IBM 75GXP 307045 drive and Tyan Trinity S1578 is slow

[Slacker]

I've been using this combo for over 3 years now with mostly no problems
(lost a few sectors within a year but no problems since then) It's always
been slow though - about 3.5 to 3.9 MB/s for both reading and writing. The
drive is ATA/100 but the board only supports ATA/66 so that's all the
performance I'm expecting, but it should be a lot faster than this.

I checked the BIOS settings and UDMA was disabled. Enabling it made no
difference. I checked the drive and cable and all appears ok - it is an
80-wire Promise cable and it is connected correctly with the blue end on the
board and the black end connected to the drive. There are no other devices
on the cable. The drive is set to master, but setting it to "cable select"
didn't help (I switched it back because it did make the drive appear to be a
slave, which caused Windows to run Scandisk every time it booted). There
were a couple of other options for HD in the BIOS (pre-fetch and block
mode). Enabling them sped things up a good bit. I'm now getting around 6.5
MB/s. Better, but nowhere near what it should be. The drive shows up in the
device list as a standard "Type 47" drive (This is Windows 98).

So what can I do to make this thing run like it's supposed to? I may not
need to upgrade my computer if I can get this thing to work right.

 

[SleeperMan]

Slacker typed:

I've been using this combo for over 3 years now with mostly no
problems (lost a few sectors within a year but no problems since
then) It's always been slow though - about 3.5 to 3.9 MB/s for both
reading and writing. The drive is ATA/100 but the board only supports
ATA/66 so that's all the performance I'm expecting, but it should be
a lot faster than this.

I checked the BIOS settings and UDMA was disabled. Enabling it made no
difference. I checked the drive and cable and all appears ok - it is
an 80-wire Promise cable and it is connected correctly with the blue
end on the board and the black end connected to the drive. There are
no other devices on the cable. The drive is set to master, but
setting it to "cable select" didn't help (I switched it back because
it did make the drive appear to be a slave, which caused Windows to
run Scandisk every time it booted). There were a couple of other
options for HD in the BIOS (pre-fetch and block mode). Enabling them
sped things up a good bit. I'm now getting around 6.5 MB/s. Better,
but nowhere near what it should be. The drive shows up in the device
list as a standard "Type 47" drive (This is Windows 98).

So what can I do to make this thing run like it's supposed to? I may
not need to upgrade my computer if I can get this thing to work right.

Lucky you...i've had two of 75GXP drives, both died in a period of 3
months...now i (did) have one of 120GXP series,it died after 2 years, i'm
waiting for a replacement. I just wonder, which one i'll get now...

Did you check DMA setting in W98? Just enabling in BIOS is not enough. Since
you've had PIO in BIOS, then PIO was also selected in W98. But now, if you
enabled DMA, you msut also set DMA in W98. I don't remember exactly where is
it, but i think it's in control panel/system/device manager, then IDE/ATA
atapi controllers/advanced or similar.

 

[Slacker]

Did you check DMA setting in W98? Just enabling in BIOS is not enough.
Since

you've had PIO in BIOS, then PIO was also selected in W98. But now, if you
enabled DMA, you msut also set DMA in W98. I don't remember exactly where is
it, but i think it's in control panel/system/device manager, then IDE/ATA
atapi controllers/advanced or similar.

Well I'll be damned. I tried it and my write/read times are now around
13/19. I started to do that earlier, but it warns you about how some
CD-ROM's blah blah blah and I was afraid it would screw something up.
Thanks.

Is this about as much speed as I can expect from ATA-33?

 

[SleeperMan]

Slacker typed:

Well I'll be damned. I tried it and my write/read times are now around
13/19. I started to do that earlier, but it warns you about how some
CD-ROM's blah blah blah and I was afraid it would screw something up.
Thanks.

Is this about as much speed as I can expect from ATA-33?

Well, i never measured my data transfer speed, so i couldn't really say.
But, if your speed has increased, it's something. I guess Google would find
some info on ATA standards and max speeds...
Oh yes, that warning...it's just because once upon a time not all CD drives
did support DMA transfer mode. But, if you don't have some ancient 2x or 4x
speed drive, you don't have to worry about it.

