How to change from UDMA5 to UDMA6

[hmk]

I have a Gigabyte GA-8IPE100 motherboard with Intel(R) 82801EB Ultra
ATA Storage Controller built in, my two SATA WD Caviar hard drives
supports UDMA6 but in windows XP UDMA is auto choosen for both
drives.

How to change that to UDMA6, is it a hardware or software problem,
in BIOS I only have the option of Enable or Disable UDMA, in my
motherboard manual it says it supports 150 MB/s operation mode.

I tried some registry hacks but it doesnt work, both drives
performance is arround 60MB on sequential Read/Write, is this the
best performance?

Please HELP.
--

 

[Bob I]

the 150 is cache burst speed, 60 is reasonable for a sustained read/write

 

[hmk]

Okay, but what about the 5 and 6 modes, drive says it supports 6 but
windows choose 5, so is it the motherboard? and is there a tool to
check the if the board/controllers supports UDM6 ? I have sandra but
it doesnt tell, or maybe I dont know where to look.
I am all new to this transfer performance issue, so excuse my
ignorance.
--

 

[BigJim]

I think it is limited by the board

 

[David Vair]

I know for regular IDE drives the Western Digital's came with a floppy that you could set the UDMA
with. You may want to check to see if they are actually at 6. If they are then maybe the
motherboard needs to be checked to see if it indeed supports the 6 speed. The specs of the board
from the manufacturer should tell drive speed support. You will not notice the difference between
the two if you are able to switch to 6.

 

[hmk]

Thank you guys for your help.

I know for regular IDE drives the Western Digital's came with a
floppy that you could set the UDMA
with. You may want to check to see if they are actually at 6.

Dave my WD does not come with a disk and could not find any tool to
change the UDMA on WD site, only data Lifgaurd tools is there, its
only for copying and partitioning the drive and giving infos about
it, it says the drive supports UDMA6 and current is UDMA5.

If they are then maybe the motherboard needs to be checked to see
if it indeed supports the 6 speed. The specs of the board
from the manufacturer should tell drive speed support.

Nothing is told about that in the manual nor on Gigabyte's site,
thats why I was asking if there is anykind of a testing tool that
will give me such info.

You will not notice the difference between
the two if you are able to switch to 6.

I get it that there is no difference in the speed from UDMA5 to
UDMA6? If so how come I noticed a big difference between lower UDMA
modes and UDMA5? Please explain more because if so then no need to
bother trying to switch.

Also on sandra file system benchmark I'm getting very low results
(50+Mb/s) compared to other similiar systems (100+Mb/s), what could
be the cause of this?

Thank you.

 

[David Vair]

The UDMA management tool was on the WD Diagnotics disk, I see that there are a couple of versions
there, I haven't tried the newer versions so I am not positive its on there, but that was where it
is located in the older versions of their disks. AS for transfer rates, there are many things that
can influence them, amount of memory on board, running items in the background, indexing service and
virus scanners influence the speed at which stuff mves around.

 

[Bob Willard]

Thank you guys for your help.




Dave my WD does not come with a disk and could not find any tool to
change the UDMA on WD site, only data Lifgaurd tools is there, its
only for copying and partitioning the drive and giving infos about
it, it says the drive supports UDMA6 and current is UDMA5.




Nothing is told about that in the manual nor on Gigabyte's site,
thats why I was asking if there is anykind of a testing tool that
will give me such info.




I get it that there is no difference in the speed from UDMA5 to
UDMA6? If so how come I noticed a big difference between lower UDMA
modes and UDMA5? Please explain more because if so then no need to
bother trying to switch.

Also on sandra file system benchmark I'm getting very low results
(50+Mb/s) compared to other similiar systems (100+Mb/s), what could
be the cause of this?

Thank you.

Sandra is not a HD benchmark, since it accesses HDs via the OS's cache
and filesystem; I'd ignore whatever Sandra reports on HD performance.

If you want to measure HD performance on your PC, download HDtach. And,
for best results, run HDtach in the LongBench mode, with all other apps
stopped.

 

[Jonny]

Thank you guys for your help.


Dave my WD does not come with a disk and could not find any tool to
change the UDMA on WD site, only data Lifgaurd tools is there, its
only for copying and partitioning the drive and giving infos about
it, it says the drive supports UDMA6 and current is UDMA5.


Nothing is told about that in the manual nor on Gigabyte's site,
thats why I was asking if there is anykind of a testing tool that
will give me such info.


I get it that there is no difference in the speed from UDMA5 to
UDMA6? If so how come I noticed a big difference between lower UDMA
modes and UDMA5? Please explain more because if so then no need to
bother trying to switch.

Because the limiting factor after UDMA 5 is the speed the bus system can
deliver the data. There is no discernible difference betweeh UDMA5 and
UDMA6. Before UDMA 5, you're limiting not only the cached speed, but also
the sustained throughput speed by selecting a lesser mode for data movement.
You won't see this in msdos, it uses throughput period, UDMA setting in the
bios makes no difference. And may sometimes be visibly faster than in XP
environment with current hard drives as there is no or little overhead in
msdos.

Do a little research on the hard drive cache, and how often its used in
everyday use. Throughput is the standard for everyday usage monitoring.
And throughput is limited by the bus system after UDMA5 mode. UDMA6 is
hype, not results.

Also on sandra file system benchmark I'm getting very low results
(50+Mb/s) compared to other similiar systems (100+Mb/s), what could
be the cause of this?

The first may be a dried up (data not applicable on the cache to the SiSoft
test) cache or not used, the latter is using the cache on the hard drive.
The latter is burst speed, not throughput. Then there is also a concern for
overhead, hardware monitoring software and so forth that can affect the
results.

I did alot of tweaking in the past. Hitting deadends maxxing what I had,
and buying faster stuff. In the end, I decided to just use and enjoy the PC
rather than spin my wheels and spend money that doesn't really make a whole
lot of difference for me.

 

[hmk]

Thank you Jonny for the clarification, and yes I usualy try to enjoy
what I have and do not tweak alot, but I had some major problems
with my hard drives performance lately thats why I was concerned.