Adaptec AHA-2940 Ultra Wide

[cozmo_d]

Hi I am a SCSI nOOb

I recentaly installed an Adaptec AHA-2940 Ultra Wide SCSI Controller
68-pin 16-bit.



I have formated it through the AHA-2940UW bios & then in WindowsXPpro
Through the MyComputer/Manage/Disk Managment Utility thats within WinXPpro

My question is this, I formated the Quantum Viking II 4.5WLS as a DYNAMIC disk from the Disk Managment utility, Is that correct ???

Also It seems that I could also Convert my WD Drive to Dynamic.....

But it gives a warning, It sayes...... After you convert this disk to Dynamic, you will not be able to start OTHER Installed Operating Systems from any volume on this disk.......

Are You Sure You Want To Convert ? I Chose NO because Im not sure exzactaly what that means...... If converting my WD disk to Dynamic will improve preformance then I want to do it, but not if its going to destroy my OS ..........

Right now its set as Basic

Please I need your help to get the most out of my HD's preformance thx .....


and if you have any tips for the SCSI drive/controller /bios settings let me know please ......

[Xaotic]

The dynamic disk feature of Windows XP, 2K3 and 2000 can enadle the use of some advanced drive configurations, largely in software RAID. Dynamic disks cannot be locally read by any of the OS not listed above, including existing multiple boot partitions on the drive. For most users, all this means is that the disk is not accessible from a DOS boot disk(even those using 3rd party NTFS readers).

Basic is the setting I use for all of my disks. DD can be problematic for recovery. I would move the data off the small SCSI and reformat into basic, before use.

The performance on that drive and controller will be slow. It was fast for it's time, but drives and interfaces keep getting faster.

[cozmo_d]

The performance on that drive and controller will be slow. It was fast for it's time, but drives and interfaces keep getting faster.

Would the preformance of this small scsi be faster than say a standerd WD 20gig 2700 rpm drive On IDE chanell ???

[Xaotic]

The controller is a UW or ultra wide and limited to at most 40MB/s on burst data. The drive might synch at 80MB/s provided you use a U2W controller, however an old 7200RPM SCSI simply will lag in performance behind newer IDE drives.

For speed, a decent U160 and much newer generation 10K or 15K SCSI would perform well. The older stuff was fast compared to PIO and ATA-33 drives, but isn't impressive by today's standards.

[cozmo_d]

Well I used HDTac & your right this drive burst speed is pathetic 31.8mbps

But it has a very low random access speed 11.6milliseconds & 0% CPU utilization wich is good I belive for what im using this scsi for, the only thing thats on it is my page file
you think that will be ok ???

[Master Mitch]

It's hard to compare two drives just from a description, but the 20 gig IDE will be newer than the old Viking, and has a higher areal density. That said, it isn't that much newer, so I'd be strongly tempted to go ahead and use the SCSI drive for your page file. The classic SCSI fast seek times and low CPU utilization seem like just the ticket for not slowing things down when paging is necessary. Additionally, having the page file on a separate drive reduces seeking, and... well, what else could you cram onto such a small drive, anyway? =)

Nevermind that a friend of mine ran his machine (which I spec'd and built) entirely off of a 9 gig Ultra2 drive up until quite recently-- when I finally fitted it with an 18 gig SCSI drive, as well. <glances down at computer with 200 gigs of IDE storage> Alas, I didn't practice what I preached.

[cozmo_d]

Thx, After doing a few things I think its running well like this

WD20gig C:/ = OS
Seagate D:/ = Backup files/programs F:/ = installed Games
Q_VikingII P:/ Page file

I used Partition magic to devide the seagate its the fastest drive, 1 partition holds backedup files other installed games The WD has the OS & other apps installed, & the Quantum_scsi has only a page file & Im telling you its definataly better than it was
before, Id love to have some super fast HDs & skip this setup but gota work with what ya got .

Thx for the help !!!

[shadowdr]

Hard to beleive that even an old slow drive can affect performance that much,but I recently found a computer on the interstate which had been run over and left to die on it's own.I stopped and picked it up thinking I might be able to salvage the ram or somthing.When I got home I began striping the stuff out of the crushed box using a hammer to beat the frame out enough to get at the peices.I had an old box in the shed so I thought I would put it back together in there and see if anything would power up.With a little fiddleing and changing the drive oreintation it booted up to win 98.Turned out it was an old Dell 4100 with a P3 800 mhz chip.It ran but seemed painfully slow loading apps and acessing stuff on the drive.I also found a 2 gig wd lying around in the shed so I thought I would stick it in and run a seperate page file.What a difference.The speed increase is very noticeable, unlike the faster disks we use now that are allready so quick.I am thinking of trying it on my old 366.Live and learn.