 

[SleeperMan]

SleeperMan typed:

Slacker typed:


Well, i never measured my data transfer speed, so i couldn't really
say. But, if your speed has increased, it's something. I guess Google
would find some info on ATA standards and max speeds...
Oh yes, that warning...it's just because once upon a time not all CD
drives did support DMA transfer mode. But, if you don't have some
ancient 2x or 4x speed drive, you don't have to worry about it.

I just found some sites about ATA speeds, and from i've seen, ATA 66 max
speed is 66MB/sec THEORETICALLY ! And this speed is only from HDD cache to
PC, and doesn't include reading data from HDD itself, so real speeds are WAY
smaller. Some mention 13-15, so i guess your speed should be just about it.
I found some info about UDMA mode 0 speed is about 15, mode 1 about 23 and
mode 2 about 31 MB/s. And that are all max possible speeds, which means that
in fact they are smaller. I quote:

 

[SleeperMan]

Uppsss...missed quote:

 

[SleeperMan]

SleeperMan typed:

Uppsss...missed quote:

It seems my PC is really ill...ready for a hammer hit...
so, here's the quote finally:

"Unfortunately most drives will not be able to supply data at this transfer
speed so the actual transfers will be significantly lower. Ultra DMA also
implements a CRC check which guards cable integrity."

 

[kony]

I've been using this combo for over 3 years now with mostly no problems
(lost a few sectors within a year but no problems since then) It's always
been slow though - about 3.5 to 3.9 MB/s for both reading and writing. The
drive is ATA/100 but the board only supports ATA/66 so that's all the
performance I'm expecting, but it should be a lot faster than this.

I checked the BIOS settings and UDMA was disabled. Enabling it made no
difference. I checked the drive and cable and all appears ok - it is an
80-wire Promise cable and it is connected correctly with the blue end on the
board and the black end connected to the drive. There are no other devices
on the cable. The drive is set to master, but setting it to "cable select"
didn't help (I switched it back because it did make the drive appear to be a
slave, which caused Windows to run Scandisk every time it booted). There
were a couple of other options for HD in the BIOS (pre-fetch and block
mode). Enabling them sped things up a good bit. I'm now getting around 6.5
MB/s. Better, but nowhere near what it should be. The drive shows up in the
device list as a standard "Type 47" drive (This is Windows 98).

So what can I do to make this thing run like it's supposed to? I may not
need to upgrade my computer if I can get this thing to work right.

I don't see a Tyan model S1578. Whatever your model is, do you have the
chipset drivers installed? For example if a Via chipset, the Via 4in1
driver bundle?

The ATA66 of your board should be adequate for all but the newest of
drives. Sustained read speeds aren't above 66MB/s yet except a few select
drives, though it will limit cache transfers to 58-62 (rough) MB/s. That
is a burst speed you should expect when testing with something like HDTACH
(Google search will find it). If your HDTACH burst speed isn't at least
50MB/s something is wrong. The sustained read speed for that drive is
unknown to me, but it could very well be around 20MB/s with some
benchmarks.

 

[Slacker]

I don't see a Tyan model S1578. Whatever your model is, do you have the

chipset drivers installed? For example if a Via chipset, the Via 4in1
driver bundle?

Oops, typo. That should have been S1598. The only chipset drives I would
have would be whatever got installed from the Windows 98 install disk.

The ATA66 of your board should be adequate for all but the newest of
drives. Sustained read speeds aren't above 66MB/s yet except a few select
drives, though it will limit cache transfers to 58-62 (rough) MB/s. That
is a burst speed you should expect when testing with something like HDTACH
(Google search will find it). If your HDTACH burst speed isn't at least
50MB/s something is wrong. The sustained read speed for that drive is
unknown to me, but it could very well be around 20MB/s with some
benchmarks.

I don't have any benchmark software, I was using a program I wrote.
According to IBM, the max transfer rate from buffer to disk is 55.5 MB/s and
max sustained is 37 MB/s. I'm not sure if it's possible to get 37 MB/s out
of this particular drive when running in ATA66 mode (the drive is ATA100),
but I'm still hoping to get more than the 18-19 that I'm now getting (with
SleeperMan's help).

 

[kony]

Oops, typo. That should have been S1598. The only chipset drives I would
have would be whatever got installed from the Windows 98 install disk.

