IDE HDD = which channels??

[Monkey muppet]

I think my HDD's are bottlenecking my system:

I currently have them set-up

IDE channel 0:

Maxtor 120Gb 7,200rpm, 2mb cashe (C:\system) on cable select
Seagate barracuda 160Gb 7,200rpm, 8mb cashe (M\Media) on cable select

IDE channel 1:

1xGeneric 24xDVD drive

Question:

Would I get better performance by using a spare IDE controller card and putting the media drive on it - so each drive would have a sperate channel??

Updates no:1

As suggested by 'Jeff7' ("So if you do a lot of drive to drive transfers, having them on the same channel will slow it down...............Adding another controller would of course alleviate all of this"). I added a IDE controller card 2x channels upto 133mhz and wondered what to put where?

'Airfoil' had a statement "Move only your backup/optical drives to the controller"

Hence a possible set-up change "how about creating a benchmark of your own by moving the same bunch AVI files around before and after you make the change?"

Update no: 2

Real-Time HHD test

A real world test. Before each test the PC was started from a cold-boot, disks were de-fragged, then the applications launched. We are testing a copy-paste speed, of a 698Mb AVI between both drives.

The drives are less than a month old each, have 'SMART' disabled, are using 80pin cables, have no (found) Viruses, Spy-ware, Malicious ware, etc, and are housed, each in an anti-vibration/shock, rubber mouted, aluminium HDD caddy.


The file starts on the desktop (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop) of the Maxtor 120Gb 7,200 2mb cashe whilst running the following, average, everyday, applicaitons:


Azureus with 6x torrents
Firefox 3x tabs (1x includes big flash)
Outlook (update every minute)

The file will finish on the Media drive (E:\Films), Seagate 160Gb, 7,200rpm, 8mb cashe whilst encoding a 4.3Gb DVD to a 700mb AVI using Dr.Divx.

Current set-up = 27s

With controller card = 14s!!!s

It looks like the drives like having a channel all to their own - with the optic's on the controller card.

Update no:3

Yeah, I know it's not scientific or 'in-depth'. The real reason is that I'm lazy to run benncies

 

[Zelmo3]

No, not unless you're doing a lot of concurrent access to both hard drives. Or if they have different PIO modes, the channel will only use the slower one.

 

[Monkey muppet]

It takes a long time opening applications and transfering of AVI's between folders.

My old system was faster around windows than this one.

I have done/set the following:

Full AVG scan
Ad-ware scan
Spybot scan
XP SP2 - fully updated

all show system as fine.

swop file is on the c:\ drive set at 1.5Gb

 

[imported_fatal]

Have you checked the drives? a slow drive could be a sign of failure

 

[Burtie21]

i like setting my it up like this ide1 hdd(C(master)/cdrw(slave) and then ide2 hdd(M)(master)/dvd-r(slave). I used to have both hdd's on the same channel and noticed the same thing as you, slow down when transfering avi from one folder to another

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: Burtie21
i like setting my it up like this ide1 hdd(C(master)/cdrw(slave) and then ide2 hdd(M)(master)/dvd-r(slave). I used to have both hdd's on the same channel and noticed the same thing as you, slow down when transfering avi from one folder to another

i thought ur not supposed to have hard drives on the same channel as slower drives like burners and wutnot

 

[Leohart]

well as far as I know, there is no problem with having slower and faster drives on the same channel as the controller automatically have timings for both. That is all your drives still operate as their respective max speed. I have pretty much the same set up as Monkey muppet and the ATA for each drive is detected differently according to its specs if I check in the post-booting and also with several hardware sniffer software (Everest)

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Leohart
well as far as I know, there is no problem with having slower and faster drives on the same channel as the controller automatically have timings for both. That is all your drives still operate as their respective max speed. I have pretty much the same set up as Monkey muppet and the ATA for each drive is detected differently according to its specs if I check in the post-booting and also with several hardware sniffer software (Everest)

Yes, I'm pretty sure that the deal with the motherboard using the speed of the slowest drive is a thing of the past. New ATA controllers time each drive independently.

So if you do a lot of drive to drive transfers, having them on the same channel will slow it down, as IDE can only do a transaction with one device per chain at a time. If you put the Seagate drive with the optical drive, that should work out. However, when the optical drive is accessed, due to its inherently slower speeds (access times are immense, and transfers are slow) the hard drive with it will be "disabled" all the time that the optical drive is actually doing any work.


Adding another controller would of course alleviate all of this. Note that some controllers don't play nice with ATAPI devices like optical drives. I also don't know if Windows will shuffle around your drive letters if you move the drive to another controller. But you can still change that arrangement in Disk Manager.

