HD speed T21 vs Dock 2631, dock wins.

[joaho]

Maybe interesting, many TP2x being sold now second hand.

I have a TP 21 and a docking station 2631.
Upgraded to 1GHz, 512 MB, USB 2.0 by pc-card, video in by pci-card in the dock. Nice machine now, only the hd is a bit slow...

So I bought a new HD (Hitachi Travelstar 7K2 60), and for preparing I put it into the dock´s ultrabay (it took a while to find out that the dock uses cable select where the TP doesn´t).
I noticed that the new hd was incredibly faster then the original one in the TP itself. Sandra gave the new hd 21000 points where the old one got 3200 points.
I expected that the new HD is faster, but that much?

Then I swapped the disks, the new into the TP and the old into the dock and tested again. Surprise!
The new one now got 3600 points, and the old one 12500. So I have to compare 12500 with 21000 and that is exactly what was to expect with 4500 vs. 7200 rpm.

But why is the TPs own controller so slow?
Answer: the ide controller in the TP is a Intel 82371AB/EB busmaster IDE (only) and the one in the dock is a CMD PCI-0648 UDMA.

The TP is only used docked, so no question, I put the new disk into the dock and no hd into the TP (the old hd goes into a NAS-Lite SMB server).
That´s it, I am content now. Positve sideeffect: In the dock the hd stays much cooler than in the TP.

[GomJabbar]

The T21 should support DMA mode for the hard drive seeing as how the older 600E certainly did. Try this, go into device manager, click on the + next to IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, now right click on all the devices listed under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and uninstall them. Now reboot. You should now see the hard drive using DMA mode.

[dsvochak]

1. Follow GomJabbar's suggestion.

2. It appears from the Intel web site that UDMA 2 is the maximum with the controller chipset in the T21. This will limit data transfer rates regardless of the drive's capabilities. A UDMA 5 capable drive will throttle down to UDMA 2 max when used in a T21.

3. Don't know anything about the dock, but my hypothesis is the dock must have a higher UDMA capability than the T21.

4. From personal experience and from the information in your post, the new drive will run faster in the T21 than the old drive just not as fast as it's capable of.

[joaho]

I think you are right! I recently had to do a clean reinstall and I can´t remember if I did select drives DMA after that or not. But DVD´s DMA I just found not selected, so probatility is high that I didn´t.

But now I leave the hd in the dock. Its much cooler there (handwarm instead of burning hot) and the TP is never moved, I use it as workstation with external TFT, keyboard and mouse.

BTW, do you have an idea how I can have full speed with battery removed? The problem is described here in the forum, when on AC with battery removed (and all settings at full speed fixed!) it only runs with slow speed (in my case 700 MHz). I had to put the battery back in to get my GHz.
And cheating is impossible (connect 15 Volt to TPs battery input poles, I have tried that) because it TALKS with the battery to see if it´s there!