scsi question/help with drive and terminators

[agatemind1]

I got the drive running and everything but it is only barely faster than my Wd400bb. Any ideas why it isn't that fast or am I expecting too much? It seems to run the same terminated and unterminated. For the termination I plugged the terminator into the last spot on the cable and connected the drive to the 2nd to last spot on the cable. Should the terminator be connected straight through the drive? (this terminator is not a pass through, if there is such a thing)

Thanks in advance.

In the bios it is set to the fastest speed (160).
I have an epox 8kha+ mobo.
The scsi card I have is an acard 67160. It is refurbished so that may be the problem
link

The hard drive is an atlas 10kII 68 pin now . The cable is braided.
Anybody know of any programs to test the speed of the bus in windows xp?

In sandra I am getting about 24000. Is that right?

It seems too slow to me.

The scsi card hangs windows for a second when it first starts loading.

In the bios I enabled 2 settings: 1 for support for >1 gb and 1 for int 13 for >8gb. I don't know if I need these or not.

Any help is appreciated

 

[lobadobadingdong]

133mb/s pci buss (32bit-33Mhz) limitation?

 

[SuperPickle]

Welcome to the forums
You aren't going to get a monsterous throughput increase with that drive over a decent IDE HDD just because it has a SCSI interface. The seek time and the multi-tasking are the biggest benefits of moving over to SCSI as well as longevity of the hardware.

 

[mechBgon]

For the termination I plugged the terminator into the last spot on the cable and connected the drive to the 2nd to last spot on the cable.

^ this is the right way.

An old first-generation 10k SCSI drive still brings some good things to the table, but high sustained-transfer rates won't be one of them. My first-generation Quantum Atlas 10k tops out at just 25MB/second, easily beaten by most 7200rpm IDE drives as far as sustained-transfer rate goes. Its quick seek times and command queueing are still to its advantage, however.

Bottom line, a newer SCSI drive would probably be the boost you were hoping for, such as a Maxtor Atlas 10k IV or Seagate Cheetah 10k.6, or better yet one of the top 15000rpm drives like the Fujitsu MAS-series, Seagate Cheetah 15k.3 or Maxtor Atlas 15k.

Also, your motherboard can have a profound impact on how effective your SCSI setup is. I had major problems with my Asus A7V333-RAID bottlenecking my SCSI card to just 49MB/sec peak, whereas my nForce board was letting it run free at up to 120MB/sec burst rates. What motherboard do you have there?

Welcome to the Forums, anyway, and good job getting your SCSI setup working

 

[redbeard1]

Any drive is only as fast as the speed that it can read/write. Aureal density is probably the most important factor in that. They basically use the same technology platters and heads in similar year class and sized drives, so you get specs that end up being closer than you would think. 10k is supposed to help, but if it is a year older than the 40 gig, the 40 might have newer technology making it test faster.

In my systems, I've seen a difference in having the scsi onboard, and having it in a slot. It isn't much though.

 

[mastertech01]

Unfortunately people who arent SCSI aware, believe that U80, or U160, or U320 are the speed of the drive itself. It is the total speed of the buss interface when used on the appropriate PCI buss. So you have to combine drives in a fast SCSI RAID array and a matching fast PCI buss to realize those speeds. Even the fastest U320 drives singly will rarely top 75.

 

[Zepper]

agate,
. Generally you can't use a converted 80-pin drive as the only drive on a standard cable. You are lucky you are getting stable operation at all.
The drive next to the terminator at the end of the cable is supposed to provide power for the terminator. Only 68-pin drives have the jumpers to enable/disable terminator power.
Show me the settings you have created for that drive in your SCSI adapter's BIOS setup and I'll see if there is anything there that needs changed.
. Also are you using a proper LVD cable with LVD termination? If you don't the drive could automatically revert to SE operation. Also the 80-to-68-pin converter has to be LVD rated.
.bh.
:moon:

 

[Sword]

PLease get into your adapter setting just after BIOS and select the speed by SCSI ID. Maybe it is not set to the maximum.

For adaptec 2940U2W it is CTRL+A just after the PnP initialisation.

And as everybody said, it is mostly the access time and the fast that you can move data to more than 1 peripheral in both direction that make SCSI a great setup.

Good luck

 

[agatemind1]

Here are some questions answered -
Yes in the bios it is set to the fastest speed (160).
I have an epox 8kha+ mobo.
The scsi card I have is an acard 67160. is that card any good?


I am now using an Adaptec 2940uw with 68 pin drive.
The hard drive is quantum 10kII.

Anybody know of any programs to test the speed of the bus in windows xp?

 

[bozo1]

What speed does the controller say the drive is running at. Not the speed the controller BIOS is set to but the speed it shows during boot when it detects the drive?

 

[Zepper]

LVD cables look like the pairs are braided - nothing like any normal drive cable. I've forgotten now what SCSITool can do, but DL a copy anyway. If I remember correctly, Ultra2 is 80MB/Sec. So try setting max thruput to that for your drive. Wide and Sync negotiation should be set to, Enabled. Disable SCAM on the drive, if possible - I think SCA drives come with SCAM disabled, but not 100% sure. And if the Seagate is the only device on the adapter, you can set Allow Disconnect to NO
.bh..
:moon:

 

[agatemind1]

any more help would be greatly appreciated. im using a 68 pin 10kII now.

thanks

 

[Zepper]

Well, what seems to be the problem now?
.bh.
:moon:

 

[agatemind1]

its slower than the other drive. and it works the same terminated or unterminated.

think it could be the card?

or just windows?

 

[mechBgon]

You also have what I'd consider a SCSI-unfriendly motherboard. My last VIA-based AMD board gave dismal performance with my U160 SCSI card, compared to my nForce and nForce2 boards and even compared to the El-Cheapo King, the ECS K7S5A (SiS735 chip).

And remember, an Atlas 10k II is two generations old, too. It's like dredging up a 10GB Maxtor IDE drive and hoping it'll be crazy-fast.

 

[SuperPickle]

Honestly, I ran Sandra on my one of my drives (Seagate 18G 10 kU160)...a bit of an older drive and my score isn't that much different that yours. I know mine is sync'd at 160MB/s so it's not a card or termination issue. I really think that it may be your expectations that are a bit too high for the drive's throughput.

Your seek times are really going to be the shining star of your drive rather than it's transfer rate. Don't fret because even though you may not notice it so much now, a 10K spindle speed really does feel faster though the benchmarks don't show it. Get used to it for a while and then go back to 7200rpm and you'll feel the speed you have now.

 

[Zepper]

My MSI KM2M Via-based mobo just loves my Tekram U2W adapter and mixed bag of HDs... U160 adapters and up are not likely to enjoy living in 32-bit 33MHz PCI slots anyway.
. Much more happy in server mobos w/ 64bit/66MHz PCI slots.
.bh.
:moon:

 

[mastertech01]

If you are running XP you may want to convert to dynamic disk. There have been lots of people reporting that dynamic is much better performing using XP. There were supposed to be fixes to help that problem but since I havent run XP for so long I have no recent experience to compare.

 

[agatemind1]

what mobos do you have with adaptec 2940uw that seem to work good?


i ran a benchmark and was getting 3 MB/s write speed. seems slow to me

what chipsets are good for scsi?

thanks