Hard Drive / Benchmark Problem

[eInform]

Hi,

I recently put together a computer, 1.2 ghz Athlon @ 1.2 ghz, 512 MB PC133 ram, Abit KT7A, Voodo 3 2000, Enlight case, AMD approved 300 W power supply and a MAXTOR 30 GB DIAMONDMAXPLUS HD. ATA 100, 7200 RMP <8.7 seek time. Here is the problem: Cached Speed: 257.88 MB/S
** Uncached Speed 1.86 MB/S I think it should me atleast 3 times higher.** Uncached speed is pathetic. I think the average is about 5 MB/S.

Does this have anything do to with my problem, orginally I partioned the hard drive to fat 16 and installed windows 2000. I only had a 2 GB C: I booted the computer up using a boot floppy and from the windows 2000 cd i went format c:. Then i put fat 32 on using the program provided by maxtor. Install windows 2000 again. Now I have a 28 GB hard drive. What gives? Is this something to do with my first fat 16 partition? I already defragmented my hard drive so its not tthat. Does my motherboard need drivers?? I dunno Any help would be very very appreciative.

Major concern: Uncached Speed.
Minor concern: Missing 2 GB

Thanks

 

[ericb]

If it's still possible I would do the following:

Save your files
Create the 4 Win2k boot disks if needed from the Win2K CD
Using Partition Magic or FDisk - delete all partitions
Reboot without creating partitions and boot from the Win2000 CD or boot disks
Create the partition using all available space from within Win2k setup
Finish the install of W2k.

I used to do this all the time with NT4 and once with Win2k.

 

[eInform]

Is there anyway i can create a boot floppy before i format my hard drive again? I have have partition magic is it recomended over fdisk?

 

[Techwhore]

<< I partioned the hard drive to fat 16 and installed windows 2000 >>



What?!?! Were you smokin' the funny stuff at the time? I won't even go into why you shouldn't do that cuz i'm sure people already told you in the last thread.



<< Then i put fat 32 on using the program provided by maxtor. Install windows 2000 again. Now I have a 28 GB hard drive >>



What exactly is the problem here? That's normal. The size stated on the box of the drive is always different from the actual size. There's a way you can figure it out, it's a discrepancy between how many bytes the manufacturer says = MB and how the OS sees a MB. There's also overhead from the filesystem, regardless of your file system. Not to mention that no partition takes up 100% of the designated area (at least not MS OS's, they leave 1% unpartitioned).

For reference, my 30 GB = 28.4 using NTFS

As for the uncached speed of the drive, i'm not exactly sure about that. It would seem that it should be faster than just under 2 MB/sec... Do you notice this in anyway, or are you just going on the benchmark results? Try using a different benchmark as well to confirm this speed.

IMPORTANT EDIT:

Have you installed the newest VIA 4in1's? Version 4.31, and the newest version 4.32 have fixed serious IDE transfer issues with the via chipset. Are you also running SP2? That too fixed serious issues for some (though i had no issues with SP1)

 

[ericb]

You can create the 4 boot disks off the Win2k CD before doing anything else. Go to the BOOTDISK dir on the Win2k CD. Run the makeboot program...you will need 4 blank disks.

Heres the partition info from Maxtor on Win2k:
Windows 2000 Supports FAT 16, FAT 32 and NTFS file systems. As menioned above, FAT 16 file system supports partition sizes up to 2.048 GB. FAT 32 file system supports up to two Terabytes and, according to Microsoft, two Terabytes should be considered the partition size limit for NTFS file systems.

 

[ericb]

Here is the info from Maxtor on why reported size and actual size is different:

Hard drives are marketed in terms of decimal (base 10) capacity. In decimal notation, one megabyte (MB) is equal to 1,000,000 bytes, and one Gigabyte (GB) is equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes. The decimal system is what we, as humans, are most accustomed to in everyday life. However, computers (and programs such as FDISK) use the binary (base 2) numbering system. In the binary numbering system, one megabyte is equal to 1,048,576 bytes, and one gigabyte is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes.

DOS FDISK and Apple's operating system (MAC O/S) use the binary numbering system. When determining hard drive capacities with FDISK, one should multiply the value shown in FDISK (displayed in base 2 megabytes) by 1,048,576 to determine the decimal equivalent for the hard drive's capacity.

Here is an Example (using a 20.5GB ATA/IDE drive):

You run FDISK and it displays the capacity of your hard drive as 19603 Mbytes. This value represents the base 2 or binary capacity of the disk drive. To determine the equivalent base 10 or decimal capacity, multiply 19603 by 1,048,576. This results in a value of 20,555,235 bytes or approximately 20.5GB in decimal terms.

 

[Techwhore]

Thanks ericb, I've explained that so many times I couldn't bring myself to do it again

 

[eInform]

Umm thanks for the help guys can i ask one more question?? I never installed any VIA 4 in 1's
All installed was the system monitor. Where can i get the latest VIA 4 in 1???

 

[Techwhore]

<< I never installed any VIA 4 in 1's >>



Yeah, that's probably the problem... check out Viattech

 

[ericb]

Or the DL link from viahardware.com here.