Re: Advanced disk Format

On 05/10/2011 09:11 PM, Java Jive wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 10:23:13 -0400, Tinker Tanker
<nosuch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> WD "green" drives are absolute shit.

Agreed, 1/3 the speed, but why?

I'm not sure that it is always the drive, it may be, but it may also
be the motherboard.

I have several SATA-1 (150Mb/s) WD drives of varying ages and sizes -
a 36GB and a 320GB which are the System and Data drives respectively
in my main PC which has an ASRock P4i945GC motherboard, a 160GB, and a
500GB. I also have two Samsung 1.5TB SATA-2 (300Mb/s) drives which
are now in NAS units.

I have two other motherboards besides the ASRock - an Abit IS7-V2,
in my backup PC, and a Gigabyte GA-8S655FX-L*

All the SATA drives I've so far tested on the ASRock and Abit boards
have worked properly in DMA mode. Additionally, both the 36GB and
160GB WD drives worked properly in DMA mode on the Gigabyte board, but
all the other SATA drives only worked in treacle-slow PIO mode on the
Gigabyte board. I've searched the web more than once, but all the
fixes I've tried, most of which suggest deleting drive history
registry values, have failed to bring the drives up in DMA mode.

So check that any drives you are having problems with are set to use
DMA and are actually using it. I don't know how to do this from
within Linux, but doubtless someone here can oblige. In Windows, go
into Device Manager and set the view to Devices By Connection. Then
right-click each drive's controller (Primay or Secondary Channel), and
click the Advanced Settings tab. Make any changes necessary, reboot,
and check back to ensure that any changes that you made have actually
stuck.

* The Gigabyte motherboard has a tangled history. It was supplied
by Scan Computers, UK, as a replacement for a higher spec Titan P4
board which failed within warranty. Consequent to the above findings,
I've since come to the conclusion that it was an item returned by
another customer as faulty, which they had lying around. Not
realising this obviously, I accepted it on the condition that it had
to work with the memory and CPU out of the failed board. It didn't,
because the memory they'd originally supplied for the failed board was
unmatched (two sticks from two different manufacturers) and while it
had happened to work in dual-channel mode on the failed board, it
failed on this replacement. Also, it wasn't on Gigabyte's
compatibility list for either board, so it shouldn't have been
supplied in the first place, because when I telephoned the order, I'd
ordered the CPU, the motherboard, and the memory together, specifying
that they should be compatible with each other. Accordingly, I tried
to send the board back, but Scan refused to accept it.

I was also having trouble with a PSU supplied as part of the original
Scan order giving occasional out-of-spec voltages.

So, after contacting my credit card company in the hope that they
would keel-haul Scan through the courts, and endless exchanges of
letters and emails, the CC did finally re-imburse me for the three
sub-standard or failed products from the original Scan order. I used
this money to buy the Abit motherboard, some decent matched memory,
and a better PSU.

What to with the Gigabyte board, the substandard memory, and the PSU
with out of spec voltages? I decided to set up a second PC as a
backup for the main one and as a test rig.

I subsequently replaced the Abit board in the main PC with the ASRock
one, and the Gigabyte board in the backup/test PC with the Abit one.

I may have some usb related Asus-A8N-E mb problems but the WD20Ears have been slow since long before. I also have a dozen other WD's from 40gb to 500gb and all of them work fine. The last time I saw the kind of perpetual disk activity of the WD20EARS was with 2.5gb Fujitsus years ago that were also lying to the system (about DMA if I remember correctly). That was much worse, I lost data, at least with these dead-dog greens there hasn't been any of that yet.












Get some Seagates and get on with life.

I used to use Maxtors, anybody remember them? One failed on me and that
was it. I've had good results with Samsung& WD but I'll let them go
too if they start smelling too much like something else. The greens are
only part of the problem, what about this 2014 deadline? I'm not on the
inside track to really evaluate the menace, and how about the coming
digitals?





.

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