Discrepancy in HD formatting speed [Asus]

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From: Gareth Jones on 2 Jun 2010 13:36

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

From: Jack Simms on 2 Jun 2010 17:05

From: Gareth Jones on 2 Jun 2010 17:58

In message <gqhd06l0k0041crd0i1j7c3sguru4gb75m(a)4ax.com>, Jack Simms
<simms(a)hoptmail.com> 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

From: Paul on 2 Jun 2010 19:48

Gareth Jones wrote:
> In message <gqhd06l0k0041crd0i1j7c3sguru4gb75m(a)4ax.com>, Jack Simms
> <simms(a)hoptmail.com> 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

From: Foke on 3 Jun 2010 12:43

On Wed, 2 Jun 2010 18:36:35 +0100, Gareth Jones
<usenet(a)nospam.demon.co.uk> 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.

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