upgrading ultra ata/66 drivers ?

BCN · Post by **BCN** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 6:53 am

Oh yes, you may install drivers in W2k....

You may want to install RU BIOS with 1.28HPT BIOS and 1.28 drivers in W2k - that's for you to hear your HDD making kind of sounds like "head crashing against the bearings inside!!!!!"

- and it will last for some time before the PC turns off...

You may want to install 1.25 drivers and your HDD will stop making this sound and trashing itself.

BUT EVENTUALLY you WILL loose all or main part of the data on you HDD because of file corruption....

Well, before not booting up you would probably get many sacndisk drive check everytime you boot... then some of your system files will get corrupted and there you go....

You will have to reinstall. You will probably have to call your hardware company for RMA, cause you WILL get BAD sectors on your new HDD and so on...

and that is only because of using HPT666 controller on our beloved BP6...

If you are able buy yourself good Promise ATA133 or ATA100 controller or some Promise RAID - like this you will save your money on buying a new HDD and your nerves for loosing all your data on trashed HDD.

If you do not have enoufh money saved for promise, or you are not able to it at the moment - don't worry and use it on normal IDE controller on ATA33 - it will be even faster than on HPT666 supposedly running at ATA66.

GOOD LUCK!!!

RRLedford · Post by **RRLedford** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 12:47 pm

Right on the mark BCN. I surrender my soapbox on this issue to you!

Anyone who puts some value on their time will come to realize that they can't afford to have a relationship with the HPT366/BP6 running Win2K/XP.
You WILL get burned, especially with the newer/faster drives connected to it. Win2K/XP is too labor intensive to risk loosing a good build from an unnecessary hdisk crash. Get the Promise card by all means.

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 1:03 pm

One more thing - can I borrow that soapbox, please?

The ATA speed in MB/s in only the theoretical maximum speed of the IDE controller. In real life you'll never get near that speed, because other factors like spindle speed, seek time and cache all factor in the equation. ATA speeds are often quoted by manufacturers because the numbers look meaningful to your average PC buyer - the number is higher, then it must be better, so the thinking goes.

My point is that the interface speed is a bit of a red-herring. I would be much more inclined to go with real-world tests and benchmarks like HDTach.

BCN · Post by **BCN** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 1:33 pm

Well... You are right in part, InactiveX

the point is that the specifications for ATA are as follows:

ATA66 is capable of providing of 66MB/sec of burst transfer rate for the period of 3ms (0.003s)
ATA100 is is capable of providing of 100MB/sec of burst transfer rate for the period of 3ms (0.003s)
and so on...

of caourse for loking into the average read/write speed the spindle RPM, seek time is very important, but the ATA rating is important also, because the ATA66 drive with the same RPM and seek time as ATA100 will show somewhat worse results.

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 2:56 pm

Hmmmm, not quite what I meant. My point was that an ATA66 drive isn't necessarily faster than an ATA33 drive. The ATA100 drive in your example would be faster only if the interface is the bottleneck in the disk subsystem. If the drive cannot read/write at the bit-rate the interface allows, then it will be no quicker than the ATA66, in real-world use, all other things being equal.

The same is true of 2x, 4x, 8x AGP. The cards never max out their throughput as stated in the specs (which I tend to take with a large pinch of salt), it's just the maximum that data can be passed between the GPU and the AGP bus.

While I agree with you that the ATA speed is important, I don't think it's nearly as important as many people think. Specifically in relation to the BP6, with most HDDs bar the very latest models, you won't see any noticeable performance boost moving from the normal IDE interface to the ATA66 interface.

RRLedford · Post by **RRLedford** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 4:41 pm

Each BIOS flash version has a corresponding version number for the Win2K/XP driver load. Normally they should match. Sometimes a newer O/S driver version will still work (or even work better) than the lower number (older) version. Some combinations work badly or not at all.
One recent post here compared hdisk benchmark results with mismatched BIOS/OS HPT driver versions & I think the best result came with a mismatch v.1.25/v.1.28 or v.1.28/v.1.25. Promise card beats all combos.

BCN · Post by **BCN** » Thu Jan 09, 2003 8:24 pm

if you flash bios, it is supposedly sould work with the same version of drivers and lower. Lower BIOS version, I think, - it did not want to work with higher version drivers, as I remember from my experience.

Besides, do NOT use 1.28 drivers under W2k or XP if you love at least a bit your HDD, besides 1.25 drivers will also trash it eventually...

man put it on IDE for your own sake, or buy promise!

Post by **Derek** » Fri Jan 10, 2003 12:03 am

bdb1 wrote:I understand it is better to not use the hpt on board ata/66 controller and I thank all who have shared this important opinion/fact. But I want to understand just for the sake of understanding the correaltion between the bios with hpt vs the hpt drivers. Lets say I flash my bios "nj with 1.21 hpt" with a newer bios" ru with 1.22" does it also updrade the drivers for the hpt controller in win 98se and or wk2 ?

Thanks

The HPT BIOS on the motherboard is what lets the computer know that there is a unique feature present. The motherboard will then be seen by the operating system you install with this unique feature; the only problem is that the operating system doesn’t know how to communicate with it.

This is what the drivers are for. Now that the motherboard BIOS knows about the HPT controller, it tells the operating system about it, the operating system will then use the drivers you’ve installed to speak to the devices on the HPT controller (that it learned about through the additional controller BIOS).

There is more to it than that, but this is as simple as it gets. I’m trying to be as clear as I can be at 1 in the morning

I hope I’ve answered at least part of your question

BCN · Post by **BCN** » Fri Jan 10, 2003 7:13 am

it is not that you need to install newer drivers, but you are able to and they will work...

but do not use 1.28 drivers!

man, get yourself promise! Otherwise you will learn it the hard way...

I am done. no more explanations on this topic from my side...

Post by **Derek** » Fri Jan 10, 2003 8:17 am

bdb1 wrote:So then are the hpt 366 drivers that you use for/during OS installation and upgrading, the same thing as the hpt versions that are included with the different version bios. when I upgrade my bios by means of flashing do I then need to update/upgrade the drivers?

Thanks AGAIN,

Naturally, if you’re re-installing everything, you’ll install the latest drivers too. Though, heed BCN’s warning.