Hdd speeds and UDMA Help

[Guzman]

Hi all
I need some help with Hdd speeds have just downloaded "Raptest" to check the system after getting frozen out at rendering stage in Unlead Video Studio with message (unable to write to drive). From this I had to reboot, then the problems started. Prior to the freeze the Digital Video editing has been excellent.

After many futile attempts to defrag/scandisc was forced to reformat video drive
Thinking it was a speed problem ran "Raptest"in boot drive which to my horror gave read and write speeds as follows
Boot drive Read 11 Mb Write 6.2 Mb
Video drive Read 2.2 Mb Write 3.5 Mb
Best I've got was read 28 Mb Read 3.6 Mb Write running Raptest from video drive

DMA is enabled and have run configuration as network sever and desktop these are the best speeds so far. At boot up drives are reported as UDMA 2
Both drives are on the same channel and connected with 80 pin cable
.
Went to Maxtors site and downloaded their test diagnostic progs
"POWERMAX . EXE" disc check utility
"UDMAUPDT . EXE" both types 100UPDT.EXE and 66TO100.EXE UDMA reporting utility on the first test (installation confirmation)
The drive failed at " SMART attribute check" code 005
this turns out to be BIOS doesn't support capacity and/or LBA not enabled in BIOS.

Checked LBA and all seems ok . Have now flashed to latest BIOS re-ran tests no change
All setting in Bios are on AUTO
Has anyone got any ideas on how to change the UDMA setting in BIOS ? as the Maxtors ulitity does not have any effect on boot screen UDMA settings or how to improve the Write Speeds to the drives

ANY HELP WOULD BE VERY GRATEFULLY RECEIVED am at my wits end??
This hobby will lead to suicide! Suicide is painless as the song goes!

Guzman
System specs
450 MHz Pentium 3 INTEL(R)440bx chipset
Micro Star MS 6156 VER 1.0 BX7 motherboard 100 MHz bus ( supports DMA 66)
256mb ram
Boot drive13 Gb Fujitsu MPD 3130AT 5400rpm Ultra-DMA66 ATA primary (master)
Video drive Maxtor VL40 30.7Gb 9.5ms 5400rpm UDMA100 primary (slave)
PYRO Digital 1394DV card
DVD/ROM drive Toshiba SDM 1212 secondary (master)
CD-RW drive Freecom secondary (slave)
Iomega usb zip
Graphics ATI All -in wonder 128 pro card
Running 98 se

[otheos]

The BX chipset does not support ATA66 only ATA33.

So no matter what cable you use you'll only get bursts at around 33MB/s (actually closer to 26MB/s)

Now:

The Fujitsu gives 11MB/s Read, 6.3 Write?

That's about write! What did you expect? The write can take a bit more (maybe 7-7.5MB/s) but that's all you'll get. This is the limit of the drive!

Now the VL should give you something in the 20MB/s+ for read and write. The drive is capable of higher but it is limited by the ATA33 MB/s interface. Remember 33MB/s is the maximum theoretical, so even if the drive can give STR (sustained transfer rates) of 30MB/s (actually the VL is in the 32MB/s range) if you add the overhead of the bus your practical limit is around 25MB/s (so the 28MB/s you got for read are ok).

There is something definitely wrong with the setup to give such low write.

Make sure your Boot drive is not being accessed during benchmarking the Video drive since the bus does NOT allow concurrent use (IDE limitations) so if the Fujitsu wants to access something (very probable since it's the OS drive!) the maxtor will have to stop and resume after!

Before your start "curing" things make sure you have tested everything in the right manner!

I am not aware of the "Raptest" so I cannot comment. Get yourself a copy of HDTACH2.61 (look at google for it) to test the raw perfromance. Also go to this site for more advice and download the ATTO toolbox for a meaningfull test!

Also, do not get confused! ATA66 or ATA100 does not mean your drive will work at 66MB/s or 100MB/s, rather that the interface is "wide" enough to accomodate so much data rate! NO IDE DRIVE IS ANYWHERE NEAR these limits.

The Maxtor UDMAUPDT.EXE is designed for SPECIFIC maxtor drives and the VL40 is NOT one of them!!. You might have damaged your drive by running it as the utility changes the mode of the drives from ATA66 to ATA100:

Procedure for changing from UDMA/66 to UDMA/100 on
DiamondMax 60 and DiamondMax VL 30 drives

Didn't you read that??

Personally I think you troubleshoot a healthy system! Test the VL properly and you'll see that it's ok. Maybe (maybe!) the Bus mastering (DMA) drivers are not correclty installed, so run HDTACH to check it out.

I strongly suggest this site for more help on Storage device issues!

otheos.

[Guzman]

Thank you otheos for your imput
you have answered a lot of my questions and given me a lot to work with regarding my problem , and all you have said makes a lot of sense to me.(now)

It has only taken 2 weeks and 3 newsgroups to find some one that actually understands the inside and workings of these cream boxes, have been lead on a wild goose chase by some so call experts.
so many thanks off to get HDTACH2.61 and ATTO toolbox now

Big Thanks for your time, I will post results after my hols which by the way are in your country so keep the sun shining !!

Guzman
Cometh the moment -- Cometh the man

[This message has been edited by Guzman (edited 07-31-2001).]