[Hudlug] SCSI drives vs EIDE for Crimbo

[Anne Wilson]

On Monday 16 Dec 2002 7:08 pm, Dave Pattern wrote:
> Hiya Shak
>
> I've read bad things about rounded cables for fast ATA100/133 drives.
>  Proper flat ATA100/133 cables have a grounding wire between each
> "data" wire that helps keep electronic crosstalk and interferance to
> a minimum.

Ah - is *that* why they appear to have twice as many wires?  Yes, I'm dub=
ious=20
about interference when the wires are bunched.
>
> With the rounded cables, all the wires are getting bunched up
> together, so I'm not 100% convinced that the grounding wires can do
> their job properly.  I guess the more you spend on a rounded cable,
> the more care the manufacturer will have put in.
>
> If you're having IDE problems, try re-attaching the IDE cables, then
> try different (or new) cables.  If you still get problems and your
> motherboard supports it, check the to see if the PSU drops any of the
> voltages when large transfers are taking place.  If so, you might
> need a more powerful (or better quality) PSU.
>
I think I'd start with the psu, before trying anything else.  Hmm - I thi=
nk I=20
have a standby 300 psu, as well ;)

> It's also worth checking to see if there are any BIOS/driver fixes
> available for the motherboard that fix known transfer problems.  One
> of my ABit motherboards suffered lock-ups when transferring large
> files and that was caused by the on-board Highpoint controller - a
> BIOS upgrade fixed that.
>
Those early Highpoint controllers were problematic.  I used  downloaded d=
river=20
upgrade to fix mine - didn't need the bios upgrade.

> Finally, slows downs might be due to the DMA setting, or if the hard
> drive is sharing the same IDE cable with a slower device.  I know my
> SuSE linux has a DMA option that, after I'd activated it, made the
> hard drive fly :-)
>
> DaveyP

Anne