Hard Drive Read/Write Speed Affects Captures

[bachelor]

I was trying to capture to my master hard drive, and was getting hella dropped frames. So I then tried to capture to my slave (after reading this forum), and it worked flawlessly. I decided to to a read/write speed test of each drive.

My slave had a read speed of 17MB/sec and also a write speed of 17MB/sec. My master, however, which is much faster (or at least it should be!) had a read speed of 3MB/sec and a write speed of 4MB/sec! What's going on?


I have the following setup:

Win2K
AMD Athlon K-7
500 MHz
384MB RAM
WD 40 gig 7200 RPM (master)
WD 17 gig 5400 RPM (slave)
40 pin 80 conductor IDE cable
(master is at end of cable)
Firewire connection


I performed the diagnostic test from Western Digital on both drives, and they both passed the Extended test. So, that tells me that it is somehow my setup.

My motherboard is from a compaq presario 5838, (17gig hd used to be master; added 40gig to system) so I don't know about compatibility. I did change the setting to ATA66 for both drives as I was told by Compaq that that was the fastest it could run at(however, I was told by another rep that it could handle up to ATA100). My bus is capable of 200MHz, but I am not sure if that is the same thing as ATA.

I tried changing my drives to DMA mode, but only my 40 gig changed to DMA. 17 gig did not, but that doesn't matter as it is still way faster (read/write speed) and allows me to capture perfectly.

In any respect, I would like to know how I can tweak my system so that my HD is running with a read/write speed up to par.

Any advice?

[RaleighNC]

How many IDE controllers do you have?? It's better if you can separate the IDE drives. Or it's probably the controller chip. I've had good luck with promise add-on pci and my capture mb is asus. Sorry on experience with compaq & promise.

[bachelor]

I have two IDE controllers. Both HD's are on one, and my DVD-ROM and CD Burner are on the other. My master HD is at the end of the cable, as it should be. Maybe I should try swapping the cables so that each HD is at the end of each cable (however, I will keep the jumper settings the same, obviously).

If it is the controller chip, then why is my HD working fine? It's on the same cable and is using the same chip. Do you think that it is possible that the chip can have bad settings for the master, but correct settings for the slave (if that's even how it works; I don't know)?

I could try installing a controller card. Do you think that would help?

Any other advice?

[KingJohn]

If you put a slow hard drive and a fast hard drive on the same IDE lead, they will both be slow.

Unfortunately you have 2 other slow devices, so the only thing to improve your system is to replace your 5400 Slave.

Or !!

How about you put your 7200 and your and your CD Writer on IDE 0, with a means of switching off the writer when you are not using it !!

When you boot up with the writer switched off, your hard drive should work a lot lot better, and lets face it you don't need your writer on all the time.

Just a thought, I am sure it would be easy to wire up a 4 pole switch for the power lead to the writer.

Try the 7200 drive on its own, un plug the other drive and see how well it performs...

Just a thought...

[bachelor]

I tried my 7200 rpm drive on its own, and it did work a lot better. So I am not sure if it slows down because there is a slave drive attached the same IDE, or because it has a slower drive attached to the IDE (i.e. would it perform up to par if the slave was also 7200 rpm?).

With respect to the idea that both drives would perform slowly because a slow drive and a fast drive are attached to the same IDE cable doesn't seem to jive with the fact that my slave gets a read/write speed of 17mb/sec when on the same cable as my master.

I think I might have to install a PCI controller card, and have my master attached to that, and my slave attached to the controller chip, or vice versa, whichever will perform better.

I also do plan on getting a 7200rpm 60gig HD to replace the 17 gig 5400 rpm. So, we'll see how it all performs.

[KingJohn]

Putting two drives on the same cable is not the problem, putting a slow drive and a fast drive on the same IDE channel is the problem. The timings are different, in order for the slower drive to work at all ! the faster drive will suffer.

When I first build this machine, I had a CD'Rom as the slave, just by doing this I lost the full potential of the drive. I have since placed a 40Gb 7200 as the slave to a 7200 20Gb, wwhhhoooosssssshh >>> They are both the new IBM Deskstar.

If you do buy another drive these beasts are great, and so quiet, I don't hear a single click

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/prod/ds60gxpdata.htm

Media transfer rate 494 Mbits/sec
Sustained data rate 40 MB/sec

[bachelor]

Thanx for the advice. By they way, it may say 40mb/sec in the specs of your IBM HD, but what are the actual data transfer rates of both of your hard drives?

