Enabling NCQ on Maxtor Diamond Max 10 Hard Drive

[ryansebiz]

I have a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB 7200 RPM SATA Model 6B300S0 with NCQ.

I heard that I may need to manually enable NCQ on the drive.

Do I?

Or is it already enabled. If so, how can I tell?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Even if it's not, NCQ seems to hurt performance in non-server usage from the few benchmarks I've bothered to read.

 

[ManBearPig]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Even if it's not, NCQ seems to hurt performance in non-server usage from the few benchmarks I've bothered to read.

Agreed. and you have to have a mobo that supports it--which yours does, i think.

 

[ryansebiz]

Originally posted by: Heen05

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Even if it's not, NCQ seems to hurt performance in non-server usage from the few benchmarks I've bothered to read.

Agreed. and you have to have a mobo that supports it--which yours does, i think.

so, do i have to enable NCQ in the hard drive?

and, if so, how?

 

[JasonE4]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Even if it's not, NCQ seems to hurt performance in non-server usage from the few benchmarks I've bothered to read.

qft

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: ryansebiz

Originally posted by: Heen05

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Even if it's not, NCQ seems to hurt performance in non-server usage from the few benchmarks I've bothered to read.

Agreed. and you have to have a mobo that supports it--which yours does, i think.

so, do i have to enable NCQ in the hard drive?

and, if so, how?

NCQ hurts performance.

To enable it, most drives requre you to use a boot disk to change the settings in the drives firmware. Also check your BIOS there might be an NCQ option somewhere in there.

 

[sandeep108]

I do not know any benchmarks but I have a samsung HD160JJ and turning off NCQ (advised for earlier versions of nForce IDE drivers) in the driver properties impacts performance quite adversely. I leave NCQ on.

I believe that several maxtor drives had problems with NCQ/Sata-2 with nForce 4 chipsets. I read somewhere that Maxtor has just released new firmware to fix their HDDs. Ask Maxtor support or search their site for it.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: sandeep108
I do not know any benchmarks but I have a samsung HD160JJ and turning off NCQ (advised for earlier versions of nForce IDE drivers) in the driver properties impacts performance quite adversely. I leave NCQ on.

I believe that several maxtor drives had problems with NCQ/Sata-2 with nForce 4 chipsets. I read somewhere that Maxtor has just released new firmware to fix their HDDs. Ask Maxtor support or search their site for it.

It is true that some Maxtor Drives have problems with nFORCE. I would not blame Maxtor, nVIDIA there seems to be a trend of things that are not compatable with nFORCE like Creative Sound Cards, Maxtor Hard Drives, some usb stuff, and Maybe some ATi incompatabilty (maybe).

 

[Mem]

I read somewhere that Maxtor has just released new firmware to fix their HDDs. Ask Maxtor support or search their site for it.

Models effected are

Maxtor has released new firmware to fix an issue with nForce 4 chipsets and their SATA II drives.

Note: This solution is only to be applied to the listed products and only when used with the nForce4 chipset. If you are unsure as to which chipset you have, contact your motherboard manufacturer or visit your motherboard manufacturer's website for clarification.

The drives affected are those with model numbers starting with:

# 6V- (DiamondMax 10)

# 6H- (DiamondMax 11)

# 7V- (Maxline III)

# 7H- (MaxLine Pro 500)

A firmware upgrade to resolve these issues for Maxtor SATA II drives is available by contacting Maxtor Support. Please have the drive serial number and the Code number available, which will be listed on the top label of the drive itself.

Link.


Personally I would leave NCQ disabled,I notice with my Maxtor it takes a lot longer to boot up with NCQ enabled on my nForce 4 Ultra board.

 

[n7]

Yeah, it seems leaving it disabled = better

 

[sandeep108]

Personally I would leave NCQ disabled,I notice with my Maxtor it takes a lot longer to boot up with NCQ enabled on my nForce 4 Ultra board.

Fortunately with my Samsung the reverse seems true...🙂

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: sandeep108

Personally I would leave NCQ disabled,I notice with my Maxtor it takes a lot longer to boot up with NCQ enabled on my nForce 4 Ultra board.

Fortunately with my Samsung the reverse seems true...🙂

Samsung makes a very fast drive. But I need proof that NCQ actully helps it out.

 

[sandeep108]

Proof? Update your firmware and try it out for yourself.

I tried it out for myself by enabling / disabling ncq in device manager>ide controller properties. I found boot-up, response and I/O noticeably slower with NCQ disabled. I do not remember the results now but even the speed test results showed a drop with NCQ unchecked. I have not tried M$ drivers at all so I would not be able to comment.

I did read at AT that ncq did help sometimes but overall for desktop use, it did not really matter. Since I was having intermittent HDD device paging errors on boot-up with 6.53 and 6.66 drivers, I tried enabling/disabling ncq to see if it did resolve the issue. I did not have any other problem at all. At that time I found that disabling ncq on my system noticeably hampered performance and since I was only having the error at boot-up and that too intermittently, I chose to live with the error rather than disable ncq.

With the 6.70 drivers I have not had the HDD device paging error since 2-3 months now with ncq enabled.

There was a long article somewhere on the nForce4 Sata-2 and Maxtor HDDs and I do recall that it was concluded that Maxtor did not correctly implement the Sata-2/ncq standard, though they got it working correctly for Intel chipsets. Try updating your Maxtor firmware. I am sure this will resolve your device paging errors at boot-up.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: sandeep108
Proof? Update your firmware and try it out for yourself.

I tried it out for myself by enabling / disabling ncq in device manager>ide controller properties. I found boot-up, response and I/O noticeably slower with NCQ disabled. I do not remember the results now but even the speed test results showed a drop with NCQ unchecked. I have not tried M$ drivers at all so I would not be able to comment.

I did read at AT that ncq did help sometimes but overall for desktop use, it did not really matter. Since I was having intermittent HDD device paging errors on boot-up with 6.53 and 6.66 drivers, I tried enabling/disabling ncq to see if it did resolve the issue. I did not have any other problem at all. At that time I found that disabling ncq on my system noticeably hampered performance and since I was only having the error at boot-up and that too intermittently, I chose to live with the error rather than disable ncq.

With the 6.70 drivers I have not had the HDD device paging error since 2-3 months now with ncq enabled.

There was a long article somewhere on the nForce4 Sata-2 and Maxtor HDDs and I do recall that it was concluded that Maxtor did not correctly implement the Sata-2/ncq standard, though they got it working correctly for Intel chipsets. Try updating your Maxtor firmware. I am sure this will resolve your device paging errors at boot-up.

I mean show me 3rd Party Proof, since I do not have SATA or NCQ. My Samsung is a three year old ATA100 5400 RPM drive that I use for backup's and downloads.