On Sunday 20 May 2001 23:31, Don wrote:
> On Monday 21 May 2001 09:47, you wrote:
> > On Sunday 20 May 2001 11:15, Brian Hartman wrote:
> > > Hi, all.
> > >
> > > I'm considering upgrading my Mandrake, but I heard of the 8.0 beta that
> > > they were having trouble with Western Digital drives. I assume that
> > > they fixed the problem, but I just wanted to make sure.
> > >
> > > Brian Hartman
> >
> > In one sense it is fixed--it was a VIA chipset/WD combination
> > problem--and in another sense it will never be fixed.
> >
> > WD drives lack essential hardware error-checking for UDMA3 and up,
> > including ATA/66 and ATA/100. The result of this just plain stupid
> > cost-cutting decision is that if the channel is noisy, the first inkling
> > you have that the data is bad is when you cannot read it off the disk.
> > Moreover, WD states at shows and elsewhere that their disks support
> > windows and Solaris ONLY.
> >
> > Civileme
>
> I don't see the problems that you mention, and find maxtor drives just will
> not work with my BP6 system. I am running three WD drives in ATA66 Mode 4
> and they work great.
>
> Don ....
Fine, use them. But the problem persists. And it is WD and their cheap
policy about the 57 byte CRC required for UDMA greater than 2 that makes me
say--use at your own risk. BTW there are crashtesters who found that WDs
would not play nice with other drives on the same channel.
Basically they are very very cheap drives backed by an outstanding returns
department. The only thing you can lose is your data.
Civileme
Oh as a PS
Computer MAXdata WD205 System RH 7.1 hdparm -t result 1.86Mb/s at UDMA4
with multcount16 readahead 8
Same system same drive UDMA2 multcount8 interrupts unmasked 9.62Mb/s
Computer Athlon500 plain vanilla WD64AA hdparm -t result at UDMA4 19.10 Mb/s
with frequent errors and segfaults on install.
Same system 40 pin cable installed to force udma2 hdparm -t read 19.28 Mb/s
and install was error-free
Computer Athlon T-Bird WD205AA udma4 hdparm -t 20.12 Mb/s
udma2 interrupts unmasked
multcount reduced to 8 from 16 hdparm -t 21.83 Mb/s
Why go for the higher speed when performance is the same--noise immunity has
to be better at the lower setting.
Civileme