 

[Monkey muppet]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Leohart
well as far as I know, there is no problem with having slower and faster drives on the same channel as the controller automatically have timings for both. That is all your drives still operate as their respective max speed. I have pretty much the same set up as Monkey muppet and the ATA for each drive is detected differently according to its specs if I check in the post-booting and also with several hardware sniffer software (Everest)

Yes, I'm pretty sure that the deal with the motherboard using the speed of the slowest drive is a thing of the past. New ATA controllers time each drive independently.

So if you do a lot of drive to drive transfers, having them on the same channel will slow it down, as IDE can only do a transaction with one device per chain at a time. If you put the Seagate drive with the optical drive, that should work out. However, when the optical drive is accessed, due to its inherently slower speeds (access times are immense, and transfers are slow) the hard drive with it will be "disabled" all the time that the optical drive is actually doing any work.


Adding another controller would of course alleviate all of this. Note that some controllers don't play nice with ATAPI devices like optical drives. I also don't know if Windows will shuffle around your drive letters if you move the drive to another controller. But you can still change that arrangement in Disk Manager.

So your solution is to use the spare IDE controller card I have lying around and install with the Seagate??

any other tweaks or settings I might've overlooked??

 

[Zelmo3]

Concerning the scans, are they running all the time? In particular, if the anti-virus is set to scan files each time they're accessed, that will slow everything down a lot. And it's usually overkill protection unless you have very risky web browsing habits.

 

[airfoil]

Originally posted by: Monkey muppet
I think my HDD's are bottlenecking my system:

I currently have them set-up

IDE channel 0:

Maxtor 120Gb 7,200rpm, 2mb cashe (C:\system) on cable select
Seagate barracuda 160Gb 7,200rpm, 8mb cashe (M\Media) on cable select

IDE channel 1:

1xGeneric 24xDVD drive

Question:

Would I get better performance by using a spare IDE controller card and putting the media drive on it - so each drive would have a sperate channel??

Yes, I'd say it wouldn't hurt to put each drive on its own channel. Since you have it lying around anyway, you could hook it up and compare performance.

Move only your backup/optical drives to the controller.

 

[Monkey muppet]

Originally posted by: airfoil

Originally posted by: Monkey muppet
I think my HDD's are bottlenecking my system:

I currently have them set-up

IDE channel 0:

Maxtor 120Gb 7,200rpm, 2mb cashe (C:\system) on cable select
Seagate barracuda 160Gb 7,200rpm, 8mb cashe (M\Media) on cable select

IDE channel 1:

1xGeneric 24xDVD drive

Question:

Would I get better performance by using a spare IDE controller card and putting the media drive on it - so each drive would have a sperate channel??

Yes, I'd say it wouldn't hurt to put each drive on its own channel. Since you have it lying around anyway, you could hook it up and compare performance.

Move only your backup/optical drives to the controller.

Would you recommend any benchies to view any differences????

 

[airfoil]

No, but how about creating a benchmark of your own by moving the same bunch AVI files around before and after you make the change?

To make things more interesting, you could place a load on the PC at the same time, by burning a DVD while running the file copy/move. It'll give you the chance to back some of your data up while you're at it.

Let us know how it turned out...

 

[airfoil]

Afterthought: I hope that controller supports at least an ATA 66 transfer rate. If it doesn't, put only your optical drives on it.

In fact, I wouldnt put my ATA 100/133 HDDs on a controller that is slower than the maximum transfer rate then the hard drive.

While you're at it, make sure you're using the 80 pin IDE cables for each of the hard drives.

 

[Monkey muppet]

Real-Time HHD test

A real world test. Before each test the PC was started from a cold-boot, disks were de-fragged, then the applications launched. We are testing a copy-paste speed, of a 698Mb AVI between both drives.

The drives are less than a month old each, have 'SMART' disabled, are using 80pin cables, have no (found) Viruses, Spy-ware, Malicious ware, etc, and are housed, each in an anti-vibration/shock, rubber mouted, aluminium HDD caddy.


The file starts on the desktop (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop) of the Maxtor 120Gb 7,200 2mb cashe whilst running the following, average, everyday, applicaitons:


Azureus with 6x torrents
Firefox 3x tabs (1x includes big flash)
Outlook (update every minute)

The file will finish on the Media drive (E:\Films), Seagate 160Gb, 7,200rpm, 8mb cashe whilst encoding a 4.3Gb DVD to a 700mb AVI using Dr.Divx.

Current set-up = 27s

With controller card = 14s

 

[airfoil]

Wow! Pretty impressive...