Scarse prestazioni dell HDD? Risponde Maxtor

[franziski]

Tempo fa interpellai via email la Maxtor, chiedendo loro come mai il mio Maxtor ATA-133 avesse indici di benchmark relativamente bassi.

A distanza di un mese, ho ricevuto oggi una risposta, molto dettagliata, i cui contenuti ritengo davvero interessanti tali da farmi decidere di condividerli con voi.

Si fa riferimento a possibili cause ben note (es. utilizzo improprio del cavo a 80 poli) ma anche a cause che io non conoscevo (e che non avevo mai letto) come il "DOS compatibility mode" e la grande imprecisione dei software di benchmarking (per cui Maxtor ne consiglia un paio di ben precisi)

Ecco a voi il testo, sperando che possa tornare utile in futuro a qualche amico che abbia avuto i miei stessi problemi.


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Dear Sir or Madam,


If you are experiencing performance problems with your hard drive there are a number of ways to troubleshoot the problem:

The data transfer rate, stated in Mb/s on the ATA hard disk specification sheets, is merely a theoretical value.

Data clusters can differ in size and are not always arranged in order. This results in an actual lower data transfer rate.


A) Check whether the hard drive(s) are using MS-DOS Compatibility mode. To do this go to System Properties and select the Performance tab. If the drive is using compatibility mode it will be listed here. For more information on this see also:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q175629


B)Make sure the drive(s) are connected to a UDMA (40 pin, 80
conductor) cable. This applies even if your system does not support UDMA.


C) Separate the drives. Connect both separately as master drives on the Primary and Secondary controllers or try them one by one as Primary master to see whether this makes a difference to the performance of the drives. When doing this please ensure that any other devices on the cables, for example CDROM, DVD, zip drives are disconnected.


D) Check which drivers are loaded for your hard disk controller (bus master drivers). If the bus master driver is not the correct one or if you are using the standard Windows drivers it may reduce the performance of your hard drive attached to that controller. If you have recently re-installed the operating system, this is a likely cause for your problem. If you are not sure whether or not your have the appropriate drivers please check with your system or motherboard manufacturer for the correct ones. If the motherboard/controller specific drivers are being used, try installing the generic Windows bus master drivers instead to see if there is an improvement in performance.


E) In order to test the data transfer rate of a hard drive you should connect it as the only drive to the standard ide controller on the mainboard and use a DOS based programme such as H2Bench ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/h2bench.zip for testing.


F) If your system only supports UDMA 33, it might cause compatibility problems with a drive that supports UDMA 133, UDMA 100 or UDMA 66. However, we have developed a utility so that, if necessary the UDMA mode of the hard drive can be manually set down to whichever mode is suitable to your system.
This program can be downloaded from our website http://www.maxtor.com/softwaredownload/default.htm This same utility can also be used to set the UDMA mode back up if, for example, you decided to upgrade your motherboard. Please note that at the moment we do not have a software solution to fix this BIOS bug for the D540X-4K and D740X product families. We would recommend contacting your motherboard manufacturer to see if it is possible to obtain a BIOS upgrade which eliminates this problem.


G) Please test the drive for faults with our diagnostic tool PowerMax which can be downloaded from our website www.maxtor.com.

H) Some Onboard Raid Controllers are "lite versions" and will not work with the same performance as a PCI Raid Controller Card. If you are using your hard drive in a RAID configuration please also test it as a single drive on the onboard IDE controller. Should the drive achieve an acceptable result, the performance problems could be caused by a driver or a conflict under Windows. In that case you should contact either the manufacturer of your RAID controller or Microsoft customer support for further assistance.


You'll find some more information on performance problems with RAID Controllers on the following website:
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/817/index.html


I) Heat issues can also influence the performance of a hard drive.
Especially in RAID arrays hard drives can get very hot. Make sure to provide adequate cooling.


If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us. In order to allow us to deal with all enquiries as efficiently and accurately as possible we would ask that you include any previous emails when replying to us.


Kind Regards,


Technical Support Team, Maxtor Ireland Ltd.


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MAXTOR Technical support / customer Service