eSata drive partition very slow

Hi

I have a drive connected by eSata, it is 2 TB and I have three partitions, 1 TB and two 500 GB approx and two 500.

Two of the partitions are fine but the third (a 500GB) is very slow, file read and transfer are very slow.

Any ideas on why?

I have all three partitions set up the same.

Cheers

Daniel

How much slower? The last partition will be slowest as it is on the inside of the platter.

Hi

it's hard to say, the way I noticed it was that I did a Casper clone of my C Drive to the first partition on the eSata drive and it took about an hour to copy the drive of 500 GB, then I did a Casper clone of my data drive also about 500 GB to the second partition and I killed it after 5 hours, it was so slow.
There are three partitions on the Disk, I am not aware of any issues with the last partition.

FYI, Casper is backup software that copies changes only since the the last time it was run, both disks were backed up about the same time a week ago, something has changed since then.

Hope this makes sense.

cheers

Daniel

Just try copying the data to the partition to see how long it takes. and what your rate is. That will rule out Casper or not.

Hi

Thanks for the replies, the problem is fixed.

I should have done this in the first place, I looked up Casper help files and found a solution, it was to use Device Manager to change Transfer Mode from "allow BIOS to determine transfer mode" to "DMA Mode".

For some reason that partition was transferring files a lot slower than the others and I guess the BIOS found a reason to use PIO mode.

BTW I would not change from Casper for anything, I tried other backup solutions and had problems, either with how I used them or with the way they worked, Casper is VERY intuitive and simple to use and as I am adventurous with software and hardware I often need to revert to my Backup (clone) to restore my system.

Also Casper help is very good and quick, an email to their help desk is responded to in a few hours and solves the problem, the only reason I did not email Casper help with this problem is that I figured Casper was working well as I had recently run Casper on my C: drive.

Anyway all's well.

regards

Daniel

daniellouwrens said:

found a solution, it was to use Device Manager to change Transfer Mode from "allow BIOS to determine transfer mode" to "DMA Mode".

For some reason that partition was transferring files a lot slower than the others and I guess the BIOS found a reason to use PIO mode.

Well I'm certainly confused.

You have to be very clear and unambiguous, when you refer to a "drive" vs. "partition" in describing a problem. They don't mean the same thing. Unfortunately Windows assigns a "drive letter" to a partition, so we kind of interchangeably and casually use drive, partition, even drive letter. But they're all very precisely different concepts, and using them improperly causes confusion.


You didn't post a screenshot from DISKMGMT.MSC, so we don't know exactly what your setup looks like. But it sounds like you have TWO physical drives.

One hard drive sounds like it's your primary drive where the C-partition lives, and it sounds like there's a second "data" partition on the same hard drive (I'll call it D).

The new SATA drive sounds like a second physical hard drive, and you have created three partitions on it (I'll letter them E, F, and G). One is a 1TB partition and the other two are 500GB partitions. Did you format all three partitions as NTFS when you created them? I'll assume yes.

If the BIOS (on your motherboard) has any setup option and therefore any effect on physical access to a physical hard drive, it would have that same effect on ALL PARTITIONS ON THAT HARD DRIVE. It cannot pick and choose how to support a specific partition on that drive.

On the other hand, if your two Casper backup/clone jobs have different setup options (relating to this BIOS vs. DMA mode option), maybe this is more likely responsible for the huge difference in job time. As was pointed out, writing to outer partitions on the drive is faster than writing to inner partitions (just because of the spinning speed at physical distances from the center of rotation), but that's a relatively minor difference that doesn't seem related to your story.

Just for closure here, can you please post a screenshot of your hard drive setup using DISKMGMT.MSC. Be sure to please maximize the window first, and also spread/separate the columns so that all text in each cell is visible and can be read, before you take your screenshot.

Thanks.

Will do, I have been in court all day and now have to go out, I will do it in the morning.

Cheers

Daniel

dsperber said:

daniellouwrens said:

found a solution, it was to use Device Manager to change Transfer Mode from "allow BIOS to determine transfer mode" to "DMA Mode".

For some reason that partition was transferring files a lot slower than the others and I guess the BIOS found a reason to use PIO mode.

Well I'm certainly confused.

You have to be very clear and unambiguous, when you refer to a "drive" vs. "partition" in describing a problem. They don't mean the same thing. Unfortunately Windows assigns a "drive letter" to a partition, so we kind of interchangeably and casually use drive, partition, even drive letter. But they're all very precisely different concepts, and using them improperly causes confusion.


You didn't post a screenshot from DISKMGMT.MSC, so we don't know exactly what your setup looks like. But it sounds like you have TWO physical drives.

One hard drive sounds like it's your primary drive where the C-partition lives, and it sounds like there's a second "data" partition on the same hard drive (I'll call it D).

The new SATA drive sounds like a second physical hard drive, and you have created three partitions on it (I'll letter them E, F, and G). One is a 1TB partition and the other two are 500GB partitions. Did you format all three partitions as NTFS when you created them? I'll assume yes.

If the BIOS (on your motherboard) has any setup option and therefore any effect on physical access to a physical hard drive, it would have that same effect on ALL PARTITIONS ON THAT HARD DRIVE. It cannot pick and choose how to support a specific partition on that drive.

On the other hand, if your two Casper backup/clone jobs have different setup options (relating to this BIOS vs. DMA mode option), maybe this is more likely responsible for the huge difference in job time. As was pointed out, writing to outer partitions on the drive is faster than writing to inner partitions (just because of the spinning speed at physical distances from the center of rotation), but that's a relatively minor difference that doesn't seem related to your story.

Just for closure here, can you please post a screenshot of your hard drive setup using DISKMGMT.MSC. Be sure to please maximize the window first, and also spread/separate the columns so that all text in each cell is visible and can be read, before you take your screenshot.

Thanks.

Hi

I'm not sure where I have been ambiguous, I did, as far as I can see, refer to Drives and Partitions as separate items, but I guess I should have been even more specific and I am always willing to learn and I appreciate your interest.

I have posted the screenshot of Diskmanagement and for added clarity, the problematic operation was D: to H: and the operation that was successfully run first was C: to G:

Since you have advised that the BIOS cannot differentiate between Partitions on the same Disk I guess there must have been some extraneous issue that was not apparent but the settings in Casper are identical except for the Drive numbers of the Source and Target drives.

For further Clarity Disk 1 (D) and Disk 2 (G, H, I,) are both eSata, perhaps that was an issue but the Casper Clone I ran last night with the new Transfer Mode settings gave me excellent and speedy results.

Regards

Daniel