So what would you do with a speedy new Ultra ATA66 Drive?

[Bixler]

Well, the gods are smiling...A minor emergency in my office caused me to have to replace my old 3.1Gig HDD in my office machine. To 'solve' the immediate problem of an impending HD failure, I gallantly saved the day by rushing home and breaking out a Quantum bigfoot that was 99% new...ghosted my old drive, and am running good again.

Of course, the Company must now reimburse me, and I flashed the Invoice on the Bigfoot at
$160.00 (bought last year and used for 1 mo).
Wellllll, you know what that kind of money will buy today in Hard drives, so I have a real problem. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

I do a considerable amount of (Very Amateur) video editing, so my question is, keep my primary HDD and use my spiffy new 13 gig ultra ATA 7200 rpm for video storage and playback? Or install this new whizbang as the boot drive?

Current cabling is as follows: Boot Drive=onboard IDE 1, DVD Rom=onboard IDE 2, 12 gig UDMA33 secondary HDD=Promise IDE 1, CDRW=Promise IDE 2. All are Master/No Slave

The only reason I have had the Promise is to settle some conflicts between the DVD, Boot Drive, and CDRW, who can't seem to get along with each other unless they've got their own Channel as Master/No Slave. (thanks in part to the ZORAN/Matrox DVD Daughter card I use.)

But NOW, I get to hook up a real ATA66.

And please, no arguments about SCSI--I know, I know (really)--Just can't afford to switch.


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AMD K63 400 Running @ 428
on SOYO SY5EMA
128M 8ns PC100 SDRAM
Marvel G-200 TV
w/DVD HW Card
DVD, CDRW (Both IDE)
Pri Hdd WD 4.1G UDMA33
Sec Hdd WD 12.1G UDMA33
Promise Ultra 66 HDD Controller
Win 98--running 98 Lite
(A GREAT program)

[Alfie]

Use it as master,you should see a big improvement.Use your slower drive for storage.

[Rags]

Bixler,

So what would you do with a speedy new Ultra ATA66 Drive?

I would use it to store information

Rags

[jtracy]

With ATA66, you might be able to play Sin without waiting an eternity for the levels to load... though I personally wouldn't do THAT again unless I had a SCSI.

Uh, nevermind that. Anyway, I'd just use the speedy drive for a primary boot drive, no matter how much larger. Your OS's swapfile (if any) and video program's chaching etc will most likely happen on the primary boot drive, so performance will speed up a bit if you did that.

And as long as you have a spare drive and are doing video editing, why not check out BeOS? I personally would install it on the secondary and do a dualboot if I was in that situation. http://www.be.com/products/

[Bixler]

Alfie and Rags:

So....Which?

Let me clarify. (haha!) The question is:

Will I get more befit out of the ATA66 protocol using it for video capture and playback (which is definitely speed intensive), or will there be better speed benefits in the execution of programs? I'm not a gamer, remember.

JTracey:

Hi guy. sorry, I'm not a gamer, just interested in whether ata66 will benefit me in fewer dropped frames etc, in video capture/playback, or in program execution. An opinion on that?

[paulcs]

You could partition the drive and use it for both. If you want to be generous, you can have a primary partition of 3 GB for Windows, and a secondary partition of over 10 GB for storage.

10 GB should be plenty. Unless, of course, you intend to start ripping DVD's, now that the encryption code is all over the place. Then you should use the whole thing for storage.

But that would be wrong.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Bixler]

PaulCS: Hope I'm not wearing you out! Thanks for watching.

Does the partition issue affect performance re. swaps? IDE channels?

To be truthful, I'm quite happy with the speed improvement since my processor upgrade, so I'm like a woundrous child as I watch programs load in half the time, etc. It's great! My concern with this issue is that Matrox took the trouble to recommend a SEPARATE Hdd in the Marvel G200 manual when I got my new Marvel 14 mo. ago, and I tend to listen when a mfr. says "here's the way this'll work best."

Now: Will ATA66 matter on that second Hdd?
currently i'm running with a UDMA33 for storage/playback, and with few problems, although the occasional stutter/anomaly will occur...you know, the kind that says "I'm pushing too hard here..."

