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ATA100 - how to check if it's working

I'm building a new machine using an ASUS A7M266 M/B, an AMD Athlon 1.4GHz and two "Maxtor Diamond Max VL 40 Ultra DMA 100" 30 Gb drives (precise model number is 33073H3). I've got as far as installing WIN2000 Pro and it all seems to be working fine.

I want to know that UDMA 100 is working (so that I get the best from the drives).

The BIOS reports that PIO mode = 4 and ULTRA DMA Mode = 5 (which I guess means the BIOS thinks that the drives are running at top speed).

I haven't loaded any drivers from the ASUS CD for the hard drive controller.

How can I tell from within WIN2K if UDMA100 is actually working (and do I need to install special drivers to make it work)?

I hope that makes sense and someone can help.

Cheers,

Tiny :)
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I'm not sure that you can easily.
In any case, Make sure sp2 in applied since there were known ATA100 problems previous to this.

Also do a Start - windowsupdate

I hope this helps !
ALso Norton Utilities , MCAfee , Ontrack etc should have speed tests.

ALso

http://www.zdnet.com/etestinglabs/filters/benchmarks/ 

cnet.com etc.
search for a hard drive speed test.

I hope this helps !
Tiny,

First, I would recommend that you check the Asus drivers against your device list to insure that you don't install drivers that you may not need.

As for the ATA100 issue, Windows 2000 does not support ATA100. All drives, even with SP2 installed, default to ATA66. See this MSKB article for more.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q260/2/33.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=Q260233&rnk=1&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000

The fix that was deployed prior to SP2 and then later incorporated into it, fixed some issues that revolved around ATA/UDMA 100 capable IDE bus's, but does not enable ATA100.

The following article will help you understand what is normally found in device manager.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q269/5/55.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=Q260233&rnk=2&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000

The most effective software for verifying ATA support is Sisoft's Sandra.

Dennis
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tinyl

ASKER

Sorry about delay in responding - been ill. I'll get back to it soon. Tiny :)
Okay Tiny!
Tiny, how are you making out?
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Sorry about the long time away - only recently fully recovered from dreaded lurgy!

FYI the WIN2000 Pro I installed was complete with SP2, so that hurdle is over.

From what I can gather, people are telling me that even with SP2, ATA 100 drives will fall back to ATA 66. Am I right about that?

I've just downloaded SANDRA and will report on what it thinks in a few days.

Thanks for your patience.

Tiny :)
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Dennis

Thanks for your comment. I've looked at both those MSKB articles and they seem to indicate that (by downloading the patch or waiting for the next SP)W2000 can support ATA100. But you seem to be saying that isn't the case?

(I'm off out in a few minutes and may not get to see any comments until tommorow)

Tiny :)
What those articles refer to are patches to properly support the bus (hardware issue), but the OS itself does not support the transfer rates.
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Dennis

Sorry about the delay - been away.

You are right. I've now got SISofts SANDRA (yukky name) on the system and got the VIA drivers loaded and the best I can get is just a little bit over 66.

I wonder whether dear ol' Microsoft will actualyy fix this (one day?!)

Tiny :)
Tiny, as much as I would like to believe otherwise, it's not a problem in MS coding or Windows as much as it is with busmastering problems. The problem stems from the original AT design on the bus years ago, htat's why scsi was so popular on high speed machines.