Ultra slow HDD -> HDD file copy

My computer has 2 HDDs. C is a 6 GB Udma33 capable Seagate Medallist. D
is a 2.5 GB Western Digital Caviar.

Creating a copy of a 100 MB file on the same drive is very quick as would
be expected. This is the case on both drives

However moving that 100 MB file from one drive to the other is incredibly
slow (30 minutes or more) and will also slow down other things happening
in the computer.

The drives are respectively the primary and secondary master devices and
there are no other devices on the IDE ports (at the moment).

Although this computer should really belong in a museum, it can burn a CD
at 16x without buffer underruns. There seems to be no problem filling the
process buffer fast enough for a burn and performance is back to what it
should be even though the burner (primary slave) is on the same IDE cable
as the drive containing the source ISO.

 

Patrick Dunford wrote:

> My computer has 2 HDDs. C is a 6 GB Udma33 capable Seagate Medallist. D
> is a 2.5 GB Western Digital Caviar.
>
> Creating a copy of a 100 MB file on the same drive is very quick as would
> be expected. This is the case on both drives
>
> However moving that 100 MB file from one drive to the other is incredibly
> slow (30 minutes or more) and will also slow down other things happening
> in the computer.
>
> The drives are respectively the primary and secondary master devices and
> there are no other devices on the IDE ports (at the moment).
>
> Although this computer should really belong in a museum, it can burn a CD
> at 16x without buffer underruns. There seems to be no problem filling the
> process buffer fast enough for a burn and performance is back to what it
> should be even though the burner (primary slave) is on the same IDE cable
> as the drive containing the source ISO.

Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?

What OS are you running? Has DMA been enabled on both drives?

Your 2.5GB WD will probably not be UDMA. So that will slow things down.
WD are probably the worst possible brands in terms of comformity to
standards and compatability issues.

 

Harry wrote:

> Patrick Dunford wrote:
>
>> My computer has 2 HDDs. C is a 6 GB Udma33 capable Seagate Medallist. D
>> is a 2.5 GB Western Digital Caviar.
>>
>> Creating a copy of a 100 MB file on the same drive is very quick as would
>> be expected. This is the case on both drives
>>
>> However moving that 100 MB file from one drive to the other is incredibly
>> slow (30 minutes or more) and will also slow down other things happening
>> in the computer.
>>
>> The drives are respectively the primary and secondary master devices and
>> there are no other devices on the IDE ports (at the moment).
>>
>> Although this computer should really belong in a museum, it can burn a CD
>> at 16x without buffer underruns. There seems to be no problem filling the
>> process buffer fast enough for a burn and performance is back to what it
>> should be even though the burner (primary slave) is on the same IDE cable
>> as the drive containing the source ISO.
>
> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
> Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>
> What OS are you running? Has DMA been enabled on both drives?
>
> Your 2.5GB WD will probably not be UDMA. So that will slow things down.
> WD are probably the worst possible brands in terms of comformity to
> standards and compatability issues.

He may also have a mobo like the (SIS Chipset) PCChips M810....which has a
serious issue with it's I/O subsystem.

If you have enough RAM for a large cache and the hard drive has a reasonable
amount of cache, you don't often notice the problem.

But if you try to do something like copy a large file from one HD to another
- something much larger than the HD or RAM disk cache - you see the
bottleneck in all it's deeply flawed glory.

This is why these mobo were so cheap and often OEM'd as a "no-name"
M810....with no "PCChips" anywhere in sight.

I bought one....but have since gotten rid of it.

 

In article <Zd5Mc.3909$>,
says...
> Patrick Dunford wrote:
>
> > My computer has 2 HDDs. C is a 6 GB Udma33 capable Seagate Medallist. D
> > is a 2.5 GB Western Digital Caviar.
> >
> > Creating a copy of a 100 MB file on the same drive is very quick as would
> > be expected. This is the case on both drives
> >
> > However moving that 100 MB file from one drive to the other is incredibly
> > slow (30 minutes or more) and will also slow down other things happening
> > in the computer.
> >
> > The drives are respectively the primary and secondary master devices and
> > there are no other devices on the IDE ports (at the moment).
> >
> > Although this computer should really belong in a museum, it can burn a CD
> > at 16x without buffer underruns. There seems to be no problem filling the
> > process buffer fast enough for a burn and performance is back to what it
> > should be even though the burner (primary slave) is on the same IDE cable
> > as the drive containing the source ISO.
>
> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
> Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?

No they are not using the 80 wire cable. Does this require 80 pin MB
connectors?

>
> What OS are you running? Has DMA been enabled on both drives?

Win98SE, doesn't seem to like DMA being enabled on the burner.

