PC hardware forum: Hard drive data transfer rate question...

And what else examining the bits along the way. You also have issues such as "WHO INSTALLED THIS OS?" since many won't fetch current or even the correct drivers.

To do speed tests we may have to examine dark details of the cache size of the drive and test the transfer rate inside that size (transfer rate will be limited when we actually read from the drive.) You also are writing to a drive and even a simple item such as NT/2000/XP timestamping files and making event logs will thwart the tests.

Sorry, I wish there was a simple test for you but I must defer to many fine speed test web pages out there. Compare with those.

Bob

Maybe too much. My background is an electronics designer that writes from assembler to higher language code. I've been faulted in the forums for giving too technical responses. Now I try to simplify but some will flog me for that as well.

If you continue to bite the hands that want to help you, I fear you will not put together the answer.

You didn't tell me about WHO INSTALLED THE OS? Which is the key reason I see subpar performance.

Since you flamed rather than engaged in the discussion I hope you can dose the flame and put yourself into gear and see the nuggets I presented and respond so we can see if the situation or test results can be improved or not.

-> Your choice here,

Bob

This is crucial information. You revealed you know about the drive jumpers so we'll skip that issue.

-> Tell me the exact motherboard make and model and the version of motherboard and SATA chipset drivers you installed when you installed XP. To wit, what did you put on that floppy that you feed XP via the F6 key during install.

I'm not going to duplicate web content about how to install XP on SATA systems. I'm only going to note where most gaffe the install.

Bob

INSTALL XP TO SATA DRIVE

Try that on google.com

I don't duplicate web content.

Bob

Without motherboard and SATA drivers... subpar performance. Maybe we expected Microsoft to do this for us?

It's something I see daily. And correct too many times to keep count.

Bob

Ok, I found some more information..

the specs for this drive state:
INTERNAL TRANSFER RATE (Mbits/sec) _______up to 1030
SUSTAINED TRANSFER RATE (Mbytes/sec)______up to 72
EXTERNAL TRANSFER RATE (Mbytes/sec) ______up to 300

so, I guess the upper limit is about 72 for practical purposes. Still, about double what I am getting now.

Why the heck do they rate this drive at 3 Gbits?

pl

Transfer rates are in perfect laboratory conditions. Period.

Examples that are fact:

Dial-up 56K modem. Never happen.
USB transfer rate. Never happen.
Broadband transfer rate. Never happen.
HD transfer rate. Never happen.
EPA mileage estimates. Never happen.
The list can go an and on.

All claims are overinflated so the product will sell. As Bob tried to tell you there are variables and all you could do is complain. I suggest you do a little investigating and reading, and when possible, a little live and hands on testing.

There are 10 types of people who understand binary; those that do and those that don't.
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*off topic* I always get a kick out of your tag line coryphaeus!
*on topic*
Burst rate. Theoretical maximum transfer rate - read "laboratory conditions."
Sustained transfer rate will always be much slower. Sectional density, rotational speed, read/write cycles and head speed, OS, cache size, temperature, power fluctuations etc. ad naseum. You get the idea. Makes for nice reading on the package but SATA2 is faster than first gen drives. Add RAID to the mix and there is another set of numbers and conditions.
Kind of like horsepower ratings. Always at the crankshaft, not the rear wheels. There is quite a bit of loss between the motor and the tires.
As for the SATA installation thing, I wasn't aware Windows would load onto a SATA drive w/o third party software (or even recognize the drive) Thank goodness for the good ole' floppy! I recently hosed an XPpro system and during re-install didn't pay attention to the F6 for third party drivers. Kept getting a "no disk recognized" error. After some hair pulling the "duh" alarm went off and one floppy later, new install. How'd you manage to bypass that? On another note, what could you do in that case w/o a floppy drive? I didn't see an option for installation from a CD during the SATA drivers install. (maybe I was crosseyed after pulling hair and missed an option)

Bottom line, 3.0Gb transfer rate is burst mode. Large scale transfers will not reach that, nor sustain that. Still a good drive.

Thanks for the pointer.

That site does not list my drive, however, there are other Seagate Barracudas there with read transfer rates between 62 and 70 MB. Unfortunately, my test with PassMark shows about 47 for my drive. As I stated earlier, my own basic transfer test (just copying files) was running about 33.. not too impressive!

Thought I would stop by again with an update.

With the help of the folks over at Bleedinedge.co,, I finally managed to get the proper SATA drivers installed and this resulted in the drive hitting 73 MBytes per second.

If interested in all the tech details and performace graphs, read the thread at: http://www.bleedinedge.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27223

In a nutshell, the SATA drivers needed to be loaded prior to XP being installed. A couple of setbacks were finding exactly what drivers were needed, as the motherboard had 1 JMircon SATA port, and 4 Intel ICH8 ports (and I had two drives, one on each). I ended up not using the JMicron port. And someone gave me a pointer to where to get the required Intel drivers, since only the JMicron driver was provided with the board.

And, I made the mistake of not getting a floppy drive, since I thought they were obsolete. Mistake! The ONLY way the drivers can be loaded prior to XP, is via the A: drive floppy.. not an external floppy, CD, or USB device... so, I had to buy a floppy drive.

And finally, because I had to reload the OS, I had to reload all my software and data. A total system backup restore was useless, as it would have retored my drive to the prior setting, ie, without the SATA driver.

Been an interesting exercise in frustration.. lots of it!

pl