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Brand new hard drive. wow 60MB/s. ok.. what's with the 29ms time?

R

RSI

Diamond Member
Posted about some trouble not long ago. Well I just tested this comp's HD with HD Tach, and it said 60MB/s which must be pretty good - but the time was 29ms! That should be near 8.5-9ms! 9.5% CPU usage. Would this have to do with DMA?

-RSI
 


<< Posted about some trouble not long ago. Well I just tested this comp's HD with HD Tach, and it said 60MB/s which must be pretty good - but the time was 29ms! That should be near 8.5-9ms! 9.5% CPU usage. Would this have to do with DMA?

-RSI >>


a few more details of your system would have been helpful but yes enable dma for the hdd & if it's a via system, have you installed the via m/board drivers?
 


<<

<< Posted about some trouble not long ago. Well I just tested this comp's HD with HD Tach, and it said 60MB/s which must be pretty good - but the time was 29ms! That should be near 8.5-9ms! 9.5% CPU usage. Would this have to do with DMA?

-RSI >>


a few more details of your system would have been helpful but yes enable dma for the hdd & if it's a via system, have you installed the via m/board drivers? >>

It's not a via system and DMA is enabled, I even tried using a utility for my mobo to force dma in win2k. Still 21-30ms time. That is TERRIBLE. Am I gonna have to open this up and look? grrr...

-RSI
 
< Would this have to do with DMA? >

No, cause the transfer rates would have sucked just as bad...



< Well I just tested this comp's HD with HD Tach, and it said 60MB/s which must be pretty good - but the time was 29ms! >

Please post picture and brand of drive...Are you sure you are reading the transfer rate and not burst speed? Cause this would be the highest non-scsi or non-raid score I have ever seen....

What was the cpu utilization like???

Edit: My ecs mobo with WD 40gig 7200 ata100 gets 41000 average with 80m/s plus (casue it is pegged to highest shown), with 9.9ms and cpu utilization of 6-7 percent...
 


<< < Would this have to do with DMA? >

No, cause the transfer rates would have sucked just as bad...



< Well I just tested this comp's HD with HD Tach, and it said 60MB/s which must be pretty good - but the time was 29ms! >

Please post picture and brand of drive...Are you sure you are reading the transfer rate and not burst speed? Cause this would be the highest non-scsi or non-raid score I have ever seen....

What was the cpu utilization like???

Edit: My ecs mobo with WD 40gig 7200 ata100 gets 41000 average with 80m/s plus (casue it is pegged to highest shown), with 9.9ms and cpu utilization of 6-7 percent... >>

That's what mine should be like. Average is only about 30. As I said the CPU utilization is 9.5% for me.

-RSI
 
OK let me get this straight

30mb sec average transfer
60mb/sec burst speed
29ms seek time
9.5 cpu utilization

Right???

If so the cpu utilization is not bad and shouldn't hamper numbers above...

Are you running this on a ata100 controller card???

Were you not in another thread talking about poor vid card performance and many asked if dma was enabled??? Well was it??? I know win2k can be difficult to tell or set it...

It acts like dma is not enabled...

Sis has no revised drivers to fix any ide issues that I can think of, and no bios fixes along these lines...So I am thinking ...

1)dma is not enabled
2)bad cable or non 80 pin ata100 cable
3)bad board with bad ide controller...

List all the bios settings for ide devices...
 
DMA has no affect on access time. It sounds like the disk has some kind of acoustic management and it is enabled.

Cheers!
 


<< OK let me get this straight

30mb sec average transfer
60mb/sec burst speed
29ms seek time
9.5 cpu utilization

Right???

If so the cpu utilization is not bad and shouldn't hamper numbers above...

Are you running this on a ata100 controller card???

Were you not in another thread talking about poor vid card performance and many asked if dma was enabled??? Well was it??? I know win2k can be difficult to tell or set it...

It acts like dma is not enabled...

