DMA66 no good at all?

[yeast]

Hi,
I finally went to Fry's and got myself a UDMA66 cable for my Promise Ultra66 and a WD 8.4GB UDMA66 HD. But what do I find? My C: (hooked onto motherboard controller) is slower! and E: (The WD UDMA66 HD) has no gain. What's wrong? I enabled UDMA66 mode on the WD harddrive, but I have no idea if the Ultra66 controller is using UDMA66. Win98 only shows a settings string box to type specific commands in Control Panel...

Confused,
Ethan

[Fyx]

Depending on how the controller works, by having a UDMA33 master on the same controller as your UDMA66 drive, you may be forcing it to operate in UDMA33 mode. I'd leave your UDMA33 drive back on your old controller, and have the UDMA66 drive on it's own on the Promise Ultra66.

Also, this may not be an issue for your drive, but some require you enable udma66 on the drive through a software utility before they will operate in that mode.

[nickcoe]

i have just upgraded to an abit bp6 with dual celeron 466. I had an abit bx6rev2 previous. I use an IBM 22gb 7200rpm drive. When l put the drive on the ata66 the drive is much faster. I can now sustain about 9mb/sec instead of about 6mb/sec.

I guess it depends on your drive as to wether an ata66 controller will make a difference. I've seen quantum 18gb ata66 and they dont look as fast as my ibm drive.

[Marijn]

Hi there,

it's a long link, but it will lead you to storagereview.com, where they have compared ata66 to ata33. As they show, there is little difference...

Marijn
http://www.storagereview.com/welcome...ta66vs33a.html

[High_Jumbllama]

I've had a Promise Ultra ATA66 since it first came out. I had planned on the ultra33 version but saw this one and pre-ordered it. It runs the Ultra66 drives at a higher rate. I forget the drive size limit, but I think it is 128GB. As for running the Ultra33 drives, it maxed out the Ultra 33 drive. Not frequently of course but it would hit the maximum when using the Ultra 33 on my motherboard would barely get 75% at all. If you have too much else running through your PCI bus or are sharing an IRQ, then this may be the result of the slowdowns. You alos have to make sure when using an Ultra66 drive that you are using the special 40pin/80 wire cable that comes with it or you can never each the ultra66 speeds.
My 4GBUltra33 drive runs through the normal cable connected to my Ultra66 and I have no problems.

FYI. CD-Roms DO NOT work with this card. Also, the eject button on LS-120s may not work.

[yeast]

1) Problem is the Ultra66 requires 2 HD's on 1 'cable'. And I only got 1 Ultra66 =( Is that why?

2) And how can I tell if Ultra66 is using UDMA66?

3) Can I configure Ultra66 at all? or is the damn thing 'uncontrollable'?

Deeply lost,
Ethan

[dchip]

I run my WD Ultra ATA-66 18GB alone on the Promise Ultra ATA card. Promise does not require 2 HDD's. Your system will detect the Promise as a SCSI device and you can make it the boot drive in you bios. As for determing for sure that your drive is delivering ATA-66
you may have to check for a utility the HD manufacturer provides. My Western Digital arrived with UTA-66 enabled, but, I have seen some that ship with it disabled. I capture between 9 and 12 mb/sec with my setup which includes ASUS P3BF, G200TV, 128MB PC-100, etc.

[yeast]

hmm...I really thought the Promise Ultra66 required 2 HD's...I'll try out tonight then.

As for the benchmarks, you're using the Matrox one, right?

-Ethan

[Rick6612]

Hi Ethan,

You are thinking of the Promise FastTrak RAID controller. That requires at least 2 drives to build a RAID. The Promise Ultra66 does not require more than one drive to operate.

If you are only using the Matrox HD Benchmark utility to measure your drives' performance, then that might be part of your problem. The Matrox utility is not very accurate. You would be better off downloading a utility like HD Tach or Sisoft Sandra.

Rick

[yeast]

So which HD benchmark did you use so that I may have a comparable benchmark?

-Ethan

[dchip]

The benchmark I used is the Matrox one. It reports between 9 and 11.97 MB/sec. I don't know why it varies. Must be the wind. Anyway, it works good like that. If I get another HDD I will put it on the Promise' second slot but I will still keep all CD ROM (writer,reader) on the IDE slots on M'board. By the way, the Matrox benchmark is in no way indicative of how fast your HDD really was born to be. The sustained capability of most Ultra ATA-66 is about 66 MB/sec but the Matrox benchmark doesn't push it that hard. Only hard enough to make sure it can make decent video.