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I'm curious about the drive controller capabilities in my 2 year old machine. SIW and Everest Home seem to tell all about the HD that's in there, but I don't see what the controller will support. Any suggestions for software to identify exactly what controllers are in there and what they can handle?
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Miles
From the Everest menu the controllers are list under Computer > Summary > Storage (right window). Click on the device and it should take you to the Devices home page. If the page isn't found on the net, just google for the device.
IE: mine is an: Field Value
IDE Controller Intel(R) 82801FB Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 2651Last edited by Abuilder; 7 Mar 2009, 07:29 AM.They tried to Assimilate me and failed! -
Thanks man. I'm checking it out now.
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Hmmm I guess the controller in this box is truly generic. Won't say nuthin' but "generic dual channel IDE controller" and that's that. Oh well, I looked at the diagram what ya' gotta' do to change a HD in this thing and it looks like a pita anyway. Guess I'll run with what's in it.
It makes for cheap prices but one downside to rapidly obsolete hardware is crappy mechanical engineering. It would be so much more fun to hold down a spring loaded latch and pull the drive out than messing with these stupid little screws and spacer cages. Sheesh!! I bet a lot of the screws are aluminum now so the old magnetic screwdriver prolly doesn't even work!
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What does device manager have to say on this issue?Comment
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That's all it says is generic yadda yadda. SIW the same. I went on HP support site and couldn't even get the specifics. It's not important but I was curious what the controller could handle. Ironically it's the faster machine that can send stuff the fastest over the Gigabit network, but that's the machine you want as target, not source. But as it is now my one big file copy benchmark gets a steady 40+ MB/sec. transfer with the new PC as target, so it's not like I'm growing old waiting for the file copy. Just wondered what was in it. The drive says Sata II drive but I have the feeling it's not 3 Gb/sec like in the newer machine. My curiosity abated somewhat when I looked at the R&R directions for the drive. Not something I want to do on the floor.
The old PC is HP Pavilion m8000n. HDTune benchmark gives av. transf rate in the 60s with max around 80, min around 40 and burst 170. On this particular PC it looks like the only thing easy to access is the Ram slots. The stuff is unfamiliar. Like there's this slot, must be the one they call x1 because it just has about 1/2" of connector to it. Really weird stuff in these boxes now.
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You are right that is the PCIe-x1 connector.
But changing the HDD is simple, if I'm correct you have the box with the media drive on the front and the HDD connected to the same bracket? If so you can change it in 10-15 minutes easily. I say go for it, I think you'll find it easier than it seems, as you know one of the most important things is to use a good screwdriver that is not damaged and fits correctly. It is the 8000 correct?Comment
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yeah, it's m8000n. in any case there's no way I'm gonna' spring for a drive until I know what the controller can put out. That's like buyin' a supercharger for a 1500 cc engine! I ain't got cash to waste.
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Geforce 6150SE nforce 430Comment
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Seems to be a secret as to what the throughput is. I posted on HP forums out of curiosity. But at the moment everything is working really well so I think I'll plateau for awhile. If it ain't broke and all that.
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throughput will be limited by hard drive cache and sustained transfer speed not the chipsetComment
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I see. The stuff is really weird now. Like on my Phenom machine it comes "raid ready" and only has one HD. But I guess due to the configuration, programs like HDTune can tell you almost nothing. None of the SMART info comes through. Makes it all guess work. The Vista 32 bit machine won't take SP1 and is plagued with shell slow copy but I found a fast copy app called KillCopy. With that I'm getting pretty good transfer speeds over the network so that was my main concern. Shell copy was only getting in the 20 MB/sec range where this KillCopy seems to get 40 MB/sec and higher using a 4 MB buffer, on big transfers like a VIDEO_TS folder or something of that kind. Plus now I can download at full bandwidth without the Lan file transfers being reduced to a crawl. Much more fun to lob files around now.
Last edited by MilesAhead; 9 Mar 2009, 03:40 AM.Comment
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It takes about 2 minutes for me to transfer a full 4.3 gigs from drive to drive, windows xp is a little slower than my reauthoring program
Of course my hard drives are over 3 years old
Again the chipset will not be the bottleneck
Even sata one had to have dual raid stripes to almost be the bottleneck
Sata 2 interface is 300MB/sComment
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