dumb question :)

[litehedded]

i just got my first SATA drive and SATA controller (promise sata300 and seagate 7200.10)
my burst speed (not that it matters) seems much lower than it should be.
is it the pci bus that's limiting that max speed? (i don't have pci express)
anyway thanks for your help (am I using too many parenthesis?)

 

[Vertigo Acid]

Couple of things:

1) What program are you using to determine your speed? If you're not using HDTach, go download that

2) Screenshots from HDTach would be helpful

 

[naro]

PCI does limit the performance.

Anyway, check that the jumper pin at the back of your Barracuda 7200.10 is removed. The jumper must be removed to enable 300Mb/s performance.

 

[litehedded]

hdtach
jumper removed
i don't have a screenshot but it was around 100 for the burst
other speeds are comparable to what i've seen elsewhere

 

[unhappy_mage]

(am I using too many parenthesis?)

No, they match. (This is too many parenthesis

Burst speeds don't have much impact on real-world performance; does the drive seem slow or is HDTach the only symptom?

 

[naro]

whats the average read speed?

should be 60+MB/s

Burst speed does not really matter

 

[litehedded]

I was writing to the disk at the time btw. the average is normally higher but the burst is always about this speed.
i know burst doesn't mean much I was just wondering what it was affecting it. I thought the pci bus

 

[Vertigo Acid]

Do it again without anything running!

 

[litehedded]

no. I'm doing something on that drive right now
the burst speed is the same as now when there's no load
the avg read is normally closer to 70

 

[tuskenraider]

Then your drive is performing fine.

 

[litehedded]

k I thought so
so is the pci bus my bottleneck?

 

[naro]

PCI bus is 32bit at 33Mhz which equates to a maximum bandwidth of 133MB/s.

But an average read speed of 70MB/s is normal for the 7200.10 using onboard SATA controllers.

If you Raid 0 with another 7200.10 320gb, you might get better read speed which is nearer to 133MB/s.

 

[litehedded]

nah. I'm anti raid 0
hardforum told me so