"Wes Newell" wrote in message newsan.2004.07.20.21.10.40.749665@TAKEOUTverizon .net
On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 15:33:29 -0400, ZigZag Master wrote:

I have a Maxtor 200GB (6Y200P0) and a Western Digital 250GB WD2500JB in a
AMD 2500 / Abit NF7-S - 1GB RAM. I am running Windows XP Pro.

I was wondering how long it should take to copy large files between the
drives.

I have some TV captures that are about 8-12GB. It just seems like it takes
a long time to copy from drive to drive....about 6-8 minutes. Is this
normal?

Also, do I have to do anything special to turn on DMA mode? I think I was
using Pinnacle Studio, and it popped up a window saying DMA mode was not
enabled on the Maxtor.

For best performance, make sure the 2 drives are not on the same channel
(cable). If they are on the same channel, this will be a major
slowdown,

Nope.

as each channel can only perform 1 IO fubction at a time.

Like this would be any different for SCSI or any other bus.

So it will have to read to ram, then write back out to the same channel.

So what. An IDE channel can support two drives.

Using 2 channels (cables), both will happen at the same time.

Nope.

Then make
sure you have them set to the fastest settings they support. I use hdparm
to check/set mine, but I run linux. Not sure where you set/check drive
modes in win.