> Your 2.5GB WD will probably not be UDMA. So that will slow things down.
> WD are probably the worst possible brands in terms of comformity to
> standards and compatability issues.

As it stands transfer rate is probably slower than a 10Mbps network card.
At work I regularly transfer 2 GB of data in about 30 minutes over a
wireless link of that speed.

 

In article <Zd5Mc.3909$>,
says...
> Patrick Dunford wrote:
>
> > My computer has 2 HDDs. C is a 6 GB Udma33 capable Seagate Medallist. D
> > is a 2.5 GB Western Digital Caviar.
> >
> > Creating a copy of a 100 MB file on the same drive is very quick as would
> > be expected. This is the case on both drives
> >
> > However moving that 100 MB file from one drive to the other is incredibly
> > slow (30 minutes or more) and will also slow down other things happening
> > in the computer.
> >
> > The drives are respectively the primary and secondary master devices and
> > there are no other devices on the IDE ports (at the moment).
> >
> > Although this computer should really belong in a museum, it can burn a CD
> > at 16x without buffer underruns. There seems to be no problem filling the
> > process buffer fast enough for a burn and performance is back to what it
> > should be even though the burner (primary slave) is on the same IDE cable
> > as the drive containing the source ISO.
>
> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
> Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>
> What OS are you running? Has DMA been enabled on both drives?
>
> Your 2.5GB WD will probably not be UDMA. So that will slow things down.
> WD are probably the worst possible brands in terms of comformity to
> standards and compatability issues.

Strangely, it now works much faster when both drives are on the same
cable (primary master and slave)

 

In article <>,
says...
> Harry wrote:
>
> > Patrick Dunford wrote:
> >
> >> My computer has 2 HDDs. C is a 6 GB Udma33 capable Seagate Medallist. D
> >> is a 2.5 GB Western Digital Caviar.
> >>
> >> Creating a copy of a 100 MB file on the same drive is very quick as would
> >> be expected. This is the case on both drives
> >>
> >> However moving that 100 MB file from one drive to the other is incredibly
> >> slow (30 minutes or more) and will also slow down other things happening
> >> in the computer.
> >>
> >> The drives are respectively the primary and secondary master devices and
> >> there are no other devices on the IDE ports (at the moment).
> >>
> >> Although this computer should really belong in a museum, it can burn a CD
> >> at 16x without buffer underruns. There seems to be no problem filling the
> >> process buffer fast enough for a burn and performance is back to what it
> >> should be even though the burner (primary slave) is on the same IDE cable
> >> as the drive containing the source ISO.
> >
> > Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
> > Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
> >
> > What OS are you running? Has DMA been enabled on both drives?
> >
> > Your 2.5GB WD will probably not be UDMA. So that will slow things down.
> > WD are probably the worst possible brands in terms of comformity to
> > standards and compatability issues.
>
> He may also have a mobo like the (SIS Chipset) PCChips M810....which has a
> serious issue with it's I/O subsystem.

No it's an Asus TX97

> If you have enough RAM for a large cache and the hard drive has a reasonable
> amount of cache, you don't often notice the problem.
>
> But if you try to do something like copy a large file from one HD to another
> - something much larger than the HD or RAM disk cache - you see the
> bottleneck in all it's deeply flawed glory.
>
> This is why these mobo were so cheap and often OEM'd as a "no-name"
> M810....with no "PCChips" anywhere in sight.
>
> I bought one....but have since gotten rid of it.

Probably nothing to do with the chipset - PC chips sux

 

In article Harry says...
> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
> Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>
80-wire only needed for udma 66 mode and above

 

In article Patrick Dunford says...
> Strangely, it now works much faster when both drives are on the same
> cable (primary master and slave)
>
If you had 1 drive coupled to an optical drive not in DMA mode that
would slow the HD down. Independant IDE timing requires both to be DMA
capable

 

Harry wrote:
> Patrick Dunford wrote:
>
>> My computer has 2 HDDs. C is a 6 GB Udma33 capable Seagate
>> Medallist. D is a 2.5 GB Western Digital Caviar.
>>
>> Creating a copy of a 100 MB file on the same drive is very quick as
>> would be expected. This is the case on both drives
>>
>> However moving that 100 MB file from one drive to the other is
>> incredibly slow (30 minutes or more) and will also slow down other
>> things happening in the computer.
>>
>> The drives are respectively the primary and secondary master devices
>> and there are no other devices on the IDE ports (at the moment).
>>
>> Although this computer should really belong in a museum, it can burn
>> a CD at 16x without buffer underruns. There seems to be no problem
>> filling the process buffer fast enough for a burn and performance is
>> back to what it should be even though the burner (primary slave) is
>> on the same IDE cable as the drive containing the source ISO.
>
> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
> Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?

