Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[Khichadi]

Hi,

I use ST3320613AS 320GB,7200.1,SATA 3Gbps drive installed on the SATA-1 port (Asus P5KPL-AM/PS). It is the only HDD (boot drive for Windows XP SP3) on my system.The burst transfer speeds are suposed to be over 100Mbps in this case, as i havent  touched the jumper as yet. I have performed the short tests using SeaTools for windows and they pass without a hick.

But the HD Tune test reveals burst speed of just 3.7 Mbps which is quite pathetic. Also bootup is extremely slow and takes up more than 2 minutes although i use 2GB DDR2-800 DIMM.

The bios settings are as below:

IDE/ATA Mode : [Enhanced]

Enhanced Mode Support on :[SATA]

I uninstalled the drivers and rebooted and windows automatically installed the drivers. Even after this, the speed is still stuck at 3-4 Mbps.

Is my configuration correct?.. How should i bring out the true speed of my drive?.. 

[fzabkar]

Windows XP will downgrade a drive's performance from DMA mode to PIO mode if it detects more than 6 CRC errors.

DMA Mode for ATA/ATAPI Devices in Windows XP:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

DMA reverts to PIO:

http://winhlp.com/node/10

Here are two SMART diagnostic tools.

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows / Linux):

http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HDDScan for Windows:

http://hddscan.com/

See this article for SMART info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

I'd look for UDMA errors in the SMART report. These are said to be the result of cabling or communications issues.

Message Edited by fzabkar on 24-02-2010 07:20 AM

[Khichadi]

Thanks for the reply.. But i sorted this problem out.. Heres what i did

1) straighten out the SATA wire, no kinks and bends

2) Taped the power cables nicely on the CPU inside so that theres no interference to the SATA/IDE cables

3) Attached the SATA cable on SATA-3 port

4) Set bios to Enhanced mode on SATA ONLY

The results are pretty impressive, bootup time is down to 40 seconds and HD tune shows burst speed of 175 MBps.. The max sustainable speed for this drive is 115Mbps as per datasheet and i get sustained speeds of 116.3MBps..  I am more than happy..!

If someone has similar issues , i would be glad to help

[fzabkar]

I wonder if switching SATA ports caused Windows to see a new drive, in which case it would default to DMA mode???