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**Alegria** · 29 March 2000, 03:48

Since when does a UDMA66 drive not support DMA transfers? It should be downward compatible to UDMA33 though. I'm missing something here.

Alegria

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The pump don't work, 'cause the vandals took the handle...
Bob Dylan

**Gurm** · 29 March 2000, 05:30

He has an UDMA66 controller built into his BE6, which has DMA always on (can't disable).

I think this is a twofold problem.

1.) Maxtor sucks hardcore. Sorry, they just do. There's a reason they're the cheapest available drive.

2.) Your drive optimizer program is flaking on you. Any caching program will totally screw up results from a benchmark. Try it with the optimizer disabled and let us know the results.

- Gurm (who would take a Seagate U33 over a Maxtor U66 ANY DAY OF THE WEEK!)

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**DosFreak** · 29 March 2000, 13:35

1. Maxtor drives do not "suck". If you want proof go to www.storagereview.com
2. Second never used a Hard drive speeder up kind of utility because they don't do anything.
3. Get a real benchmark program like HDTACH from http://www.tcdlabs.com/

**Gurm** · 29 March 2000, 16:19

Maxtor (oh my GOD, I wrote Matrox by mistake. I hope the acolyte isn't here... good, now it's gone!) hard drives SUCK. They SUCK REAL BAD. I'm serious. I have used, abused, and sold all brands of hard drives. No other drive, on a regular basis, is returned making a loud "snap, snap, snap, snap" noise.

Not only that, but their throughput is sub-par, they are loud, and did I mention that they are prone to breaking in a rather spectacular manner?

Secondly, yes I agree - no "hard drive optimizers". Funny that your DRIVERS will do that if you use them correctly.

*sigh* Ok, rant off.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[This message has been edited by Gurm (edited 30 March 2000).]

**Jon P. Inghram** · 30 March 2000, 15:01

I've got a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 5120 7200 RPM UDMA/66 10gig drive, and have been pleased with it. Well, except for the before mentioned HORRIBLE, frightening, make you think the computer's about to explode clicking/snapping noise that's occurred a couple of times since we've had it. That and HDTach shows that it won't hit above 22MB/s burst transfer rate, but I think that's probably just my crummy Epox MVP3G5 mobo.

**Gurm** · 30 March 2000, 15:50

Jon,

Get your data off that hard drive. NOW. TODAY. Get it all off and return it immediately for repair/replacement. That clicking will recur, and happen more and more until the drive expires!

I mean it. Heed my warning.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**Jon P. Inghram** · 30 March 2000, 16:17

Great... :-) It's probably a good thing then that we keep what little important stuff we have backed up on zip disks. Thanks for the warning!

**Gurm** · 31 March 2000, 05:06

Jon,

No thanks necessary, just get yourself a working hard drive, that's all the thanks I need.

Here's how to go about it:

Case 1: You bought your drive recently (within 30 days) from a major store (Micro Center, CompUSA, Circuit Shitty).

Path of Action: Go to store. Tell them the drive sucks ass. Make them give you a new one.

Case 2: You bought your drive from a smaller computer custom shop within a year (standard warranty time period for those kinds of shops).

Path of Action: Same as before, only you have longer!

Case 3: You are out of store warranty (30 days for major chain, 1 year for small store).

Path of Action: Go to Maxtor's web site. If they have an online RMA form, fill it out. If not, just call their technical support number. These people will want to "do some tests". Tell them you aren't interested in tests because the drive made a HORRIBLE noise (try to make the noise on the phone with your mouth and throat, that always works - they're too shocked to argue with you at that point). They will issue you an RMA number.

NOW is the tricky part. Demand a rapid exchange, or a cross shipment, or whatever Maxtor calls it. That's when they ship you a new drive overnight (or priority, whatever), and you send the old one back within a couple weeks of getting the new one. Gives you time to do a drivecopy or ghost to get your data backed up. You just have to give them a credit card number so they can be sure you don't skip town with their drive.