80-wire cables are only needed for ATA66 and above. Neither of his drives
are rated that fast and I doubt his IDE controller is faster than ATA33.
--
~misfit~

 

In article <>,
says...
> In article Patrick Dunford says...
> > Strangely, it now works much faster when both drives are on the same
> > cable (primary master and slave)
> >
> If you had 1 drive coupled to an optical drive not in DMA mode that
> would slow the HD down. Independant IDE timing requires both to be DMA
> capable

In general it seems that devices on different ports have much slower
transfer of data between them.

When I tried the burner on the secondary with the HDDs both on the
primary the flextralink burnproofing kicked in a lot more often.

I would have expected the transfer rate to be faster between the primary
and secondary than between two devices on the same cable - unless maybe
most boards can't read the primary and write the secondary more or less
simultaenously.

 

~misfit~ wrote:

>> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
>> Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>
> 80-wire cables are only needed for ATA66 and above. Neither of his drives
> are rated that fast and I doubt his IDE controller is faster than ATA33.

I was asking if he had 80-wire cable.

 

colinco wrote:

> In article Harry says...
>> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
>> Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>>
> 80-wire only needed for udma 66 mode and above

I was asking if he had 80-wire cable.

 

Harry <> wrote in news:%VfMc.4060$:

> I was asking if he had 80-wire cable.
>
>

It helps avoid un-necessary chatter if questions are briefly justified.
Justification also help the end user with their own troubleshooting steps
as it often triggers a different approach.
Ciao, Dave

 

Harry wrote:
> ~misfit~ wrote:
>
>>> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
>>> Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>>
>> 80-wire cables are only needed for ATA66 and above. Neither of his
>> drives are rated that fast and I doubt his IDE controller is faster
>> than ATA33.
>
> I was asking if he had 80-wire cable.

Why?
--
~misfit~

 

~misfit~ wrote:

> Harry wrote:
>> ~misfit~ wrote:
>>
>>>> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
>>>> Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>>>
>>> 80-wire cables are only needed for ATA66 and above. Neither of his
>>> drives are rated that fast and I doubt his IDE controller is faster
>>> than ATA33.
>>
>> I was asking if he had 80-wire cable.
>
> Why?

I was asking all the questions I could think of because the post
was so devoid of detail. No mention of the os, etc.

 

Dave Taylor wrote:

> Harry <> wrote in
> news:%VfMc.4060$:
>
>> I was asking if he had 80-wire cable.
>>
>>
>
> It helps avoid un-necessary chatter if questions are briefly justified.
> Justification also help the end user with their own troubleshooting steps
> as it often triggers a different approach.

pot kettle black!

 

Harry wrote:
> ~misfit~ wrote:
>
>> Harry wrote:
>>> ~misfit~ wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary
>>>>> cables? Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>>>>
>>>> 80-wire cables are only needed for ATA66 and above. Neither of his
>>>> drives are rated that fast and I doubt his IDE controller is faster
>>>> than ATA33.
>>>
>>> I was asking if he had 80-wire cable.
>>
>> Why?
>
> I was asking all the questions I could think of because the post
> was so devoid of detail. No mention of the os, etc.

Ok, it's just that the question was irrelevant. Regardless of OS, an 80-wire
cable won't make an ATA33 drive any faster.
--
~misfit~

 

~misfit~ wrote:

> Harry wrote:
>> ~misfit~ wrote:
>>
>>> Harry wrote:
>>>> ~misfit~ wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary
>>>>>> cables? Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>>>>>
>>>>> 80-wire cables are only needed for ATA66 and above. Neither of his
>>>>> drives are rated that fast and I doubt his IDE controller is faster
>>>>> than ATA33.
>>>>
>>>> I was asking if he had 80-wire cable.
>>>
>>> Why?
>>
>> I was asking all the questions I could think of because the post
>> was so devoid of detail. No mention of the os, etc.
>
> Ok, it's just that the question was irrelevant. Regardless of OS, an
> 80-wire cable won't make an ATA33 drive any faster.

It will cut out noise on the cable and possibly eliminate sporadic errors.
It provides better transmission characteristics, and better shielding
for electrical noise. An 80-wire cable has every second wire connected to
earth - if you want a high quality system then having 80-wire cable helps.

You say "... and 80-wire cable won't ...". Well it could do if the
cable was running right next to the high-frequency transformer of
the power supply!

Of course I could also have asked "how long is the cable" but that is
just one of many hundreds of things that a person needs to be cognisant
of when fault finding.

Perhaps I should have asked "does the cable run right next to a noisy
electrical component".

Perhaps I should have asked "is the drive recalibrating frequently"?

