Can a cable slow down a drive?

[MCS]

Under Win98, I could rip a DVD using Smart Ripper and it would get up to 12X - the process would take about 6-9 mins, depending on the DVD. I started using WinXP, and when I ripped a DVD it was only reaching about 5X, and was taking up to 25 mins! I was convinced it was a Windows XP problem BUT

It suddenly occured to me that just after installing XP I did change my drive configuration slightly. This is how my IWill KK266-R *was* set up:

VIA IDE 1 - HD Master, HD Slave
VIA IDE 2 - DVD Master, CD-Writer Slave
AMI Controller Disabled

Changed to

VIA IDE 1 - DVD
VIA IDE 2 - CD-Writer
AMI IDE 1 - HD
AMI IDE 2 - HD

Basically each device on it's own cable and on it's on channel (on-the-fly CD copy works great now at full speed ).

I may have used a different cable for the DVD drive than the one it was on with the CD-Writer - could this cause a problem? DMA is Enabled for all drives. Or could it be a bug between the VIA IDE and the AMI IDE?

Thanks

 

[Priit]

Speed of DVD/CD-ROM drives shouldn't change even if you use ATA-33 (40 wires) cable instead of ATA-66/100 (80 wires). I belive there's no DVD/CD-ROM drive that needs data to be transferred faster than 33Mb/s. Maybe XP IDE drivers are faulty? You can try to put drives back as they used to be and see if that helps...

 

[MCS]

<< Speed of DVD/CD-ROM drives shouldn't change even if you use ATA-33 (40 wires) cable instead of ATA-66/100 (80 wires). >>



This is what I thought - and also, what could be different about one ATA-33 cable and another?



<< You can try to put drives back as they used to be and see if that helps... >>



I thought about doing this, but I booted into 98SE (I still have it as a dual boot) and the rip speed was slower there too, but not quite as slow. Putting the drives back is an option but not desirable as the configuration works better for CD copying and for file transfer between drives (well not in the case of DVD ripping obviously!).

 

[Priit]

All ATA-33 should work equally well If speed under W98 also has gone down, try to put that DVD drive slave with your HDD into AMI IDE controller. Also, are you sure that it's the fault of DVD, maybe your HDD's on AMI controller doesn't work right and that's why speed is down? Does that AMI controller shares it's IRQ with some other device?

 

[MCS]

AFAIK you can only put HDs on the AMI controller, it won't recognise optical drives. I could try though. You raise an interesting point about the HD though. Perhaps it is not functioning correctly and so the DVD drive is reading slower because the HD can't "keep up". I am not sure about the IRQ, I am not at the machine because I am at work, I would say that XP is more likely to share IRQs than 98 is, but the chances of both OSs sharing it with the same OTHER device is remote possibly?

 

[Priit]

Most of newer mobos seems to have all PCI slots sharing IRQ with some on-board devices. I think it should be same on both OS'es. But, if you share IRQ with IDE controller, you can't use unmasked interrupt with it and that might bring performance down a bit. Also, it depends how well can other device share IRQ, some older NIC's and other stuff might cause troubles (also depends how drivers are written). Try some HDD test programs and see how well they work.

 

[MCS]

Yes I remember my previous Abit KT7 board used to share the Highpoint controller with PCI Slot 5. Having checked my IRQs then, I think my next step is to put the drives back and see what happens to my rip speed. Then maybe I should bench the HDs performance, then put it all back again and re-bench them. If the HD performance *is* significantly down, do you think it's possible that the DVD-ROM would "rip" slower because of this? I wonder if the speed reported when ripping is the overall speed rather than just the speed that the DVD-ROM drive is reading the disc?

 

[Priit]

Yes, I think it's highly possible that DVD ripping speed drops when there are problems with HDD's IDE controller (drivers). Maybe it's easiest to just look CPU usage during the ripping for start: it CPU is maxed out, there's probably sht. wrong with drivers. You can also try to find some test program that would bench your DVD (I had utility named cdspeed99, but it's only good for testing usual CD's) drive to make sure that problem isn't there. I guess the speed reported during ripping is current DVD reading speed (but I haven't ever used any DVD drive so I can't say for sure .

 

[MCS]

I don't think it is the DVD-ROM, after all, that was on the VIA IDE channel before as a Master and still is, the only thing that MIGHT have changed is the cable (but then again I might have used the new cable for the CD-Writer, I can't remember). It's more likely to be the HD. Another fact to reinforce this is I used Nero to do some on-the-fly CD copying, and I tested the read speed of the DVD-ROM before hand and it went to 40X and over...the HD would not have been in use during this process. I have lots of things to try!

Thankyou Priit you have been very helpful, especially at raising the right kind of questions to try and solve this strange problem...