HD Controller delays

I had two drives (1 Maxtor and 1 Samsung) connected to a Promise
Ultra133 Tx2 card but when Windows XP would start it would crash after
a few seconds of loading applications. It seemed to crash quicker if I
tried starting other applications while it was loading. I moved the
drives to my motherboard's ata100 controller and Windows was stable
again. The computer is a Presario 8000T with a P4 2.8 GHz with
hyper-threading and both drives were in mode 6 with the Promise
controller and are now back to mode 5 on the motherboard's controller.
I am using Promise's latest drivers 2.0.0.43. I hate sacrificing speed
for stability, yet it seems the extra speed (33%) gained from the
Promise controller is not worth it if I have to suffer unusually long
delays.

On 27 May 2004 19:02:21 -0700, (Joe) wrote:

and both drives were in mode 6 with the Promise
controller and are now back to mode 5 on the motherboard's controller.
[snip]

What is the drive's max speed? Some hard drive tended to be unstable
if you try to force them to operate at faster speed than they are
designed for.
--
To reply, replace digi.mon with tds.net

Uh, that would be impossible. They run at the speed they run. The
controllers are backwards compatible.

Personally, I've had nothing but trouble with the Promise cards. Make sure
you have the latest firmware AND drivers.

Tom
"Impmon" wrote in message
...
On 27 May 2004 19:02:21 -0700, (Joe) wrote:

and both drives were in mode 6 with the Promise
controller and are now back to mode 5 on the motherboard's controller.
[snip]

What is the drive's max speed? Some hard drive tended to be unstable
if you try to force them to operate at faster speed than they are
designed for.
--
To reply, replace digi.mon with tds.net

On Fri, 28 May 2004 00:59:20 -0400, "Tom Scales"
wrote:

Uh, that would be impossible. They run at the speed they run. The
controllers are backwards compatible.

Really? I tested your claim and changed the setting on my PC's BIOS to
force my older 60GB ATA66 drives at mode 6. Nothing but crashes and
bombs. Changed the setting back to 5, my PC ran fine.

So obviously the drive could be forced to run at incorrect speed.
IIRC mode 6 is for ATA133, mode 5 is ATA100, mode 4 is ATA66, mode 2
is ATA33, and mode 1 tops out at 16. Although there are mode3, it's
rare and unusual and I have yet to see ATA44 drives.

Anyway, unless the hard drive is designed to handle 133MB/sec, forcing
it to operate at mode6 usually causes error and crashes. Some
hardware like the IDE card aren't that smart and may incorrectly
assume the speed mode.
--
To reply, replace digi.mon with tds.net

Yes, really. ATA133/100/66/33, etc. are nothing more than "burst rate" specs
for the controller bus. Few IDE drives can hit a sustained 10 megabyte per
second transfer rate, the operative word being "sustained." You cannot force
a drive to transfer data faster than its rating. You MIGHT be able to select
different modes for the controller bus, but not the drives.
HH

"Impmon" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 28 May 2004 00:59:20 -0400, "Tom Scales"
wrote:

Uh, that would be impossible. They run at the speed they run. The
controllers are backwards compatible.

Really? I tested your claim and changed the setting on my PC's BIOS to
force my older 60GB ATA66 drives at mode 6. Nothing but crashes and
bombs. Changed the setting back to 5, my PC ran fine.

So obviously the drive could be forced to run at incorrect speed.
IIRC mode 6 is for ATA133, mode 5 is ATA100, mode 4 is ATA66, mode 2
is ATA33, and mode 1 tops out at 16. Although there are mode3, it's
rare and unusual and I have yet to see ATA44 drives.

Anyway, unless the hard drive is designed to handle 133MB/sec, forcing
it to operate at mode6 usually causes error and crashes. Some
hardware like the IDE card aren't that smart and may incorrectly
assume the speed mode.
--
To reply, replace digi.mon with tds.net

Then you have a hardware problem with your machine. The specifications are
quite clear. The controller must be backwards compatible with older drives.
Would you be running something other than a Windows Operating system?
Perhaps Linux isn't smart enough to know the difference.

Tom
"Impmon" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 28 May 2004 00:59:20 -0400, "Tom Scales"
wrote:

Uh, that would be impossible. They run at the speed they run. The
controllers are backwards compatible.

Really? I tested your claim and changed the setting on my PC's BIOS to
force my older 60GB ATA66 drives at mode 6. Nothing but crashes and
bombs. Changed the setting back to 5, my PC ran fine.

So obviously the drive could be forced to run at incorrect speed.
IIRC mode 6 is for ATA133, mode 5 is ATA100, mode 4 is ATA66, mode 2
is ATA33, and mode 1 tops out at 16. Although there are mode3, it's
rare and unusual and I have yet to see ATA44 drives.

Anyway, unless the hard drive is designed to handle 133MB/sec, forcing
it to operate at mode6 usually causes error and crashes. Some
hardware like the IDE card aren't that smart and may incorrectly
assume the speed mode.
--
To reply, replace digi.mon with tds.net