R32 limits primary HDD to 30mb/s (DMA 2)? Anyone HDD faster?

[abently]

Hi guys,

Just trying to diagnose whether its an (1.8" to 2.5") adaptor bottleneck or R32 chipset bottleneck? It's reading the primary HDD as DMA 2 with or without the DVD drive (which is DMA 2) in place...

I was under the impression the R32 supported ATA-100 / DMA 5....

I guess the question is has anyone bench marked their R32 HDD read/write faster than 30mb/s?

Cheers in advance!

[automobus]

Please tell us a little bit more about your 1.8-to-2.5 adaptor. Is it a SATA to PATA translator? If yes, then I have an idea of what is wrong.

I think firmware/BIOS has a routine which conditionally sets host cable detection bit. Where a new SATA device is used, its IDENTIFY DEVICE word 93 is zero, and IBM's overacting 'COPYRIGHTED CODE AND PARTS CONTAINED HEREIN' configures ATA host to not detect Ultra DMA wiring.

[abently]

Ok, should clarify a bit better, it's actually a mSATA to PATA adaptor within a 2.5" Housing. Using the JM20330 chip by the looks of things.

For a list of Bios updates / fixes regarding the R32, I found this list > http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... ud23us.txt

What's your suggestion?

I can always stick in a proper 2.5" PATA drive with 160GB disc platters for max speed and see where that leaves me speed wise.

[automobus]

I have no suggestion. You might decide to research a way to make your operating system ignore cable detection, force higher Ultra DMA modes. Or you might decide to write replacement firmware for your mSATA drive, program it to set word 93. Or there might be a different explanation. Word 93 is just my idea, I did not prove it. Now including your R32, I believe firmwares of the following models are 'word 93 sensitive': A31p, R32, T30, T23, X22 (genus includes X22 X23 X24).

[abently]

Ok, will try a few things when I get back and have time and see where I end up. I've got a Momentus that I can throw in and see it that's normal. Then I might re-install XP and see it that resets it and if it still fails, then will try Win 7 light and see where that ends up.

[Wild_Willy]

I know this is an old thread, but I wonder if anyone has resolved this issue? I revived my OLD R32 as I wanted an XP machine to play with. When I started it took two minutes to respond to a mouse click and a couple of days to install the XP updates.

Getting battery miser working again and installing windows from scratch helped quite a bit, but going to 1GB of RAM probably helped the most. My first attempt at adding an SSD was a miserable failure; the machine would not recognize the drive. Although I could read the drive with a PATA to USB interface and Check Disk was fine. I decided to try a new interface after wasting days on this. The R32 can see the new drive, but it would not boot. Somehow it thought the partition was corrupt; probably the difference in the interfaces. I decided to cut my losses and just reinstall everything from scratch on the new drive.

So it all works now, but I hit the 30MB limit mentioned above.

I'm currently on BIOS 2.16, the latest I could find.

Wait until I get my Mobile Pentium 4 2.4Ghz CPU, this thing will blow the doors off my Ryzen Threadripper!

[Screamer]

I don't think anyone has thought of a simpler solution to solve this problem yet, but automobus already has a complicated solution that you can try.

You might decide to research a way to make your operating system ignore cable detection, force higher Ultra DMA modes. Or you might decide to write replacement firmware for your mSATA drive, program it to set word 93. Or there might be a different explanation. Word 93 is just my idea, I did not prove it.

In a different post from a long time ago, he stated that SATA HDD/SSDs report word 93 as '0'. Which means that the PATA/IDE 80-wire conductor cable does not exist and in turn, the operating system will limit itself to Ultra DMA 2 or Ultra DMA-33 for data integrity reasons. This is why you are hitting the 33MB/s transfer speed limit.

Hold up, are you seriously thinking of installing a Mobile Pentium 4-M 2.4GHz in your R32? The Mobile Pentium 4-M 2GHz had already hit the cooling limits of the R32's heat-sink, even with some decent thermal paste applied (Tuniq TX-3).

EDIT: Removed some junk that I thought would have been useful, apologies for the filler-like contents.