[plug] Bit of hardware advice

[John Summerfield]

> Hi ya all,
> 
> Just after a bit of hardware advice on a new drive that I am considering
> purchasing for my machine. Basically I am looking at getting one of the new
> 13.6GB Quantum Fireball KA UATA 55, 7,200 rpm HDD. This will slot into a
> machine that has an Abit BX6 motherboard and a 300A celeron processor
> (overslocked to 450 of course). The ide controller only supports 33 so I was
> planning to buy an updated controller card like the ones below:

Why? Isn't this performance good enough? Will UDMA/66 actually do better?
[root at possum summer]# /sbin/hdparm -ti /dev/hda

/dev/hda:

 Model=IBM-DJNA-370910, FwRev=J74OA30K, SerialNo=GH0GHG01
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
 RawCHS=17662/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=34
 BuffType=3(DualPortCache), BuffSize=1966kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
 DblWordIO=no, maxPIO=2(fast), DMA=yes, maxDMA=2(fast)
 CurCHS=1108/255/63, CurSects=-1464860401, LBA=yes, LBAsects=17803440
 tDMA={min:120,rec:120}, DMA modes: mword0 mword1 mword2 
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, PIO modes: mode3 mode4 

 Timing buffered disk reads:  32 MB in  1.91 seconds =16.75 MB/sec
[root at possum summer]# 


This is a 7200 rpm drive in a PII-233, LX chipset, UDMA/33. 

Note the cache size;-)

You only get the 66 Mbytes/sec if the data's cached. Otherwise it's back 
to waiting for the drive to seek & spin. The sustained data rate is 
closely related to the rotation speed and the real track capacity (not 
what the BIOS  thinks or what the drive says).

-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.