Discrepancy in HD formatting speed

Hi Folks,

I've just built up a machine I want to use as a backup 'server' using a
spare A7V600 motherboard I have.
I've installed an additional PCI SATA card, and have just put in three
identical 2TB WD20EADS drives, one using a port on the motherboard (I
had to jumper this drive to force the SATA150 mode) and the other two
are going to the new SATA card (seems to work fine in the default
SATA300 mode).

Out of habit, I always do a 'standard' (not 'quick') format when I first
stick a drive in, and I'd expect a 2TB drive to take a few hours to
finish, which is indeed what its looking like on the two drives attached
to the PCI card.
However the drive connected directly to the motherboard zipped through
the (same) format in a min or two. I double checked and it was not set
to quick.

I'm running XP on it and using the standard Admin Tools Disk
management utility.

Anyone know why there is this discrepancy in speed?

Cheers
Gareth

On Wed, 2 Jun 2010 18:36:35 +0100, Gareth Jones
wrote:

Hi Folks,

I've just built up a machine I want to use as a backup 'server' using a
spare A7V600 motherboard I have.
I've installed an additional PCI SATA card, and have just put in three
identical 2TB WD20EADS drives, one using a port on the motherboard (I
had to jumper this drive to force the SATA150 mode) and the other two
are going to the new SATA card (seems to work fine in the default
SATA300 mode).

Out of habit, I always do a 'standard' (not 'quick') format when I first
stick a drive in, and I'd expect a 2TB drive to take a few hours to
finish, which is indeed what its looking like on the two drives attached
to the PCI card.
However the drive connected directly to the motherboard zipped through
the (same) format in a min or two. I double checked and it was not set
to quick.

I'm running XP on it and using the standard Admin Tools Disk
management utility.

Anyone know why there is this discrepancy in speed?

Cheers
Gareth

most likely reason would be the speed of the interface.
PCI is only about 20% the throughput of the onboard SATA150 .. under
'perfect' conditions

In message , Jack Simms
writes

most likely reason would be the speed of the interface.
PCI is only about 20% the throughput of the onboard SATA150 .. under
'perfect' conditions


Hi Jack,

I'm sure you're right that a full speed SATA150 interface would be
faster than a PCI card in normal use, but it doesn't explain the HUGE
discrepancy in speed I'm seeing, PLUS:
I recently built up another machine using a brand new, current core2duo
motherboard and CPU, using another batch of the exact same 2TB drives,
and those also all formatted in hours, not minutes.
Also, due to the age of the motherboard, I suspect that the on board
SATA ports of the A7V600 are actually pretty closely tied to the PCI bus
themselves, so I don't think there would be such a big difference
between on board, and PCI based transfer.

So I'm tempted to think its the motherboard controller of the A7V600
that's the odd one out here, but I'm puzzled as to why its doing it, and
does it make any difference to the integrity of the format?

Cheers
Gareth

Gareth Jones wrote:
In message , Jack Simms
writes

most likely reason would be the speed of the interface.
PCI is only about 20% the throughput of the onboard SATA150 .. under
'perfect' conditions


Hi Jack,

I'm sure you're right that a full speed SATA150 interface would be
faster than a PCI card in normal use, but it doesn't explain the HUGE
discrepancy in speed I'm seeing, PLUS:
I recently built up another machine using a brand new, current core2duo
motherboard and CPU, using another batch of the exact same 2TB drives,
and those also all formatted in hours, not minutes.
Also, due to the age of the motherboard, I suspect that the on board
SATA ports of the A7V600 are actually pretty closely tied to the PCI bus
themselves, so I don't think there would be such a big difference
between on board, and PCI based transfer.

So I'm tempted to think its the motherboard controller of the A7V600
that's the odd one out here, but I'm puzzled as to why its doing it, and
does it make any difference to the integrity of the format?

Cheers
Gareth

To test basic SATA performance, try the HDTune read benchmark.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

It won't help explain your format issue, but it will tell you
whether things are "normal" or not.

PCI is capable of 110-120MB/sec, depending on PCI bus latency
setting. If you're seeing a radically different value for that,
like 25-30MB/sec, I have a possible answer for that. On my
VIA based motherboard, the usage of a WinTV card with BT878
chip on it, caused the BIOS to do an optimization (bug fix),
for some problem with the VIA PCI bus. And that slows performance
to a crawl. Unplugging the WinTV card, brings the system back
to normal speed again. I tried using the PCI Latency Tool,
but could not see a significant setting being changed, between
the two situations, so I still don't know exactly what
the optimization was doing to the bus. I hated this behavior
so much, I changed motherboards.

Paul

On Wed, 2 Jun 2010 18:36:35 +0100, Gareth Jones
wrote:

Hi Folks,

I've just built up a machine I want to use as a backup 'server' using a
spare A7V600 motherboard I have.
I've installed an additional PCI SATA card, and have just put in three
identical 2TB WD20EADS drives, one using a port on the motherboard (I
had to jumper this drive to force the SATA150 mode) and the other two
are going to the new SATA card (seems to work fine in the default
SATA300 mode).

Out of habit, I always do a 'standard' (not 'quick') format when I first
stick a drive in, and I'd expect a 2TB drive to take a few hours to
finish, which is indeed what its looking like on the two drives attached
to the PCI card.
However the drive connected directly to the motherboard zipped through
the (same) format in a min or two. I double checked and it was not set
to quick.

I'm running XP on it and using the standard Admin Tools Disk
management utility.

Anyone know why there is this discrepancy in speed?

Cheers
Gareth

My guess is that it has something to do with the SATA150 mode jumper. You
guessed that the full format would be a lengthy process, and that's a good
guess. Regardless of interface, it shouldn't have finished in just a
couple of minutes, so it must have got confused somehow with the jumper
setting.

And why the 'habit' of doing a full format? Do a quick format and get on
with things. You can always do a surface analysis via CHKDSK tools (which
does a better job of error detection than "format") later once the OS is
installed, but with the integrity of modern drives combined with SMART
reporting, I think that full formats *and* surface analysis are just a
waste of time. The drive itself will reallocate bad sectors if necessary.

In message , Foke
writes
And why the 'habit' of doing a full format? Do a quick format and get on
with things.


I knew someone would try and pick me up on not doing a quick format LOL.

I think its a case of 'why not'

If I was building these up every day for a living, maybe I would skip
this step to save time, however as it is, even with a full format, I
can indeed do what you suggest and 'get on with things' by simply
leaving the computer run and doing something else. I mean ... the lawn
has to get cut at some point :-)

On 6/5/2010 7:36 AM, Gareth Jones wrote:
In message , Paul
writes
To test basic SATA performance, try the HDTune read benchmark.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

It won't help explain your format issue, but it will tell you
whether things are "normal" or not.


Well I didn't use that one (but thanks for the link anyway), however I
did do a rough speed test, and all looks fairly 'normal', with the on
board SATA getting around 85 MB/s out of the drives, and the PCI card
giving about 65MB/s

So that still doesn't explain the stupidly fast format for the on board
drive
??


I don't do a full format, but after some new and faulty drives I have
taken to running the drive manufacturer's diagnostics before putting
drives in service to do a full scan or recertify or whatever the
manufacturer calls it.

Don