How to speed up ext. zip?

[elunico]

I read somewhere that you could significantly increase a parallel zip drive's performance by changing the onboard parallel mode option to ECP under the BIOS setup (normal->epp->ecp). I did that, have ECP mode use DMA 3, and onboard parallel port on 378/IRQ7. I haven't seem any improvements so far. So my question is how can i make sure that the zip drive is hooked up to the parallel port under ECP, and just how much of an improvement could i get from it? (from what i've heard it rivals usb speed). I have a parallel iomega 100 zip ext drive.

 

[Floyd]

You simply need to run the Parallel Port Accelerator utility that is installed with IomegaWare. You should have a shortcut entry under the start menu where the rest of the IomegaWare utilities are located. The actual executable is PPA3OPT.EXE. It will analyze your PP transfer rate and add an appropriate control string to the Iomega adapter in Device Manager, which of course is dependent on the transfer mode selected in the BIOS...as long as you have it set to ECP/EPP then you should notice large file transfers to/from the hard drive take much less time. Nonetheless, the parallel port still cripples the system while transfering data, it just doesn't do it for quite as long

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[OS]

-shudder-, uggh, parallel port Ok but seriously, on my USB zip, I have the option to write cache the drive, maybe you have the same option. It's under the device manager. The downside is that if your computer reboots, crashes, or powers off while writing, you can lose data.

 

[LED]

Go to System properties and enable the write behind cache within Performance/File /Removeable Disks

 

[elunico]

Yeah i found that option, thanks for the suggestion, but wait a minute... :Q what do you mean lose data after system reboot? i can understand losing data while transferring during crashes or power offs...