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[pbarata]

I've a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Serial ATA HD. The highest mode I can achieve is Ultra ATA-100 (mode 5) and not the maximum support by Barracuda the Ultra ATA-133 (mode 6). How can I enable mode 6 in Windows XP?

[jaeger66]

There is no such thing as UDMA for SATA drives.

[pbarata]

When I run the Seagate tools it clearly indicates that my HDD is operating at Ultra ATA mode 5 and is capable of mode 6. So I wonder efectively in which mode my S-ATA HD is running? (Or should I assume that best performance mode is default).

Thx.

[PoRsChE]

you cant , intel chipset only support up to ATA 100 which is UDMA 5

[pbarata]

Thx PoRsChE

Ops, so the solution maybe be an external HDD controller. Is there any brand that you would recommend to me?

Do you thing this extra investment is worthwhile?

[Wonkanoby]

why its only a maximum bus speed it will not make your drives one bit faster than they are now

no current drive troubles an ata 100 bus or evan comes close

[iyongski]

Isn't the specs for the SATA on Intel's ICH5 and ICH5R include:

• The individual channels can support Serial ATA transfers up to 1.5 Gb/s (150 MB/s)
 :
• Point-to-point connection topology ensures dedicated 150 MB/s per device
 :
• In addition to the features of ICH5, the ICH5R I/O controller hub includes an integrated RAID controller that utilizes the dual Serial ATA ports for a high-performance RAID Level 0 configuration with a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 300 MB/s. By integrating the Intel RAID controller into the I/O controller hub, there are no PCI bandwidth limitations (133 MB/s) nor any loss of PCI resources (request/grant pair, PCI slot) that would typically occur with discrete PCI RAID solutions.

So when you run on SATA, the HD will already operate at these "theoretical" speeds?

[Wonkanoby]

never in a million years,just bench it in sandra or atto

most current hard drives run at far less than 1/3 of that bus speed of 150

my 2x wd 8 mb cache in raid 0 are at about 50

wether the bus can handle 100 133 or 150 what does it matter if your drive can only do 45

[jaeger66]

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ULTRA ATA MODES FOR SATA DRIVES.  Trying to read or set modes is like trying to adjust the oil pressure on your televsion.  Windows doesn't know the difference, so it just calls it UDMA 5.  But SATA is entirely different.

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by iyongski

So when you run on SATA, the HD will already operate at these "theoretical" speeds?

No.  The fastest ATA drive on the planet is about 70MB/s.

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by PoRsChE
you cant , intel chipset only support up to ATA 100 which is UDMA 5

True, but also totally irrelevant.

[vango44]

pbarata, If you're interested in speeding things up and don't mind spending some more money, go out and buy a match for your SATA drive and Raid them together. You'll get a large boost in speed and it won't cost much more than buying an ATA133 HDD controller. You could buy the 2 cheapest drives you can find and if you Raid them, get better performance than any other ATA drive. Isn't that one of the reasons you got the NEO-2 mobo?

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by vango44
pbarata, If you're interested in speeding things up and don't mind spending some more money, go out and buy a match for your SATA drive and Raid them together. You'll get a large boost in speed and it won't cost much more than buying an ATA133 HDD controller. You could buy the 2 cheapest drives you can find and if you Raid them, get better performance than any other ATA drive. Isn't that one of the reasons you got the NEO-2 mobo?

That's not true.  Single Hitachi 7K250, WD Raptor, WD 200/250JB, and Maxtor Maxline 2 Plus all outperform 2 Maxtor DM Plus 9's in RAID 0.

[MarkA]

Hi,

Put your drive temporarily on the Promise controller. When your computer boots up, see what the Promise controller sets it to. I know it sets my Ultra ATA Maxtor to UDMA 6, whereas the Intel controller doesn't.

Mark

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by MarkA
Hi,

Put your drive temporarily on the Promise controller. When your computer boots up, see what the Promise controller sets it to. I know it sets my Ultra ATA Maxtor to UDMA 6, whereas the Intel controller doesn't.

Mark

  Oh for crying out loud.  If you don't know the answer, don't make one up.  SATA does not use UDMA/UATA at all.  It just has to call it something so Windows doesn't get confused.

[MarkA]

I did that myself, OK?

[MarkA]

jaeger66

And, by the way, since you are a triple ace and know everything about everything - the next time I need to know something, I'll be sure to ask you.

Mark

[vango44]

We've forgotten that the point of this thread is to try to help pbarata.   So pbarata, since you already have a great motherboard with some features I'm sure you'd like to try sometime. And since Raid is one of those features that you've already paid for, I recommend grabbing another matching SATA drive. Personally, I experienced between a 50-70% performance increase. However,if you want to keep things simple and have some extra $$$, then jaeger66 is quite right particularly about the WD Raptor. It is a great drive!  
Make sure to do some reading about different setups for Raid and visit some hardware reviewing sites before you decide anything. Good Luck!  

