Slow read rate on hard drive

Shwick

I have a Western Digital 80GB IDE hard drive that’s been working fine for four years now. Its jumper setting is configured as cable select, and it’s connected to the master on my IDE cable. The hard drive gets about 38 MB/s read, tested with hd-tach. My dvd writer is plugged into the slave on the same IDE cable.

HD tach


Sisoft Sandra


I installed a second Western Digital Caviar SE 200GB IDE hard drive today.

Western Digital Caviar SE 200GB IDE ATA100 7200RPM 8MB 8.9MS Hard Drive 3 Year MFR Warranty - DirectCanada

The jumper setting for the 200GB drive is configured as cable select. The drive is connected to the slave slot on a second ide cable instead of the master slot because it’s neater that way. There is nothing connected to the master slot. However, I formatted the drive to be a master from Windows, so it shows up in the bios as a master. The 200GB drive produces a 32 MB/s read rate with hd-tach and sisoft sandra with about 13ms seek rate, even though its rated for 93.5 MB/s and should probably produce 60 MB/s when functioning properly. 32 MB/s is clearly too low.

HD tach


Sisoft Sandra


Also, the pattern in the graph from hd-tach is really weird- it seems like the read rate remains constant instead of declining like normal hard drive behaviour.

I updated my bios from 1006 to the latest non-beta version 1013 but the read rate remained the same.

No other programs were open/running when I ran the benchmarks.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here?

Thanks




System specs:
Asus A7V8X-X Motherboard (socket A)
Amd Athlon 2500+
1 GB ram
Windows XP Home SP2

Dyre Straits

Are you using the proper 80-pin cable?

Tipstaff

To add to that, what DMA 'Mode' is the hard drive running in, or to be more precise, what Mode is the computer reporting it is running in? Mode 2, 4, 5, or PIO? You can double check this through Device Manager, usually under the Primary/Secondary controller listings under the 'Advanced' tabs.

This, btw, is the Ultra DMA Mode that I'm referring to. The reason I ask is that the drive is rated at 100mbs transfer, which would be Mode 5. However, it's possible the motherboard, or Windows is forcing a lower mode, such as Mode 2, or even PIO mode. This would account for the slower speed.

Judas

IMO,

i find it more reliable to set the drive that is at the END of the cable, to MASTER and the one in the middle to slave.... instead of using cable select... (i've just ran into less problems that way.. as i've seen some weird bios issues where the drives had for some reason, swapped positions and modes every other reboot or at odd times)

Grace

It's most probably the DMA setting. It should be set to Ultra DMA, not Multiword DMA.

Shwick

upgraded to 80 conductor IDE cable, works properly now, thanks.

Proper Read Speed

H3X4D3C1M4L

Just to note... usually its best to keep IDE chains homogenous for problem solving and for performance benefits... i.e. HDD's with HDD's and disc drives with disc drives.

Also its better to have 2 masters on 2 different channels than 1 master and 1 slave on 1 channel.

Just a thought

Dyre Straits

I really did think that was the problem. Glad it's sorted out.