copy from PATA to SATA disk uses 70% CPU

[LiamC]

Tony is just gunna love this...

My system is an Athlon 2800+ (o/ced to 2250MHz).

Boot disk WD 800JB (Primary Master, no slave).

Just added a Maxtor 6Y120M0 (DiamondMax 9+) on the SATA 1 port.

Motherboard is Abit KV8 Pro.

When I copy files from the WD to the SATA disc, CPU utilisation goes through the roof--peaking at around 70%. Now this isn't something I've seen since the PIO days. Is this a known issue?

I have flashed the latest BIOS (1.9).
I have installed the latest VIA chipset drivers (4.55p1)
I have updated the VIA RAID SATA drivers to v 2.21

Yes, the WD is using UDMA mode.

I knew I should have bought a PATA disk, Samsung at that, but no-one stocks them.


:x

 

[LiamC]

Updated the VIA SATA/RAID drivers to v 3.10. Still no joy.

BTW. The disk isn't in a RAID array. It is the only SATA device.

If it is of relevance, the WD is a Basic disc (3 partitions), while the SATA Maxtor is a Dynamic simple volume. OS is XP Pro.

 

[Clocker]

I'm thinking this is a VIA problem (good old VIA again).

Copying a 2GB file from my 7K250 8MB cache SATA on a SIl 3114 ---> 7K250 2MB cache PATA on the nVidia controller nets me about 18% CPU usage.

Sorry I can't be of further help.

CPU is a 2500+ @ 2400Mhz.

 

[mubs]

Could this be the old W2k / Wxp / W2003 "SCSI bug"? AFAIK, SATA controllers are treated as SCSI controllers in Windows. It could be the non-cached writes to the SATA drive that's the culprit. Post #138 in this thread at the other place has some info, and post #146 has a link of where to find it. Cobra Chi specifically talks about Wxp SP2.

Clocker's doing fine because he's reading from the SATA and writing to the PATA drive.

 

[LiamC]

Thanks Mubs. I got hold of the Dskcache.exe tool, but I get Error 1117: Error getting the write cache value. I tried copying files from the SATA disk to the PATA, and the CPU usage is much less--though still higher than what I thought it should be. I might grab another PATA disk and see what happens.

Grrr. New Technology!

 

[mubs]

I think people with SATA ports have had mixed success with that tool. I have a Promise Ultra 100 that Windows sees as a SCSI controller, and I get an error too (probably the same one, I don't remember). My understanding is that if the SATA (and in my case Promise) driver does not conform strictly to Microsoft spec/standards, the tool won't work.

 

[Bozo]

Looks like a VIA problem.
I have a WD SATA drive and a Hitachi PATA dive attached to a D865 Intel motherboard. Copying files from one to the other (either direction) only shows 8-12% CPU utilization. This is with XP, SP2 installed.
The SATA drive shows up in device manager as an IDE device.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Clocker]

Could this be the old W2k / Wxp / W2003 "SCSI bug"? AFAIK, SATA controllers are treated as SCSI controllers in Windows. It could be the non-cached writes to the SATA drive that's the culprit. Post #138 in this thread at the other place has some info, and post #146 has a link of where to find it. Cobra Chi specifically talks about Wxp SP2.

Clocker's doing fine because he's reading from the SATA and writing to the PATA drive.

I get the same result going both ways.

C

 

[Mercutio]

On my Albatron 8x800 (Via with Via SATA), going from an SP1614N (PATA) to a 7k250 (SATA), I used between 18 and 33% of an Athlon64/3500. As a guess I'd say it was around 22% on average.

I tried several times with a 1.5GB file.

 

[mubs]

Clocker & Merc: Can you tell us how Windows sees your SATA controller / drives? What Bozo said makes perfect sense.

 

[Mercutio]

All my SATA drives show up as SCSI disk devices. This machine is a Windows 2000 Server.

 

[LiamC]

Hmmm. Mine shows up as SCSI as well. Maybe it's a WD thing :mrgrn:

My system is XP SP2 as well. As I have a spare partition, I'll try a clean install. The files I copy are a folder aroun 1.6 GB. Lots of small files and a few large ones.


On another note, I found this thread on VIA/SATA and boot drives:

http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?catid=12&threadid=53401

 

[blakerwry]

Everything i've seen regarding HDD CPU usage suggests it is related to the controller and the drivers and has very very little to to with the HDD itself (assuming it runs in the proper UDMA mode)

 

[Clocker]

Clocker & Merc: Can you tell us how Windows sees your SATA controller / drives? What Bozo said makes perfect sense.

They show up as SCSI devices.

C

 

[Bozo]

I wonder if the way the drives show up is related to the controller. On Intel motherboards, they are 'native' and show up in the BIOS. On some other boards, the controller is an add-on and drivers must be loaded separately. On my Asus P4c800-E Deluxe, two of the SATA ports are connected to the Intel chipset and show up in the BIOS. The other SATA ports are connected to a Promise controller (installed on the motherboard) and separate drivers must be installed.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

I've seen the same thing on some nforce3 boards.

 

[LiamC]

Well I bought a Samsung SP1213N (PATA) and connected it up to the VIA mobo. And the transfer is just the same going from PATA to PATA as it is from PATA to SATA (and vica versa). Could be a controller thing as blakewry suggested. I might dump in a Promise controller for giggles and see what surfaces.

The copy process I use involves several directories with a couple of sub-directories with lots (000's) of very small files. GB's overall, some large files as well.