Sis has no revised drivers to fix any ide issues that I can think of, and no bios fixes along these lines...So I am thinking ...

1)dma is not enabled
2)bad cable or non 80 pin ata100 cable
3)bad board with bad ide controller...

List all the bios settings for ide devices... >>

It's a brand new comp straight from the shop. They do not sell computers with messed up cables and stuff. To assure myself of this, I checked everything myself. Every possible thing inside the computer was as perfect as I could have put it myself. Everything was neat, on top of that. The cables were (and can only be) plugged in properly, they were the correct cables, plugged into the correct places.

Am I running this on an ATA100 controller card?

Did I not say that I have an ECS K7S5A? It's a pretty new mobo. Why would I need a controller card? This mobo supports ATA100 on its own. The video "problem" was solved. I was just expecting better performance, and also needed to install proper drivers and the AGP driver from the mobo cd.

The only thing bugging me at this point is the 29ms time for the hard drive.

<< 3)bad board with bad ide controller... >>

What the? Everything else works 100% perfectly. Bad board? It's also brand new! Bad IDE controller? Very unlikely but it is alwas possible as well. But it seems to work and the CD-ROM work perfectly too (not that it's on the same controller).

I used a DMA force utility and it even says Ultra DMA in the device manager. Urgh.. this bugs me.

-RSI
 
< Am I running this on an ATA100 controller card?

Did I not say that I have an ECS K7S5A? It's a pretty new mobo. Why would I need a controller card? This mobo supports ATA100 on its own. The video "problem" was solved. I was just expecting better performance, and also needed to install proper drivers and the AGP driver from the mobo cd.
>

You ever heard of a pci controller card??? I use mine so I can have all my drives on their own
channels...many do this in case you didn't know...


< They do not sell computers with messed up cables and stuff. >

That is pretty naive...


I like sharkkeepers idea as well...You still have yet to mention drive specs...please post them
 


<< < Am I running this on an ATA100 controller card?

Did I not say that I have an ECS K7S5A? It's a pretty new mobo. Why would I need a controller card? This mobo supports ATA100 on its own. The video "problem" was solved. I was just expecting better performance, and also needed to install proper drivers and the AGP driver from the mobo cd.
>

You ever heard of a pci controller card??? I use mine so I can have all my drives on their own
channels...many do this in case you didn't know...


< They do not sell computers with messed up cables and stuff. >

That is pretty naive...


I like sharkkeepers idea as well...You still have yet to mention drive specs...please post them >>

I thought I had already, my bad. All I know about the drive is that it is 40GB, 7200rpm, 2MB buffer, and Maxtor. I forget the model name, but it was some number (letters mixed in too?).

And no, I don't know anybody who uses PCI controller cards like that. Most people I know have one drive, and one or two CD devices, which are on a seperate cable. It's naive to think that a computer shop that I've bought from many times without a problem sells computers that work properly? Come on. How many times have you bought a brand new computer, and the IDE cables are messed up? Still, that doesn't mean I won't/have not checked it.

-RSI
 
"30mb sec average transfer
60mb/sec burst speed
29ms seek time
9.5 cpu utilization"

If those are your results, then your transfer rate is very low as well. Either the proper IDE drivers aren't installed, or DMA isn't enabled, or the drive is just defective, but that is least likely. Would be useful if you posted system specs, at least the hard drive if nothing else.

"Edit: My ecs mobo with WD 40gig 7200 ata100 gets 41000 average with 80m/s plus (casue it is pegged to highest shown), with 9.9ms and cpu utilization of 6-7 percent... "

You didn't enable advanced size check, those numbers are invalid.
 
I usually don't cause my root drive I run it on rarely has over 4-5gigs of info...

Who the f are you to say what is invalid??? I agree ppl need to say whether the test is ran with it or without it to make apple and apple comparisons...Who knows he may have not checked it either...

