fastest file transfer between two IDE HDD

[wuduhel]

what is the best way to hook up 2HDD and 2 optical drives on a standard 2 EIDE channel mobo?

when i had both HDD on the same channel, master/slave, it took like 3-5min to copy a 700mb avi

when i tried one HDD on each channel, both master with the optical drives as slave, it took like 1:35 to copy a 700mb movie

are these normal speeds? if so, damn, it's going to take a couple hours to move my movies and mp3's to my new HDD

the speeds i was seeing in this article seem a lot faster than what i'm getting!

TIA

edit:

not only was it faster to have the HDD's on different channels, i'm also able to actually use the computer while copying files.

BTW my machine is p4 2.4 1gbRAM both HDD's are 160GB WD 7200

 

[SKORPI0]

Originally posted by: wuduhel
when i tried one HDD on each channel, both master with the optical drives as slave, it took like 1:35 to copy a 700mb movie
not only was it faster to have the HDD's on different channels, i'm also able to actually use the computer while copying files

You got it, best way to hook them up.

 

[wuduhel]

seems like 1:35 for 700mb is slow. in this article they were talking transfer speeds of under 30 seconds

oh well i guess i'll just let it run overnight

thanks

 

[Concillian]

Soemthing ain't right. I can get 25-35 MB/sec by transferring over Gigabit ethernet from my server box to my primary PC. You're only getting ~7 MB/sec with a direct transfer?

You should be getting about 3 gigs across in 1:35

Check your chipset drivers and/or IDE drivers. There's a definite shortcoming there somewhere.

 

[Zepper]

Most good current-model 7200rpm drives can do about 40MB/sec average transfer rate. So theoretically you should be able to do 700MB in about 20 sec. It may be helpful to turn off the memory resident portion of your AV program - that can slow file manipulations dramatically. Also check any other background processes that might hinder disk accesses.
. The dummy author in the linked article didn't turn off HD buffering or RAM caching during his burn testing. If you have enough RAM installed to buffer a large chunk of a CD in memory, then a same channel transfer can actually be pretty speedy. HD caches/buffers usually can't be set that large. Obviously, since only one drive on an IDE channel can operate at a time, cross-channel transfers will be faster (you want the smallest HD cache possible for large continuous transfers) - all else being equal. Everything is a compromise. You want a small HD cache for continuous txfers and a large one for intense random accesses - so you have to choose a nice middle ground and be happy.
. It is also good to make sure that all drives are set and configured to operate at their optimum as has been noted above.
. I think you have hit on the best configuration if you only have two IDE channels (one HD and one optical per channel). When setting up IDE systems, I like to give each IDE drive its own channel - ATA adapter cards are cheap . But personally, I use SCSI which is at nowhere near as high a premium as it used to be... (Up to 15 devices per channel!)

.bh.

:moon:

 

[wuduhel]

Originally posted by: Concillian
Soemthing ain't right. I can get 25-35 MB/sec by transferring over Gigabit ethernet from my server box to my primary PC. You're only getting ~7 MB/sec with a direct transfer?

You should be getting about 3 gigs across in 1:35

Check your chipset drivers and/or IDE drivers. There's a definite shortcoming there somewhere.

yeah i'm getting about the same transfer rate over my ethernet! this is lame.

what exactly should i check for in my chipset/ide drivers?

 

[Concillian]

Try reinstalling them.
It's been a while since I've used multiple IDE drives but play with any options under Device manager (and the specific drive, obviously)
Also disable "index for faster searching" under my computer --> drive of choice --> properties.

 

[imported_Phil]

Even thought my situation is odd, I thought I'd share.

Two hard disks; one is a Seagate 7200.7 (8Mb cache) 200Gb PATA, the other is a Maxtor DM9+ (2Mb cache) 120Gb PATA. They are both on the same IDE channel, with an nForce 2 board, using the nForce IDE SW drivers.

Copying 694Mb between the drive took sixteen seconds = 43Mb/sec average. With them on the same channel, this flies in the face of conventional advice regarding hard disks and IDE channels

 

[wuduhel]

looks like i'll have some tweaking when i get home.

i did just buy a $13 IDE PCI card that will give me two more IDE channels. it's also supposed to support SW RAID. it's gotten good reviews at fatwallet, so we'll see how it works out.

 

[Anubis]

2 of my HDDs are set up as master and slave on the smae channel it takes about 3 seconds for me to transfer a 180mb file from 1 to the other, both are 7200RPM IDE HDDs

i have 2 more HDDs on a PCI IDE CARD and transfering from them/to them is just as fast

 

[wuduhel]

damn my shits slow gotta fix it

 

[Anubis]

you said 3-5 min for a 700mb file? something is definitly messed up there, last night i moved 4.7 GB in about 5 minutes, 1 folder with 25 files at about 200 megs each

something is messed up with your IDE drivers or your Hard drives

 

[Blain]

Is it faster to have Windows on its own partition or on its own drive?
I'm asking about working with data and large files on the 2nd partition or 2nd HD.

 

[LTC8K6]

Wuduhel, did you check device manager to see if your drives are running in UDMA 4 or 5 mode? It doesn't sound like they are.

 

[wuduhel]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
Wuduhel, did you check device manager to see if your drives are running in UDMA 4 or 5 mode? It doesn't sound like they are.

primary IDE
device0 current transfer mode: ultra DMA mode 5 (HDD)
device1 not applicable (nothing is connected)

secondary IDE
device0 current transfer mode: ultra DMA mode 5 (HDD)
device1 current transfer mode: ultra DMA mode 2 (dvd burner)

the HDD's are less than 6months old...one i just got two days ago...

when i let windowz automatically update the IDE drivers it couldn't find any