Hope this helps!

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**bongo** · 31 March 2000, 23:20

Hey thanks a lot for the suggestion for turning off the disk optimization, it really made a HUGE difference in speeding up the system!

But there is still a bit of irritating weirdness. When I run HardDrive Tach on my Maxtor UDMA66 (91366U4) 7200rpm, I get the following specs:

Rand Access Time 16.9ms
Read Burst Speed 59mbs

BUT

when I run the test on the older Seagate UDMA33 7200 rpm

Rand Access Time 13.3ms
Read Burst Speed 14.4 mbs

I know that the Burst speed is better on the Maxtor, which it should be, why the heck am I getting a slower Access Time than the older Seagate? I have turned off all the disk optimizer, so what gives? And I read somewhere that the Maxtor should get under 9ms rand access time...any thoughts?

thank you again

ps should I enable write behind caching in the file system properties??

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"The path of excess leads to the temple of knowledge"

ABit BE6 II UDMA 66 w/ PentiumIII 500mhz
Matrox G400 DH 32 meg MAX
Maxtor 13gig UDMA66 7200 Seagate 9gig UDMA33 7200
Aureal Vortex SuperQuad2500
19" PF790 Viewsonic (superb flat screen)
19" Samsung 950p (amazing quality for the price)
ACK 580 crdless k/b and mouse
Panasonic 7585 CD RW 32x8x4
Pioneer DVD 114 10x40x
USR V90 ISA everything modem
one big case fan and standard retail CPU/HS cooling from Intel

[This message has been edited by bongo (edited 01 April 2000).]

**Gurm** · 1 April 2000, 08:16

Ok, I'll say this slowly, maybe you'll hear this time...

M A X T O R S U C K S.

It's that simple. They can ADVERTISE a 9ms access time, but in practice my IBM 7200RPM U66's seldom get much better than 9ms... Seagate Cheetahs still are only 8ms (except the hyper-ultra-mega-fast ones that cost as much as my last car!). Nothing Maxtor has ever made has been better than 10-ish ms, no matter what they advertise.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**RAB** · 1 April 2000, 08:40

I'll take Gurm's warnings into account, but I've never had any clicking sounds out of my Maxtor 10gig. 12.9ms random access, but only 21.5 mps read bursts. But this is because of the same Epox MVP3G5 as Jon. I wouldn't call it a POS, but the burst speed is not what it should be on these boards.

RAB

**Jon P. Inghram** · 1 April 2000, 14:42

Maybe POS is a little harsh on Epox. :-) I just wish VIA or the board manufactures would just admit that either there's a driver or hardware problem with these motherboards that is preventing full UDMA/66 speeds.

I'm kinda wondering if perhaps the UDMA/66 support is similar to the early G400's AGP 4x support, in that they really mean it just works with a UDMA/66 drive, but won't really run at the full speed.

Oh, about the G400, if I were to switch my G200 for one, would it improve performance much? With Halflife, my G200 almost functions as a 3D DEcelerator, and I get much better framerates in software mode in complex scenes. It runs quite good with Quake2 though.

**Gurm** · 2 April 2000, 07:21

Jon,

At least twice as fast, if not faster. Yes, the G400 is a major step up.

- Gurm

**RAB** · 2 April 2000, 08:22

Jon,
3dMark99 scores with K6-3 450:

G200 2260
G400 3750

I have both video cards overclocked, but the relative speed is indicative of what you can expect. The G200 is on a 112 mhz FSB, but the G400 is only on a 100 mhz FSB on the Epox MVP3G5. That's another disappointment of the MVP3G5 - it won't overclock the FSB. The G200 is on an MVP3C2 and it easily overclocks the FSB to 112. I'm sure if the FSB were 112 on the G400, it would add 50 points to the 3dMark99 score.

RAB

Oops! Sorry, I got way off the subject.

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Strange problem with Maxtor UDMA66 HD

Strange problem with Maxtor UDMA66 HD

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