My HDD runs at half speed - why?

[Nimbus1951]

Hi,

I have an IBM DTLA 307030 30GB HDD and a Western Digital 20GB (a lot like the IBM). The IBM, however, runs much much sower than the WD. About 1/3 to half speed compared to the WD. My friend has the same IBM HDD in 45GB, and the exact same motherboard, and his run the same speed as my WD - faster than my IBM that is. I know that my IBM should run the same speed as my WD but it doesn't.
Anybody know why my IBM run so slow?
I have the same standard drivers from windows XP as my friend has, so I don't suppose it's the drivers. I've also checked the setup of the HDD's and the controller and compared it to my friend..... excactly the same.

Please help me - it's sooooo slow.... my windows take over 1 minute to start!!!

Regards,
Nimbus

 

[chizow]

Hmm looks like you checked your DMA settings in device manager, if not check them again. Also, check the drive jumpers. I've read reports of problems when certain drives aren't set for cable select, master, or single drive. What board are you running? The drivers may still be an issue or the board itself may have issues running more than 1 drive per channel. Also, inspect your IDE cable to make sure its not damaged or frayed. It is an 80-channel UDMA 66-133 cable right? I know its a silly question, but I've seen the mistake made before on these boards by pretty experienced system builders.

Hope that helps,

Chiz

 

[Nimbus1951]

First of all.... forgot to mention my system, it's a K7S5A mobo.
How do I know what mode my HDD should run in? And how do I set it?

I've by the way moved my WD to the secondary bus so it's now:
IBM (C and CD-rom on primary (80 pin) with the IBM as master
WD on secondary (40) as master

USED to be:
IBM and WD on primary (80) with IBM master
CD-ROM on secondary (40) as master

Now I have the problem that the WD is on a 40 pin cable....
However windows is faster at starting up now (down to 26 secs. from 1m11s.) but my system is much slower at detecting the WD now - probably because of the 40 pin cable (?).

NOW my system runs:
IBM runs Ultra DMA mode 5 and the WD runs Ultra DMA mode 2.

BUT.... now PC-Mark tests BOTH HDD's to running at 1/3 to ½ speed.... oh so slow... even though I can't really feel any difference.... ???

Man... I really don't understand anything....

BOTTOM LINE:
I'll get an 80 pin cable for the WD for sure.... but the IBM is still slow. My friend has the excact same mobo (K7S5A) and the same HDD (IBM DTLA 307030) and his is much faster.

Regards,
Nimbus

 

[Nimbus1951]

Never mind the smiley - it was supposed to be

( C: ) indicating it's the primary drive with windows...

minor error....

Nimbus

 

[chizow]

There is an edit key in the lower right of each of your posts

Anyways, you should definitely get an 80-conductor cable for any channel that has a UDMA 66 device or faster on it. Just an FYI, 40-conductor and 80-conductor IDE cables both have 40-pins (header). That would probably explain why your WD "feels" slower and why its running in DMA 2. Also, most newer drives and boards auto-detect primary/secondary if you leave the drive set to cable-select. This varies slightly from mobo to HDD, and I have neither so I couldn't tell you which to choose definitively. I'd say just leave them on cable-select and attach them accordingly with the ribbons.

Basically, you can tell which DMA mode your drive should be running based on its rated UDMA or ATA (use interchangeably) speed.

ATA33 - UDMA 2 - Optical drives, older HDDs
ATA66 - UDMA 4 - Most modern drives and 5400rpm drives.
ATA100/133- UDMA 5(6) - Most new drives and 7200rpm drives.

Now, when you are saying its only running 1/2 or 1/3 of its rated speed, are you basing it on the UDMA mode? If so, that's where your problem lies. IDE devices are limited by the PCI bus and sustained throughput does not come close to the UDMA rating. If you are running benches on a single drive, you should probably expect around 30-40 mbps, most RAID set-ups only get 50-60mbps. You should run Sisoft Sandra's disk bench and see how you fare. Although it gives synthetic benchmarks, it will give you othere drive set-ups to compare to, so you have a better idea of where you should be. I'm thinking once you replace that 80-pin conductor, your drives are performing at the level they should be.

Chiz

 

[Nimbus1951]

edit... yeah

When I say ½ or 1/3 I'm comparing it to my friends system. His is identical to mine. Same mobo and HDD (even drivers as they are the standard ones).

I don't know if the 80 pin cable will solve my speed problem... I already have an 80 pin cable plugged on my IBM drive... it's still slow. And before I switched I had both drives on the 80 pin cable but only the WD was fast. And windows was extremely slow at starting up. It is as though that when I have both HDD's on the same 80 pin cable there is some sort of conflict.
But the IBM is slow no matter how I arrange them... I really don't get it.

My IBM is actually the big problem here... I think the WD would run fine with an 80 pin cable, but the IBM just won't run ok - even if I leave it all alone in the whole world on it's own private 80 pin cable...

Regards,
Nimbus

 

[Peter]

First of all, the WD drives need to be jumpered to Single when they're alone on the cable, not Master. Hence the slow detection.

Then, I wouldn't trust anything but HDTach when measuring IDE interface and media throughput.

 

[Nimbus1951]

But I've tested with PCMark on two almost identical computers... BOTH with K7S5A mobos and the excact same HDD's.... Do you still think I can't trust PCMark??? Only difference betweem the two computers is that my cpu is slightly faster, and there is a geforce2 on my comp. and a geforce4 on the other. What graph card is plugged in shouldn't make a difference...

Now I've put back both of the HDD's on the primary bus on a 80 pin cable.... They are now BOTH on Cable Select. Windows is down to a worldrecord loading time of 22 secs.... never been there before. But still the IBM seems to lack behind in speed. Even my WD seems to get more and more tired...

If ANYBODY knows of IDE drivers the K7S5A mobo PLEASE tell me about it.... I can't find any on the homepage of ECS.
And the funny thing is that my friend has the same drivers as I do... so much for drivers...?

One last thing... does anybody have tricks and tips for the IBM drive? Maybe the IBM drive is the real problem - maybe it's configured wrongly... either in windows or in BIOS - or by jumpers???

Regards,
Nimbus

 

[Jeff7]

I'm not sure what IDE controller the board uses, but I figure that SIS's IDE drivers will do the trick.
Link.
Their site's a bit slow; and though the e-mail address section has an asterisk next to it, it isn't required; just use the bottom of the page where it asks for what driver category you want.
Hmm, the K7S5A uses the SiS 735 chipset, and there's no IDE drivers there for that chipset; it must use a separate IDE controller. Nuts, can't tell what controller it is; the picture at ECS' site is too low-res to make out the numbers on the chips. Anyone here know what IDE controller the board does actually use?

 

[Nimbus1951]

As far as I know, the IDE controller is within the 735 chipset. It's kinda an overall chipset. That's also why there's only one IC on the board (major IC that is).

Another thing.... I've just checked the defragmentation of my drives. One of them had a file fragmentation of 85%!!! And that was AFTER the defragmentation.... why does the defragmenter in windows suck so hard?!?! But it still doesn't explain why my C: drive is so slow - it's not fragmented.
Anywayz - could u guys recommend a defragmenter program? What should I use to defragment?

Regards,
Nimbus

Yup - I was right - it's an all in one system. Just checked:
http://www.sis.com/products/chipsets/oa/socketa/735.htm