Folkert Rienstra wrote:
"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.

Wrong. His drives will only be running at half their potential if they're
both on the same channel.

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

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

Actually, it is. An ATA bus (current SATA implementations or parallel) can
only have one active request at a time. A SCSI bus can have requests
outstanding, so there is very little wastage of bus bandwidth (though more
complex electronics are needed).

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.

Yes, but not at the same time. Only one request can be active at any point
in time. So your drives will run at exactly half of their potential speed if
you only use one channel. This is the reason why doing any sort of IDE RAID
pretty much requires that you have one device per channel, otherwise you
take a big performance hit.

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

Nope.

You're wrong, again. You should actually understand the topic before you
answer with such confidence

[...]

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Michael Brown
www.emboss.co.nz : OOS/RSI software and more
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