Does ATA66 matter in continuous sustainted high transfer rates, or is it just another of those 'burst' specs that really mean little in the real world?

[RAB]

Bixler,
Can you make the Promise card's Primary IDE slot your boot drive? If you can, definitely use your new found wealth to put a UDMA66 there. It really makes Windows load faster and programs really jump on the screen faster. Loading programs is where the extra burst speed comes in handy. Since video is a fairly constant playback, I wouldn't think it would be as beneficial there. But store some stuff on the new drive and compare it to the same thing stored on the old drives.

Have you got a copy of HD Tach? Its a freebee from www.tcdlabs.com and will measure the read speed on you HD's. Play with different set ups because, on mine at least, the HD (master) was fastest when connected to the same cable as my DVD-ROM (slave) rather than on separate cables.

RAB

[paulcs]

I'm going to defer to Matrox's sage wisdom on this issue.

God, I see benefits to both, but I'm using some fairly fast SCSI drives, and do not video editing, so I couldn't give you a definitive answer.

But I bet they could on the Desktop Video forum. You might want to try there. Also, maybe This Idiot has some information on his website. But I would definitely go to Desktop Video and see what they have to say.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Haig]

Ultra 66 drives have no benefits for video editing/capturing becuase it doesn't affect the sustained data rate, only the burst rate.

If you're going to partition a hard drive and use the 2nd partition for your video work, be carefull because the sustained data rate of the hard drive will come down as you get closer to the center of the platter.

This is also why hard drive manufacturers will never give the sustained data rate when the hard drive gets full. It would be nice if they just had a chart of the data rate for every 100m

Haig

[Wombat]

Yes, but is this only 66 v. 33? If we're talking about a 7200rpm drive v. 5400rpm...

[Wombat]

Maybe it won't affect you, but I thought that the 7200rpm might provide a higher sustained data rate. The extra speed should do more than reduce seek time. I know that the 10,000 rpm drives are fast enough that they keep quite a nice sustained rate.

[Bixler]

Walrus, Jeff B and Patrick have had a good discussion on the same topic over on the Desktop Video forum. There's some real good advice re. IDE configs over there.
http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum2/HTML/002729.html

Here's how I intend to config, after gleaning the wealth of much appreciated comments and suggestions. And check my sig at the top of the thread which is my current (not new) setup.

1. Ghost my old 3.1 gig over to the new drive.

2. Change the Bios to make the machine boot from my Promise.

3. New drive will be primary on the Promise, and all alone with a single primary DOS partition.

4. Second Promise channel will have my old UDMA 33 12 gig as master for video capture and transfer. My CDRW will be slave (no auto insert.)

5. Onboard Primary IDE will have my DVD alone on it's channel (in order to keep the DVD daughter card happy)

6. Onboard secondary IDE will have my old boot drive alone on it's channel for backup, storage of CD burner disk images, and other archives.

I suppose the only real pick-em option above would be to put ALL my HDD's on the Promise, (If there isn't a size difference issue) and let the DVD and Burner occupy the Onboard IDE's.

Any hints on that option?

[This message has been edited by Bixler (edited 07 January 2000).]

[Jorden]

I'd really would love to tell you that works Tim, but alas, my Promise Ultra 66 card isn't in yet, so I'm still sitting here with alot of loose cables and one UDMA/66 hdd sitting on top of my printer

Jorden.

[paul]

re 5400 vs 7200 - it's the electronics that pass the data from the platters to memory that matter more than rotational speed. PC Magazine did a review recently.

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k6-3 450 @500 - tyan 1590s bios 1.16 - wdac310100 5400 udma33 - g200 mill sgram w/8mb upgrade & bios 2.6-20 PD 5.41 (DISABLED) - AGP1x (NOT MY CHOICE) - 128MB 10ns sdram - sblive value 3.0 - 4 Boston Acoustics A40's - 3com 3c905b-tx - cable access (28.8k for emergencies) - win98SE
dx7 - V3 steering wheel/pedals - MS sidewinder PRO