jafo@miranda.UUCP (Sean Reifschneider) (02/15/91)
I put a Maxtor LXT200S drive into my 3000, and set it up using HDToolBox. The parameters that the drive reported seemed to differ from what the manual for the drive said it should be. It had more cylendars and less blocks per track than the manual said it should. With the settings HDToolBox givs me, it's capacity is 190MB instead of the 207MB that the manual says it has. How do I find the correct settings? I think getting the settings correct will up the speed by some. The Maxtor has the same speed ratings (on paper) that the 50MB Quantum has, as well as 32K of buffer, but it still comes out quite a bit slower, especially on reads. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks, Sean -- From the desk of Sean Reifschneider. Isn't Amiga UUCP great? Thanks Matt. uunet.uu.net!ccncsu.colostate.edu!ncuug!miranda!jafo
jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) (02/20/91)
In article <jafo.4192@miranda.UUCP> jafo@miranda.UUCP (Sean Reifschneider) writes: >I put a Maxtor LXT200S drive into my 3000, and set it up using HDToolBox. >The parameters that the drive reported seemed to differ from what the >manual for the drive said it should be. It had more cylendars and less >blocks per track than the manual said it should. With the settings >HDToolBox givs me, it's capacity is 190MB instead of the 207MB that >the manual says it has. HDToolBox makes a "best-guess" at the numbers if the information from the drive doesn't multiply out right (often the case with zone-recorded drives). It gets the total capacity from ReadCapacity, and other information from Inquiry and ModeSense pages. As for the size, the manuals often give you the physical size, not the size after SCSI spare blocks and cylinders are removed. You can try setting the size to what you think it should be, but HDToolbox (at least the more modern versions) will tell you that the size is larger than the drive says it can hold (older versions silently let it through, and the last partition would be unformatable). >How do I find the correct settings? I think getting the settings correct >will up the speed by some. The Maxtor has the same speed ratings (on paper) >that the 50MB Quantum has, as well as 32K of buffer, but it still comes >out quite a bit slower, especially on reads. Quantum has a 64K buffer. Finding the optimal settings may produce some speed improvement, but usually not a lot. A lot depends on the SCSI implementation, the length of the cable (yes), the speed of the processor in the drive, the effectiveness of it's read-ahead (if any), etc. -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com BIX: rjesup The compiler runs Like a swift-flowing river I wait in silence. (From "The Zen of Programming") ;-)