SCSI speed problem in Win XP

[Guest]

Hello,

I have been searching and searching the internet for an answer to this
little 'challenge' of mine and I was wondering if anyone would be able to
help me. Several years ago I invested quite a lot of money in SCSI HD's and
an Adaptec SCSI 39160 Ultra 160 SCSI card. It worked wonderfully with
Windows ME and was the fastest system I had ever seen. In the last couple of
months, however, I upgraded to Windows XP and found that all of my SCSI drive
speeds had significantly dropped. I ran a check of the transfer rates of my
U160 HD's and they were transfering about 20MB/sec, while my IDE drives are
transferring about 33-40MB/sec. When the computer boots up, it shows that my
SCSI HD's are sync'ed at 160MB/sec and they are on a 16 BIt bus. Is there
something wrong with my system? I have checked everywhere I know to check.
Adaptec has no answers for me and I am about ready to throw my computer out
the window! Here are my system specs:

OS: Windows XP PRO
CPU: Athlon XP 2600+ (Thoroughbread chip)
RAM: Corsair PC3200 Dual Channel 4ooMHZ (1GB)
Video card: ATI Radeon 9700 PRO
HD: Quantum Atlas III U160 10,000 RM 18.4 GB x2 (1 is set as my system/boot
drive, the other is used for storage)
HD2: Maxtor 80 GB 7,200 RPM 8 MB cache ATA 133 (Used as swap
file/storage/program install
Soundcard: Soundblaster Audigy Platinum Ex
SCSI card: Adaptec 39160 (Downloaded latest drivers that Adaptec had on
their website. I believe they are from Nov. 2002)

If someone could help me it would be greatly appreciated. I have checked
with everyone I know to check with to no avail. HELP!

Sincerely,
David Wester

 

[R. McCarty]

I use SCSI drives and an Adaptec 19160 controller. I have 3 Seagate
Ultra 160 drives, which perform very well. First thing I would do is get
a program called DiskSpeed to check actual access time, burst rate &
sustained transfer rates. My Seagate's access in around 8.0 mSec,burst
of 96 Meg a second and sustained at over 56 Meg ( Not too bad on a
66-Mhz bus).
Have you checked the SCSI Bios to make sure that Termination is set
correctly ? Anyway, there are a lot of SCSI parameters in both the card
BIOS & jumper settings that can affect performance.
Download DiskSpeed32 here:
http://www.geocities.com/vgrinenko/DiskSpeed32/
If the benchmark shows poor performance, then you've got some work
ahead to run down the cause(s).
Post back with your results and I'll see if I can assist you.

 

[Tod]

Just my 2 cents

I'm guessing the you just upgraded Windows XP over Win Me (not a wipe, then
install)
Could it be that something got leftover from Win Me and is interfering with
Win XP.
Have you tried totally deleting all Adaptec software and then reloading ?
Try moving the swap file to the second SCSI drive.