Use this kool tool to find out:

http://www.justedit.com/pub/drivers/ezdvtest.exe

[KingJohn]

I did the tests on the first motherboard I had, it was a Jetway, and had a Quantum fireball 40G. They were both took back and exchanged for an Intel motherboard and the new IBM drives, they don't transfer at 40mb/sec, they bother transfer around 43mb/sec and average 41mb/sec

Hey I like that software you linked, it shows 48/mb/sec - I have something a bit more accurate than that.

[bachelor]

WOW! That's very impressive. What do you think allows you to get such a high speed? The motherboard with its IDE chip, or do you think that IBM's hard drives are that much better than Western Digital?

Also, what program do you have that is more accurate for speed tests?

[Lamont Cranston]

I see 60G drives. Any problems or concerns with 100G drives like the Western Digital 100G 7200 RPM ATA 100 for a capture drive?

[bachelor]

No experience with 100gig drives. Just make sure that it has read/write speeds above 10mb/sec. Use this to test:

http://www.justedit.com/pub/drivers/ezdvtest.exe

Also, set it as your slave drive if you can (no OS running). And if you can have it on a different IDE cable than your master drive, all the better!

[colin@60n]

From my experience, what little there is of it, the following configuration works well enough:

IDE-0rimary hard disk for OS (master)
IDE-1VD-ROM (master)
CD-R/RW (slave)

RAID IDE-0:Secondary hard disk for capture/editing
[add another matched hard disk for capturing/editing in RAID 0 setup if neccesary]
RAID IDE-1:Tertiary hard disk for additional work space or audio capture

The capture/editing/work space disks should be good quality ATA100 7200rpm drives. Most of these quote and show in testing around a 40Mb/sec write speed but even the IBM 60GXP's (generally accepted as about the fastest around) have a specified minimuim rate of 20Mb/sec, presumably onto the inner tracks of the platter, which you only find when you start filling the disk up with captures.

[bachelor]

Kool, thanx for the info. Don't really have much experience with RAID. Could you give me a brief description of what it is, and how I set it up?

[colin@60n]

I don't know what options you have where you're at but both Chaintech and Adaptec do low cost PCI cards that provide another two ATA100 channels and basic RAID functions.

With a RAID 0 setup two hard disks (which should most definately be a matched pair for performance and reliability) are connected to the RAID card and are seen by the system as one big disk, which may then be partitioned up into various drives if necessary.

When data is written to this 'big disk' the RAID card splits the data across both physical drives thus giving an increased write speed.

With your setup Bachelor you should use your smaller 5400rpm disk as your primary drive for the OS and your bigger faster 7200rpm drive on the RAID card for capturing/editing. If you need more space or speed then get another drive the same and connect it as explained above.

[bachelor]

Kool. Thanx. I plan on getting a 7200rpm 60gig in a few weeks, probably an IBM Deskstar as that is supposed to be one of the fastest. When you say that the drives should be the same for a RAID card, do you mean the same make, model, and size, or can they both be of the same rpm, but different makes and sizes, like it will be in my case (Master = Western Digital 7200rpm 40gig, Slave = IBM Deskstar 7200rpm 60gig)?

Also, will I need a RAID card (I only have space for two drives total (master and slave)), or should I just get a controller card for one of the drives so that they will each be on separate IDE cables?

[Nelson37]

Not all add-on controllers will add additional IDE channels, make sure you get one of the Ultra-ATA cards which adds channels rather than just replacing your mobo controllers, this will do you no good.
To put two drives on same cable, they should be matching performance specs for best speed, same make and model for compatibility. RAID CLUSTERS MUST BE MATCHED DRIVES! Drive RPM is an indicator of performance, not a precise measurement - there are 5400 drives which transfer data faster than some 7200 drives.

[Lamont Cranston]

Caution: Not all matching drives will work on the same IDE bus on the Promise Ultra100 PCI card. I have a 100G and 40G 7200RPM Western Digital ATA 100 drives. The performance was severly impared when both drives were on the same Promise IDE bus. I moved one to the second IDE bus and they both worked fine.

[bachelor]

OK. Will keep all that info in mind. Thanx.