That being said I reran it:

average 36981
burst still pegged at 80mb/sec
11.7ms seek
8.2 cpu utilization

RSI, use the maxtor software that came with it to enter in and check the acoustic settings or to test it thoruoghly...

< And no, I don't know anybody who uses PCI controller cards like that. Most people I know have one drive, and one or two CD devices, which are on a seperate cable. >

40gig WD 7200 rpm ATA100 on primary master (promise controller card)
45gig Maxtror 7200rpm ATA100 on secondary master (promise controller card)

Lite-on Lt163 Dvd-rom primary master (ide controller)
Aopen 1232a CD-RW secondary master (ide controller)

This assures no channel sharing or performance hits from reading and writing from drives on same channel....

Actually most ppl have multiple harddrives now...they use second drive as storage drive...


 
"Who the f are you to say what is invalid???"

No IDE drive does or ever has had sub 11ms access time, let alone 9.5ms, which makes the statement incorrect. Also, HD Tach test access time, not seek time.


"I usually don't cause my root drive I run it on rarely has over 4-5gigs of info..."

What you use is irrelevent. If I use the only the first 100MB on my drive does that mean the acces time for my drive is 3ms? no. For comparative purposes you have to test the whole drive. Testing the first 8GB on different drives is not comparing apples to apples as different platter counts and different data density means 8GB of data takes up widely varying amounts of horizontal disc space from the spindle.
 
I can agree that access time is somewhat irrelevant in testing the drive, but the less data is placed on drive (defragged assumption as well) meaning written to the outside of the disk and thus the faster portion, higher speeds in writing and reading will be achieved in real world perfromance...

Hence the WD around 1/2 way to 40 finally starts tailing off, and not as fast as my 45gigger by maxtor by the way...Rpm speed of 7200rpm is set and thus at outter rings the drive at that speed can cover more ground faster...
 
maybe hdtach is just screwy or something... im sure you have other comps that you use, now does this system feel slower when opening up files and programs?
 


<< They do not sell computers with messed up cables and stuff. >>


Hah, I recently put together a system for my friend. The ATA cable included was so poorly made that the connector actually fell off of the cable. Luckily I had about 20 spares.
 


<<

<< They do not sell computers with messed up cables and stuff. >>


Hah, I recently put together a system for my friend. The ATA cable included was so poorly made that the connector actually fell off of the cable. Luckily I had about 20 spares. >>

Hahaha... well, sorry to hear that!

No, it's not HD Tach messing up. I've only resorted to checking with HD Tach to confirm my suspicions. The drive is slower. The seek time is worse, period. Now the trick is figuring out why and what I can do about it, if anything. I already disabled the acoustic management which I thought could possibly affect it. The seek time went from 30 down to 19... 19 is still way too high for a new 7200 drive.

-RSI
 
Try the drive in another computer, that will help isolate whether the problem lies with the drive or with the computer it is in.
 


<< Try the drive in another computer, that will help isolate whether the problem lies with the drive or with the computer it is in. >>

I may do that. If I'm feeling un-lazy enough, I'll take my HD and test it in his comp. If it goes fast as hell, i'll know what to do (smash the Maxtor to bits. er... I mean, return it for a better HD).

-RSI
 
Uhhh.... If it works properly in your friends computer, you should smash your computer, as that is probably where the problem lies, not the drive.
 
Maxtor hard drives retail with AAM (acoustic management) on, so you need to use the software on their website to turn it off, if you would better performance and more noise.

Josh
 
If you are using integrated video then you have your culprit. The integrated video can hog the PCI bus.

n/m, I missed your m/b model. 😱

I doubt its the acoustic settings on the drive. Maxtor simply runs their drives at 5400rpm to make them quieter. The software should not be necessary to switch it from 5400rpm to 7200rpm, considering the drive was rated for 7200rpm.
 


<< Uhhh.... If it works properly in your friends computer, you should smash your computer, as that is probably where the problem lies, not the drive. >>

I don't think you're following.

-RSI
 
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