[PoRsChE]

sigh .. this topic is so HOT
until everyone get mad

[pbarata]

Indeed the lesson to take from all good contributes is to bet on RAID 0 configuration. I’ve spent a lot of time improving my system performance and now I’ve a very stable P.4 2.4G running at 3.1 GHz. If I change DRAM eventually I could reach a stable configuration at 3.4 GHz (with current DDR400 I get some errors during SANDRA burn-in).

But the sad true is that all this improvements are bottleneck by Hard Disk  performance, thus I decided to get a fast HDD betting in the new S-ATA/150 enhanced protocol, however I’m quite drilled by its performance, which really is not a huge improving when compared to may not so old IBM Deskstar 60GXP ATA/100.  

Trying to understand what could be the cause for such a poor performance gain I started this quest. I hope we can all learn a bit more on S-ATA from all contributes. Thx

[pbarata]

Originally posted by vango44
pbarata, If you're interested in speeding things up and don't mind spending some more money, go out and buy a match for your SATA drive and Raid them together. You'll get a large boost in speed and it won't cost much more than buying an ATA133 HDD controller. You could buy the 2 cheapest drives you can find and if you Raid them, get better performance than any other ATA drive. Isn't that one of the reasons you got the NEO-2 mobo?

Unfortunately my mainboard is model 865PE Neo2-LS and RAID-0 is not included as an option in BIOS!!

[Steve Ell]

Oh dear.

If it makes you feel any better, I've got a Barracuda 7200.7, and I think it's pretty fast, it's certainly as fast as you'll get at that kind of noise level.   Maybe try to concentrate on how nice it is to have a quiet drive!

I suppose the real issue is that hard drives don't get that much faster from one generation to the next.   But is your 7200.7 really too slow?   Don't worry about benchmarks, I bet it doesn't take very long for your applications to boot up!

I use my 7200.7 for running multi-track audio, which is generally held to be fairly demanding disk-wise, and I've never had a problem with the speed of the drive.

As various other people have pointed out, the SATA-150 protocol simply increases the maximum theoretical bandwidth, which even at ATA 100 leaves plenty of headroom compared to the maximum rate a drive can stream data.

But you have got a fast drive!   And the super-thin SATA cable isn't impairing the airflow in your case!  

[vango44]

Unfortunately my mainboard is model 865PE Neo2-LS and RAID-0 is not included as an option in BIOS!!

   Sorry, I thought all the 865PE Intel boards with dual SATA connections had Raid built-in. Please disregard my posts above.  

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by pbarata

Trying to understand what could be the cause for such a poor performance gain I started this quest. I hope we can all learn a bit more on S-ATA from all contributes. Thx

Your performance is fine.  SATA is just a new interface on hard drives, until the drives get faster the interface is irrelevant.

[Wonkanoby]

the extra bandwith on the 133 and 150 have only one tiny advantage and thats with data your drive holds in its memmory cache,that will move faster

so the first 8mb of data wizzes across faster than on an older board,after that nothing else changes from ata 66 days

[REILLY875]

GIVE "Wonkanoby" A CIGAR AND A PINT ...Sean REILLY875

[Bootstritty]

SATA 150 can be run in UDMA mode 6  You my get 60 MB's a sec at the most the very most. the raid driver is an option that is installed before Windowsm and Intel not MSI has the S&*t

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by Bootstritty
SATA is and can be run in mode 6  

Wrong.  Sorry.

[pbarata]

Originally posted by Wonkanoby
the extra bandwith on the 133 and 150 have only one tiny advantage and thats with data your drive holds in its memmory cache,that will move faster

so the first 8mb of data wizzes across faster than on an older board,after that nothing else changes from ata 66 days

Wonkanoby, you are using a Highpoint RAID controller. Which model is? Are you happy with performance and usability? Thx

[pbarata]

I've just found an article on S-ATA which can be very claryfiyng:

"Back To The Future: Serial ATA Arrives At Last"

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20020812/

[Wonkanoby]

its an abit model rocket raid with latest 2.34 highpoint bios and drivers on it ,yes its great,evan if they did another bios i think i would stick with this version

[msinback]

I know this is an old question and perhaps the technology has changed since it was discussed.  However, I too have been trying to enable Ultra DMA 6 on my Windows XP machine using two 300GB Maxtor Diamond 10 drives (SATA Ultra 16 150mb).  Well, I finally figured out that when I change On Chip ATA Operating Mode From Native Mode to Legacy Mode, the windows hardware manager now indicates that all drives are running in Ultra DMA 6.  The reality is that there is really no difference in the drive benchmarks when tested with Sandra.  The DMA 5 actually may be a bit faster.  What's the deal?????


