[GLLUG] Disk drive controller question

Bill Bartilson bbartilson at comcast.net
Fri Feb 6 15:46:05 EST 2009


One is obviously faster than the other.   :)

All kidding aside, if you want to shed light on what the actual  
differences are:

1.  Swap the drives.  I know you say they are identical, but they  
can't be.  Each drive has different physical parts.  One drive might  
be dying, one might be healthy.  At any rate, it's only science if you  
can duplicate it.  Mark one 'A' and one 'B' and try each on each  
different controller, copying each way, and note any differences, and  
whether the differences follow the drive or not.

2.  Repeat the same deal with each other item.  (IDE wires, different  
jumper settings on the drive, anything else you can think of to  
change.)  Keep good notes.

3.  Try a different piece of software (Gparted or something)  Perhaps  
the code written for reading data with controller X works much better  
with controller X, but only for long reads, and works like crap for  
long writes.  I dunno.

Via process of elimination, you'll discover that one controller reads  
or writes a lot faster, one of the drives is actually not so good, or  
something in the code itself is different.

This all presumes it's not merely an intellectual question and you  
care to 'know' the answer.  I for one would be interested to hear your  
findings if you care to try.

Me thinks the most likely scenario is that one of the drives is  
getting funky.  In which case I'd say Spinrite them both before you  
try anything else.

Regards,
B


On Feb 6, 2009, at 2:35 PM, Stanley C. Mortel wrote:

> OK, here's the deal.  I'm using Acronis to copy a partition from one  
> IDE
> drive to another identical drive, both are 120 GB with a single
> partition.  One drive is connected to the on-board IDE controller, the
> other is connected to a 3WARE RAID controller with only one drive on
> it.  Each drive is alone on its channel / cable, set to cable  
> select, on
> the right connector, etc.  If I copy from the IDE to the 3WARE, it  
> takes
> about 5 minutes.  If I try it the other way around, it tells me it is
> going to take 2 hours.  There is nothing in my knowledge base to  
> explain
> this.  Anyone know why this would happen?  If you don't know for sure,
> any reasonable ideas?
>
> Stan
>
>
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