It is next to impossibly to diagnose a problem without vaste amounts
of information. "Why is my disk drive slow" is a silly question and
most likely will never be solved in discussion groups like this.

 

Harry wrote:
> ~misfit~ wrote:
>
>> Harry wrote:
>>> ~misfit~ wrote:
>>>
>>>> Harry wrote:
>>>>> ~misfit~ wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary
>>>>>>> cables? Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 80-wire cables are only needed for ATA66 and above. Neither of
>>>>>> his drives are rated that fast and I doubt his IDE controller is
>>>>>> faster than ATA33.
>>>>>
>>>>> I was asking if he had 80-wire cable.
>>>>
>>>> Why?
>>>
>>> I was asking all the questions I could think of because the post
>>> was so devoid of detail. No mention of the os, etc.
>>
>> Ok, it's just that the question was irrelevant. Regardless of OS, an
>> 80-wire cable won't make an ATA33 drive any faster.
>
> It will cut out noise on the cable and possibly eliminate sporadic
> errors. It provides better transmission characteristics, and better
> shielding
> for electrical noise. An 80-wire cable has every second wire
> connected to earth - if you want a high quality system then having
> 80-wire cable helps.

I know. However, from the OP it would seem that this is a less than
state-of-the-art machine.

> You say "... and 80-wire cable won't ...". Well it could do if the
> cable was running right next to the high-frequency transformer of
> the power supply!

Then why not suggest re-routing the cables instead of asking if he has
cables that weren't even around when that machine would have been built?

> Of course I could also have asked "how long is the cable" but that is
> just one of many hundreds of things that a person needs to be
> cognisant of when fault finding.

I have seen very few cables longer than the ATA (or whatever) max spec of
18" (I think)

> Perhaps I should have asked "does the cable run right next to a noisy
> electrical component".

See above.

> Perhaps I should have asked "is the drive recalibrating frequently"?
>
> It is next to impossibly to diagnose a problem without vaste amounts
> of information. "Why is my disk drive slow" is a silly question and
> most likely will never be solved in discussion groups like this.

I beg to differ. I hang in alt.comp.hardware and problems like this are
solved by the regulars frequently, at the rate of several a week at least.
Often the first replies ask for more detail but I've never seen anyone ask
if an old machine, running sub-5GB HDDs on an ATA33 system is fitted with
80-wire cables that (probably) weren't available at the time of manufacture.
--
~misfit~

 

Patrick Dunford wrote:

> In article <>,
> says...
>> Harry wrote:
>>
>> > Patrick Dunford wrote:
>> >
>> >> My computer has 2 HDDs. C is a 6 GB Udma33 capable Seagate Medallist.
>> >> D is a 2.5 GB Western Digital Caviar.
>> >>
>> >> Creating a copy of a 100 MB file on the same drive is very quick as
>> >> would be expected. This is the case on both drives
>> >>
>> >> However moving that 100 MB file from one drive to the other is
>> >> incredibly slow (30 minutes or more) and will also slow down other
>> >> things happening in the computer.
>> >>
>> >> The drives are respectively the primary and secondary master devices
>> >> and there are no other devices on the IDE ports (at the moment).
>> >>
>> >> Although this computer should really belong in a museum, it can burn a
>> >> CD at 16x without buffer underruns. There seems to be no problem
>> >> filling the process buffer fast enough for a burn and performance is
>> >> back to what it should be even though the burner (primary slave) is on
>> >> the same IDE cable as the drive containing the source ISO.
>> >
>> > Do you have 80-wire UDMA cable on both primary and secondary cables?
>> > Are your disk drives set to cable-select or master?
>> >
>> > What OS are you running? Has DMA been enabled on both drives?
>> >
>> > Your 2.5GB WD will probably not be UDMA. So that will slow things down.
>> > WD are probably the worst possible brands in terms of comformity to
>> > standards and compatability issues.
>>
>> He may also have a mobo like the (SIS Chipset) PCChips M810....which has
>> a serious issue with it's I/O subsystem.
>
> No it's an Asus TX97
>
>> If you have enough RAM for a large cache and the hard drive has a
>> reasonable amount of cache, you don't often notice the problem.
>>
>> But if you try to do something like copy a large file from one HD to
>> another - something much larger than the HD or RAM disk cache - you see
>> the bottleneck in all it's deeply flawed glory.
>>
>> This is why these mobo were so cheap and often OEM'd as a "no-name"
>> M810....with no "PCChips" anywhere in sight.
>>
>> I bought one....but have since gotten rid of it.
>
> Probably nothing to do with the chipset - PC chips sux

Asus have made shonky mobos, too. I bought one a few years back that had an
I/O bottleneck of significant proportions in it's VIA Apollo chipset.