Via MVP3 chipset, you need the Via 4in1 driver,
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=403

I don't have any benchmark software, I was using a program I wrote.
According to IBM, the max transfer rate from buffer to disk is 55.5 MB/s and
max sustained is 37 MB/s. I'm not sure if it's possible to get 37 MB/s out
of this particular drive when running in ATA66 mode (the drive is ATA100),
but I'm still hoping to get more than the 18-19 that I'm now getting (with
SleeperMan's help).

It would help to use standardized benchmarking software, that is,
something the rest of us are familiar with so we have something to compare
to. HDTACH is fee for read testing and will run on Win98.
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach
Well, at least I "think" version 2.7 will run on Win98, but I'm sure
version 2.6 will, which should be found with a Google search.

 

[Slacker]

It would help to use standardized benchmarking software, that is,
something the rest of us are familiar with so we have something to compare
to. HDTACH is fee for read testing and will run on Win98.
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach
Well, at least I "think" version 2.7 will run on Win98, but I'm sure
version 2.6 will, which should be found with a Google search.

According to HD Tach I've got an average read speed of 21.4 MB/s, which is
pretty close to what the program I wrote was reading. This was after
installing the VIA drivers. Unfortunately I didn't have HDTACH before then
so I can't give a before-and-after reading, but I didn't notice any
difference with my program. If anything, it may have slowed down just a
touch (hard to tell, it's different every time). I did have something called
Performace Test 5.0 that showed around 4.5 MB/s before I installed the VIA
drivers and 8.5 MB/s afterwards, but I don't trust those numbers at all -
they just seem way too low.

 

[kony]

According to HD Tach I've got an average read speed of 21.4 MB/s, which is
pretty close to what the program I wrote was reading. This was after
installing the VIA drivers. Unfortunately I didn't have HDTACH before then
so I can't give a before-and-after reading, but I didn't notice any
difference with my program. If anything, it may have slowed down just a
touch (hard to tell, it's different every time). I did have something called
Performace Test 5.0 that showed around 4.5 MB/s before I installed the VIA
drivers and 8.5 MB/s afterwards, but I don't trust those numbers at all -
they just seem way too low.

One thing to look at with HDTACH is the burst speed. Burst for a drive
running in correct ATA mode for your chipset should exceed ATA33 speed, be
well over 33MB/s. Also note the CPU utilization, if it's very high that
would be a sign that DMA isn't enabled in Win98. DMA setting is accessed
in Device Manager, Properties for that drive (and enable for optical
drive(s) too if they're faster than about 16X, varies per drive when they
started supporting DMA/ATA33).

From what I recall, 20MB/s is roughly what was seen back when 20GB 5400
RPM drives were popular. If you still feel your performance is bad you
might see if drive needs defragmented.

 

[Slacker]

One thing to look at with HDTACH is the burst speed. Burst for a drive
running in correct ATA mode for your chipset should exceed ATA33 speed, be
well over 33MB/s. Also note the CPU utilization, if it's very high that
would be a sign that DMA isn't enabled in Win98. DMA setting is accessed
in Device Manager, Properties for that drive (and enable for optical
drive(s) too if they're faster than about 16X, varies per drive when they
started supporting DMA/ATA33).

From what I recall, 20MB/s is roughly what was seen back when 20GB 5400
RPM drives were popular. If you still feel your performance is bad you
might see if drive needs defragmented.

I have DMA enabled, that's one of the things that increased my performance
yesterday. I defraged the drive today and the new readings are around 20MB/s
read speed, 23.9MB/s burst speed and 35% CPU utilization. This is according
to HDTACH. It doesn't appear I am in ATA66 mode. Any more suggestions? For
reference:
80-line ribbon cable is installed correctly
HD is the only device on the cable
UDMA is set to Auto in BIOS
Pre-fetch and Block Mode are enabled in BIOS
DMA is enabled in system properties for that drive (Win98)
VIA drivers have been installed (seemed to make no difference)

 

[kony]

I have DMA enabled, that's one of the things that increased my performance
yesterday. I defraged the drive today and the new readings are around 20MB/s
read speed, 23.9MB/s burst speed and 35% CPU utilization. This is according
to HDTACH. It doesn't appear I am in ATA66 mode. Any more suggestions? For
reference:
80-line ribbon cable is installed correctly
HD is the only device on the cable
UDMA is set to Auto in BIOS
Pre-fetch and Block Mode are enabled in BIOS
DMA is enabled in system properties for that drive (Win98)
VIA drivers have been installed (seemed to make no difference)

See if HD manufacturer has utilities to check HD ATA operating mode (which
one it's currently using) and a utility to manually set ATA66 mode.

