DMA and Win2k

[AndrewDV]

Hi,

Has anyone had success with getting Win2K to utilize DMA on their hard drives? Anyone out there use a Promise Fasttrack 100 in Win2K?

I loaded up Win2K in another partition a long time ago. It is never used because the benchmarks are super slow. With the coming of the G400 Win2K drivers, I am trying to decide what hurdles need to be overcome. The DMA issue is #1.

Thank you

[wkulecz]

I'm not having any trouble with DMA or my Fasttrack66 on windows 2000.

I've BX chipset PIII's and AMD chipset Athelon. I've done nothing special other than install the fasttrack66 drivers.

DMA settings are in device manager under the controller not the drives as was in win9x.

The only benchmark that counts for me is can I capture and export back to tape without drops or glitches. The answer is yes no problem. Except for a new 1394 drive I'm trying -- can capture to it fine on four systems. Outputing a file on it back to tape fails on three of four systems :-(

HTH.
--wally.

[Dr Mordrid]

My FT100 works great in Win2K. Just make sure whenever you install any of the newer drivers for the Fasttraks you also do the following;

1. install the Fastcheck utility appropriate for your driver version.

2. in the Fastcheck "Options" disable the S.M.A.R.T. feature. Leave the CACHE on.

3. reboot.

Dr. Mordrid

[AndrewDV]

Thanks

I do have a question on the benchmarks. Whether Intel or AMD, the readings from the Matrox tool are less than half of Win98. Just an example, the tool reads ~7MB/s under Win2K for a WD hard drive, while it is ~19MB/s under Win98.

The only odd item I noticed is the diff between Intel and AMD for setting DMA. For the Intel machine, I used the device manager. I picked the controller card, and selected the DMA setting.

For the AMD machine, I had the same experience at first. After seeing the low performance #s, I loaded the VIA drivers (v 4.28) which included the ATA100 driver. The process of recognition went as usual. After that was complete, the device manager showed the updates. The odd item is that the ability to select DMA or PIO was gone. The performance went up slightly, but not by much. However, the performance was better on the AMD machine than the Intel machine.

Does anyone else get these low readings? I'd rather have those nice high readings. Is it a problem with the tool or more something withn Win2k.

Thank you

[wkulecz]

Are you able to capture without drops and output back to tape without glitches? If so, did you buy your computer to edit with or to brag about benchmark numbers?

The only benchmarks that count are your applications! These stupid benchmarks are leading to wrong headed designs just so marketing can play the stupid numbers game.

--wally.

[AndrewDV]

LOL!

You do make a good point. I just want to make sure that the system is running at high potential.

Thank you