World doesn't make sense (at least my IDE setup doesn't ;-))

[Carlos Moreno]

I'm very clueless about this...

I have an ASUS A7V motherboard, with an Athlon 1GHz.
Have a couple of Western Digital ATA100 hard drives
(40G + 80G).

So, here's the puzzler: when connected to the "default"
IDE connectors of the motherboard (which I'm assuming
are ATA66), the speed reported is 3.5MBytes per second.

(the report is produced by a software that does video
capture and edition -- it evaluates the speed of the
disk to see if it is enough; to my great surprise, the
software complained that the disk wasn't fast enough!!!
(a 7200 RPM, ATA100 connected to presumably an ATA66
interface??)

I defragmented the drive (although it wasn't that
fragmented... I reinstalled the system not two weeks
ago). No change.

In fact, even more puzzling: at first I thought the
problem was that both drives were connected to the
same cable (one is primary master, the other is
primary slave). So I connected one drive to each
cable, and disconnected the CD-ROM, such that the
*only* thing connected to each interface is *one*
hard drive... To my surprise, the speed reported
was about 5% slower (yes, **SLOWER**).

When I connect the drives to the ATA100 (which is
not a very good deal for me, since I can't seem to
make the Promise controller work with Linux), then
the speed reported is 35MBytes per second (10 times
faster!!). If I connect them to the ATA133 PCI card
(the one that comes with Maxtor hard drives), then
the speed reported is the same -- if I connect the
Maxtor drives to the ATA133, then I get 46MB / sec...

Frankly, these numbers don't really make sense to
me. Am I doing something wrong... *cough*, I'll
*cough* rephrase... *What* am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

Carlos
--

 

[Matt]

I'm very clueless about this...

I have an ASUS A7V motherboard, with an Athlon 1GHz.
Have a couple of Western Digital ATA100 hard drives
(40G + 80G).

So, here's the puzzler: when connected to the "default"
IDE connectors of the motherboard (which I'm assuming
are ATA66), the speed reported is 3.5MBytes per second.

Have you installed the latest 4in1s or Hyperion drivers?
Are you using new, 80 wire cables?

(the report is produced by a software that does video
capture and edition -- it evaluates the speed of the
disk to see if it is enough; to my great surprise, the
software complained that the disk wasn't fast enough!!!
(a 7200 RPM, ATA100 connected to presumably an ATA66
interface??)

Try HDTach

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

How do you have them jumpered ??
If you are using CS jumpers, then this is what you will get.

Make sure that you are using a cable that is NOT a CS cable
(no cutout in it), also make sure it is a 80 connector cable -
Clueless.

the one that comes with the drives works good...

Then use the W/D utility to check to see how the speed is set...
It is possible to set the default on the drives back to ATA 100. It
may be set to 133 and their may be a timing problem when using at 100.

Since you appear to be not using a MS operating system, I would check
to see what drivers you are using for the IDE controller. Their are
ALOT of variations in the VIA drives for non MS operating systems.

[snip]

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Sounds like PIO mode 1 or 2.

Have you installed the latest 4in1s or Hyperion drivers?
Are you using new, 80 wire cables?


Try HDTach

And tell us what the CPU use is.