MSI865PE
Processor
Model : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
System BIOS : American Megatrends Inc. V2.5
System : MICRO-STAR INC. MS-6728
Mainboard : MICRO-STAR INC. MS-6728
Total Memory : 1GB DDR-SDRAM
Chipset 1
Model : Micro-Star International Co Ltd (MSI) 82865G/PE/P, 82848P DRAM Controller / Host-Hub Interface
Front Side Bus Speed : 4x 203MHz (812MHz data rate)
Total Memory : 1GB DDR-SDRAM
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 203MHz (406MHz data rate)
Operating System(s)
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP/2002 Professional (Win32 x86) 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 2)

SiSoftware Sandra
Maxtor 6B300SO (SATA ULTRA 16 300GB Serial ATA 150)
DMA 6 Benchmark Results
Drive Index : 50 MB/s

Benchmark Breakdown
Buffered Read : 30 MB/s
Sequential Read : 63 MB/s
Random Read : 28 MB/s
Buffered Write : 115 MB/s
Sequential Write : 63 MB/s
Random Write : 47 MB/s
Average Access Time : 20 ms (estimated)

Drive
Drive Type : Hard Disk
Total Size : 279GB
Free Space : 263GB, 94%

SiSoftware Sandra
Maxtor 6B300SO (SATA ULTRA 16 300GB Serial ATA 150)
DMA 5 Benchmark Results
Drive Index : 50 MB/s

Benchmark Breakdown
Buffered Read : 40 MB/s
Sequential Read : 63 MB/s
Random Read : 28 MB/s
Buffered Write : 117 MB/s
Sequential Write : 63 MB/s
Random Write : 47 MB/s
Average Access Time : 20 ms (estimated)

Drive
Drive Type : Hard Disk
Total Size : 279GB
Free Space : 263GB, 94%

[Danny]

The motherboard number you have given comes in several versions. I will assume you have both these drives connected to the ICH5 controller since you refer to changing the on chip operating mode.

The ICH5 controller supports two PATA channels at UDMA5. UDMA is totally irrelevant when referring to SATA drives. UDMA is a parralel data transfer rating; SATA is a serial data transfer rate. The ICH5 shows SATA drives to Windows as IDE drives, so Windows does it's best to display what it thinks is connected.

Maxtor led the drive to UDMA6 PATA drives. These drives are capable of transferring data at 133 MBS, compared to 100 MBS for UDMA5. Actually, it's not the drives that are capable of that transfer rate, it's the interface that is capable. The drives are the same ones used in SATA models, and use the same technology as used by other manufacturers.

Basically what you have is a high speed interface on a low speed drive - the drives top out around 65 MBS on the fastest portion of the platter, and can drop as low as 30 MBS on the slowest. So the 66 MBS interface is plenty fast. The only time any drive can feed data at the interface's rated transfer rate is when the data is sitting in the cache. Considering most cache's are 8 MB, and even allowing for new drives with 16 MB caches, divide that by the transfer rate to see how long you can saturate the communication bus.

SATA drives offer several advantages over PATA drives, and now cost about the same. As well, the PATA interface is on it's way out. As far as UDMA6 vs UDMA5, it's pure marketing hype.

[msinback]

Thanks so much for your reply and explanation.  Now I understand!!  Yes, I do have an ICH5 controller. And my board is the  865PE Neo2-FIS2R.  I agree with you.  The marketing folks of drive manufacturers do mislead the enduser.  What was more confusing was the description of this chipset found in the MSI docs for this board:

• Intel® ICH5R Chipset
- Integrated Hi-Speed USB 2.0 controller, 480Mb/sec, 8 ports
- 2 Serial ATA/ 150 ports 
- 2 channel Ultra ATA 100 bus Master IDE controller 
- PCI Master v 2.3, I/O APIC
- Supports both ACPI and legacy APM power management - Serial ATA/150 RAID 0 and RAID 1 

And then the hard drive manufacturer says:

• Ultimate performance
with SATA/150 interface,
1.5 Gb/sec. interface speed
• Ultra ATA data transfer
speeds up to 133MB/sec.

So, what do you think of this "MHX™ + NCQ technology" on the SATA drives?  Is this also hype?
Finally, should I change my settings back to "native mode"

[Danny]

NCQ, from the tests I have seen, is of a benefit when multiple applications/threads need to access the drive at the same time, typically in a server invironment. There is little benefit of this for the desktop right now, but as software adapts to multiple-core cpu's this will probably change.

In the Intel world to take advantage of NCQ you need to use a board with either the ICH6 or ICH7 chipset (the latter is full SATA II).

You should change back to Native mode. This free's up additional IRQ's to the operating system and gives you access to all 6 hard drive channels.