AlecStaar and everyone, I have poor hd performance in XP Pro

[DARTH maul 0]

I just did a long format of my hd installing NTFS.

 

I have the official Asus A7V 1009 bios, and my mobo is PCB revision 1.02 and I've now installed the 1009X/FXD (temp fix) bios from braziliantech and enabled the CPU IDLE feature in the bios.

 

Anyway, no CPU idling, I get about 17000 for my Sandra 2001 Pro (latest patches applied) and with hd tach 2.61 I get around ata66 performance too, 63 mbps transfer rate, etc.

 

I have my hd (Western Digital Caviar 30Gig 7200rpm 2MB Cache ATA100 IDE) plugged into my A7V's primary (blue) ATA100 promise controller and its detected as primary master using ultra dma5 mode. In Windows XP Pro, Sandra saya I have DMA5 mode enabled and running. I am using the blue cable for my hd and nothing else uses ATA100 promise controller.

 

I have not installed any VIA drivers of any kind.

 

I let Windows XP Pro use its native default drivers. Nothing is over-clocked. Nothing is sharing DMA's. No forced hardware. IRQ9 is used for all my PCI device though Microsoft's ACPI.

 

BRAIN (Administrator) from Brainsforum, the forum were I moderate hardware/software section known as darth maul, recommended you, AlecStaar because he had the same A7V mobo and operating system as me and was getting ata100 performamce.

 

I am using the blue cable for my ata100 hd that came with my A7V mobo. My cd-rom uses the ATA66 controller in the primary master spot, nothing else uses ATA66 controller and its detected as DMA2 with PIO mode4, ata33 mode, regular cable from what I can see (not blue).

 

Do I need a new ATA100 cable?

 

Is there a bios setting?

 

Is there a service pack addressing this issue for Windows XP Pro?

 

Any VIA drivers that fix this?

 

 

As you can see, I am stumped!!!!!

 

HELP.........

[pcdabbler 0]

ATA 100 is a specification, and is the maximum theoretical performance possible. You will never see sustained speeds at 100mb/s with any current drive. you may see burst speeds approaching this. If ur seeing sustained speeds up to ATA 66 standards, I would be very happy. Users with RAID can get up to 78 meg/sec sustained. My own ATA 100 drive delivers around 30 meg/sec sustained .. using ATTO HD benchmark.

[DARTH maul 0]

pcdabbler,

 

When Iran Windows98 and 98SE (FAT32), I got the theoretical 100 MB/sec transfers using my A7V mobo and ATA100 cable and WD Caviar hd.

 

Now with Windows XP Pro (NTFS), I get slow ata66 transfers.

 

Something is weird here........

[DARTH maul 0]

Come on people. Anyone want to give it a stab?

 

Lots of viewing, not reply's?

 

Is my problem unique or what?

[Brian Frank 0]

I don't know. I have the A7V myself, but just the 1007 BIOS. The speed has been a little dissappointing under XP. I know I've got 5400RPM drives, but I was expecting a little better performance than what I have. I'm not sure why this is, but things are at least a little faster than under 2k.

[DARTH maul 0]

I think its the ATA100 cable!!!!

 

I took it out, plugged the blue end back into my mobo (A7V) and the middle (grey) section, NOT THE FAR (black) END THIS TIME and my hdtach 2.61 scores went from 53.9 mbps to anwhere from 62.9 -> 77.0 mbps!!!!

 

I use the 1009X/FXD (temp fix bios from braziliantech) with CPU Idle feature enabled!!!!

 

You guys figure I should buy a new ATA100 cable?

 

Are there different qualities of ATA100 cables or are they all the same and I should keep mine?

[ok_interested 0]

From what ive noticed its not a winxp problem.. more like a win2k/xp problem.. you notice it when moving from 98se or me to win2k/xp

 

read what i posted in the win2k forum that is simmilar to this.

 

http://www.ntcompatible.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18901

 

. dont know if it will help it all depends on your system, assuming you do have ata100 enabled and all other factors being equal ect.., but it is definetly somthing to do with 2k/xp and win98/me does run better.

[Brian Frank 0]

I also found the source of my troubles: my hard drives went kaput--explains quite a bit actually.