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Thread: ata 66 / 33 ?

  1. #1
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    ata 66 / 33 ?

    Hello folks.

    I did a search, but came up empty handed. If I missed something, my apologies.

    I've got an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe mainboard, with a Barton 2800+, and have recently started having troubles with my windows drive. Ie; choppy performance, horrible load times, and constant disk activity (well, much worse than the usual standard I should say...)

    I only just noticed after some troubleshooting, that my windows drive (A maxtor 5200 rpm 20 gig) is only running in ATA 66 mode, and my cd-rom drive is supposedly running at ATA 33.

    I tried swapping IDE cables (both ata 100 and 133 compliant), but to no avail.
    My Linux drive and Windows drive are on the same cable, I've tried running the windows drive on the same cable and same plug-in that is usually used by my linux one.

    What's going on?
    My Linux drive is running happily at ATA 133, and I know that my windows one used to be at least ata 100.
    Is it just dying from old age? A self test reports that it's had 2,700+ hours of uptime.

    Or am I missing something?

    I ran through the bios a couple of times and found nothing out of place.
    Also, I think ata 33's a bit slow for a 40x24x40x16 burner/dvd drive, but that's not important, it still flies in Linux. :P

    Any help or suggestions would be appreciated...

    And more apologies - for the sloppy post layout. In a hurry to leave in 10 minutes. :P

    edit: Typos
    Last edited by Sarlok; 07-27-2004 at 01:48 PM.
    When you kill one, it is a tragedy. When you kill 10 million, it is a statistic.

  2. #2
    The Burninator sm8000's Avatar
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    No optical drive is going to do better than ATA/33, so don't worry about that. DVD datarate is 1,353 KB/s - that times 16 is only about 20MB/s. CD datarate is 150, that times 40 is 6MB/s.

    You sure that Maxtor is 5200 rpm? Desktop drives are usually 5400 or 7200 rpm. Regardless, look up that drive's model number at maxtor.com and see what its best mode is. Also check for a firmware download.

    What IDE drivers are you using in Windows? nVidia's or Microsoft's? I've heard MS's may be better. What version of Windows is this? Check IDE Controller properties in Device Manager to see if DMA or better is enabled.

  3. #3
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    It is 5400 rpms. My bad.

    I don't know which drivers it was using in Windows - I've since formatted the drive. Although, it was more than likely Microsoft's drivers.
    It was Windows XP Professional.

    The thing that has me confused, is that it shows ATA 66 in the Post bios screen - the one that displays all attached devices and whatnot before it begins loading an OS or scanning for bootable cd's etc.

    Just for kicks I tried changing the Access modes to and from LBA, Large, Normal and auto. I didn't think it would make any difference, but tried anyway.

    I'll look up the drives serial no. and make when I get a chance. I've gotta power down to take it out.

    Any other ideas?
    When you kill one, it is a tragedy. When you kill 10 million, it is a statistic.

  4. #4
    The Burninator sm8000's Avatar
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    Access mode should be set to LBA for drives over 120GB. That won't affect transfer rate, which would be a property of the IDE channel. In my BIOS I have that set to Auto.

    I'm betting what you're seeing in the POST screen is what mode the drive is capable of, not what it's doing. Check maxtor.com for drive firmware or even a software utility to enable ATA/66.

    How are you jumpering them? Master/Slave or Cable Select? And is your IDE cable 80 wires or 40? (They're both 40 pins)

  5. #5
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    I'll be darned. the specs page says that the drive only goes up to ata 66, but I could have sworn I used to have it working at ata 100.

    There aren't any firmware updates for this model, if there are, then they are well hidden on Maxtor's site. Unles sthey have a seperate site with firmware updates and such that I don't know about.

    I'm jumpering them with the Linux drive as Master, and the windows/maxtor one as slave.
    However, I disconnect the linux drive and set the maxtor to master when formatting and trying to install windows.
    Both drives are on an 80 wire cable. I've tried another 80 and 40 wire, but neither made any improvement.

    This is the drive in question:
    http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...tra%20ATA%2066

    I'll try it in another pc and see how that works.

    edit:
    responded to your questions. sorry bout that. hehe
    Last edited by Sarlok; 07-28-2004 at 03:45 AM.
    When you kill one, it is a tragedy. When you kill 10 million, it is a statistic.

  6. #6
    Gone Fishin' ukulele's Avatar
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    Windows XP automatically selects the DMA mode and because it treats all hard drives as a SCSI device it doesn't report the DMA mode to device manager. In other words DMA mode is a non-issue with XP.

  7. #7
    The Burninator sm8000's Avatar
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    Ukulele, what on earth are you talking about????

    NT, 2000, and XP will list storage drives as SCSI in Device Manager if third-party mass storage drivers are in use. Otherwise you'll see what DMA modes are in use.
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  8. #8
    Gone Fishin' ukulele's Avatar
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    It doesn't matter with XP. Even if you changed it it would not matter. XP overrides DMA control and automaticly detects PIO mode and if it detects more then a few errors from an incorrect setting it will still choose automatic settings.

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