 

[Trent©]

I have DMA enabled, that's one of the things that increased my performance
yesterday. I defraged the drive today and the new readings are around 20MB/s
read speed, 23.9MB/s burst speed and 35% CPU utilization. This is according
to HDTACH. It doesn't appear I am in ATA66 mode. Any more suggestions? For
reference:
80-line ribbon cable is installed correctly
HD is the only device on the cable
UDMA is set to Auto in BIOS
Pre-fetch and Block Mode are enabled in BIOS
DMA is enabled in system properties for that drive (Win98)
VIA drivers have been installed (seemed to make no difference)

If you have any caches available in the BIOS...video, BIOS, etc...turn
them on.

Also...are you continually running any programs that would interact
with the way that the drive processes your requests?...like real-time
virus protection?...or a firewall?

And I don't think you mentioned the specs for your system. This can
play a big difference on the way you perceive your drive operating.

Good luck...let us know.


Have a nice week...

Trent©

Follow Joan Rivers' example --- get pre-embalmed!

 

[Slacker]

If you have any caches available in the BIOS...video, BIOS, etc...turn

them on.
Nope.

Also...are you continually running any programs that would interact
with the way that the drive processes your requests?...like real-time
virus protection?...or a firewall?

I am running Norton and Zone Alarm. I'll try without them, but I'd be
surprised if they made any difference. There was one norton utility that
slowed everything down a lot, but I disabled it so long ago I don't even
remember what it was.

And I don't think you mentioned the specs for your system. This can
play a big difference on the way you perceive your drive operating.

No, I didn't. It's a K-2/500 AMD with 384MB of memory. I've seen faster
read/write specs for similarly equiped machines so I was assuming that
wasn't the issue, but then it's always possible that some are exaggerating.

I tried running my program at work on my laptop (2Ghz P4) and got basically
the same results as my machine at home. After diddling with the code
somewhat I got a fairly consistent 15MB/s write and 20MB/s read with both
machines (for those keeping score, writes of very large files are somewhat
faster (20%?) with buffering turned off and write-through enabled when
creating the file - everything else is faster with buffering on an
write-throug disabled). This was after defraging my HD at home, but not at
work (Windows 2000). Interestingly, read speeds were in the 300-400MB/s
range on the W2K machine, even on very large files. NT obviously does a much
better job of caching than W98.

I found a utility that would allow me to change the HD mode. It was
defaulted to ATA100 so I changed it to ATA66, hoping that would make a
difference. It didn't. I guess this is pretty much all I'm going to get. Oh
well, it's still 4 times as fast as it was last week.

 

[Trent©]

I tried running my program at work on my laptop (2Ghz P4) and got basically
the same results as my machine at home. After diddling with the code
somewhat I got a fairly consistent 15MB/s write and 20MB/s read with both
machines (for those keeping score, writes of very large files are somewhat
faster (20%?) with buffering turned off and write-through enabled when
creating the file - everything else is faster with buffering on an
write-throug disabled). This was after defraging my HD at home, but not at
work (Windows 2000). Interestingly, read speeds were in the 300-400MB/s
range on the W2K machine, even on very large files. NT obviously does a much
better job of caching than W98.

There's other issues in play here also. You may be doing a tight
defrag on the NT machine, for instance. And it doesn't sound like
you've checked cluster size.

I often run 8k or 16k clusters. 16 seems to be the optimum for me in
many cases for speed.

I found a utility that would allow me to change the HD mode. It was
defaulted to ATA100 so I changed it to ATA66, hoping that would make a
difference. It didn't.

You'd probably see more speed at 100...but yer more susceptible to
data corruption. That's why its always a good idea to make sure the
drive and mb speed match.

I guess this is pretty much all I'm going to get. Oh
well, it's still 4 times as fast as it was last week.

Good luck.


Have a nice week...

Trent©

Follow Joan Rivers' example --- get pre-embalmed!