• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Why does a zip drive reading or writing bog down the whole system?

M

mellondust

Senior member
I have a zip 100 on my home computer and I notice that when it is reading from or writing to the drive it seems to slow the system up a bit. My cd-rw does not do this but why the zip drive, they are on the same ide cable? It is not that big of a deal at home becuase it writes or reads pretty fast, the real problem is when I take a disk to school to download some thing big (I am on a 56k, they are on a t-1).
When I try to copy my file to the zip disk it and lets say my file is 75 megs, it takes about 30 to 40 minutes to copy it. It also makes the system so slow that the internet just crawls 3 times slower than my 56k modem. I must add that the school computers have zip 250 drives in them, is that the problem? Is it some sort of compatability problem between zip100 and zip250 or just the way they work. I would think they should work together better than that. Any suggestions of ways to speed it up or am I stuck with a fast download but slow copy scenario?
 
could be a problem with the ide channels. what chanel do you have all the different devices on? I notice ur runin 2 hd's so im guessing the zip drive is shared with one of them. You could try copying the files on the zip disc to your other hd and see if that speeds it up at all.

eg if your system was setup like this;
pri master - hd1
pri slave - cd/dvd

sec master - hd2
sec slave - zip
try copying the zip disc to hd1, that should speed up the transfer cos theyre on different ide channels.

I used to have a similar setup but with a cdrw instead of a 2nd hd. I ended up forking out for a promise ata100 card so I could have everything on separate channels, saves having to worry about what could be talking on the same chanel as something else.

You could try to disable write cacheing on the zip drive, i know that has slowed mine down in the past.

There shouldnt be any compatibility probs with the zip100 or 250 drives. Im running a zip250 at home with a mixture of 100's and 250's in uni and my mates mainly have 100's and ive neevr had any problems with them.

hope some of the makes sense, im absolutey shattered right now!
c.
 
Or why not put both hd's on one channel? I forgot where I read this, but I remember reading that putting a zip drive (or cd-rom) on the same channel as a hd will slow down that hd a lot.
 
yeh, thats right LoTecha. The ide channel wil only run at the same speed as the slowest device on the same channel, or something to that effect any way.
 
From what I understand, that's only true of =older= IDE controllers.. With today's IDE controllers, that isn't an issue anymore -- they run independently of each other on the same channel..
 
Ive got my 2 hard drives on a promise ATA controller, my DVD on primary master, zip250 on primary slave, and burner on secondary master, and no speed problems. Maybe you should try something like that.

And I dont think the fact that your school has zip250s effects it. I have a zip250 internal, and my school has zip100 usb on a mac, and I dont think it's slower.
 
DN unless you are using RAID or different channels it goes to slowest speed even on todays controllers, you can also only transmit data from one device at a time. That's why 2 identical HD's on one channel will be slower than the same hd's on different channels. Also why "on the fly" copying (with the cd and cdrw on the same channel) doesn't work at the same rate as burning from a HD on another channel.
But to the original subject I have the same problem with floppies. They take forever to read and you can't do anything at the same time yet they are on independent channels.
 
The zip250 when writing to zip100 disks will take longer than from a zip100 drive. They are compatible, but the speeds are not the same as using zip250 disks. I would say that the 30-40mins is still pretty long though. Our school has zip100 drives and I have a zip250 drive so I have a bunch of zip100 disks and they do take longer to do operations on them than the normal zip250 ones.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top