate goes up ...

this is one of those problems that i know i cant solve by myself ... :)

[Ice Czar]

the most strange thing is when i burning or transfering a large file and for example surfing the webb or reading e-mail's the transfer rate goes up ...


do more of that :p

did you mean the transfer rate decreases?
how are you measuring this?

[jokke]

im copying a large image file of 4.7Gbyte in windows commander from my WD drive to the Maxtor drive ... when im not doing anything with the computer exept copying that file the transfer is about 6Mbyte/sec... when i start to surf or working with light programs the transfer rate goes up to about 8-9Mbytes/sec...

that problems consists when im also burning an image with my DVD-burner... when im only burning its about 4x and when im doing light work its about 6-7x

strange isnt