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eSata drivers for internal eSata drives under WinXP SP3
Does Microsoft have available for download drivers which will improve the
performance of eSata internal harddrives. As shipped originally WinXP was probably not equipped to handle eSata, but years later there are many things available for use under WinXP SP3 which the old drivers won't optimize. -- Kindly remove my name and address before forwarding this e-mail. Also, please place my address in the bcc field when sending me e-mail. We have no control over who will see forwarded messages! This helps to keep all our Personal Contacts lists Private and Stops Intruders & Spammers. |
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eSata drivers for internal eSata drives under WinXP SP3
From: "Docster"
Does Microsoft have available for download drivers which will improve the performance of eSata internal harddrives. As shipped originally WinXP was probably not equipped to handle eSata, but years later there are many things available for use under WinXP SP3 which the old drivers won't optimize. By definition eSATA are Externally connectected SATA Drives not "eSata internal harddrives". Based upon a given system, there are internal and external connecttions but there is only one OS SATA driver for the SATA controller and associated chip-set. The concept is OS independent. -- Dave Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp |
#3
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eSata drivers for internal eSata drives under WinXP SP3
Docster wrote:
Does Microsoft have available for download drivers which will improve the performance of eSata internal harddrives. As shipped originally WinXP was probably not equipped to handle eSata, but years later there are many things available for use under WinXP SP3 which the old drivers won't optimize. ESATA is the same thing as SATA. How they differ, is the electrical levels are slightly different. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#eSATA "transmit amplitude... 500–600 mV" "receive amplitude... 240–600 mV" The purpose of doing that, is to support a 2 meter cable, instead of a 1 meter cable. The difference between launch and receive sensitivity, gives room for the loss caused by a longer cable. While an Intel spec happens to repeat that info, there is nothing that I could find, to suggest a port was programmable as SATA or ESATA (i.e. change the receiver or transmitter characteristics). I have to conclude from that, the port runs ESATA levels at all times, even when regular SATA drives are connected. I don't think the port is in a position to "guess" what is connected. And unless I can find a register that sets those levels, then I have to conclude it uses ESATA levels, so it is ready for ESATA when it shows up. ******* What WinXP is not equipped with, is AHCI drivers. You have to use a manufacturer AHCI driver for that. And it's debatable whether that gives an actual performance improvement. The workload on a desktop, probably doesn't build enough queue depth, for native command queuing to gain an advantage. And while the hot plug feature of AHCI is fun, it has to be done with some care, so the drive doesn't get damaged in handling (bump the drive while the platter is spinning). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahci "Many SATA controllers offer selectable modes of operation: legacy Parallel ATA emulation, standard AHCI mode vendor-specific RAID" WinXP has two drivers available for legacy parallel ATA emulation. One driver handles compatible mode (I/O space, INT14 and INT15), while the other driver handles PCI space, INTA#. In cases where a chip happened to not support that emulation, then a vendor specific driver would be needed. ******* What will improve the performance of SATA/ESATA devices, would be a caching controller, where the OS doesn't know caching is occurring. But that's not a practical solution. Using an SSD for the boot drive, is the most practical. At least one poster to USENET, has switched entirely to SSD, and owns multiple of them. Whereas I own zero of them Paul |
#4
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eSata drivers for internal eSata drives under WinXP SP3
"Paul" wrote in message ... Docster wrote: Does Microsoft have available for download drivers which will improve the performance of eSata internal harddrives. As shipped originally WinXP was probably not equipped to handle eSata, but years later there are many things available for use under WinXP SP3 which the old drivers won't optimize. ESATA is the same thing as SATA. How they differ, is the electrical levels are slightly different. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#eSATA "transmit amplitude... 500–600 mV" "receive amplitude... 240–600 mV" The purpose of doing that, is to support a 2 meter cable, instead of a 1 meter cable. The difference between launch and receive sensitivity, gives room for the loss caused by a longer cable. While an Intel spec happens to repeat that info, there is nothing that I could find, to suggest a port was programmable as SATA or ESATA (i.e. change the receiver or transmitter characteristics). I have to conclude from that, the port runs ESATA levels at all times, even when regular SATA drives are connected. I don't think the port is in a position to "guess" what is connected. And unless I can find a register that sets those levels, then I have to conclude it uses ESATA levels, so it is ready for ESATA when it shows up. ******* What WinXP is not equipped with, is AHCI drivers. You have to use a manufacturer AHCI driver for that. And it's debatable whether that gives an actual performance improvement. The workload on a desktop, probably doesn't build enough queue depth, for native command queuing to gain an advantage. And while the hot plug feature of AHCI is fun, it has to be done with some care, so the drive doesn't get damaged in handling (bump the drive while the platter is spinning). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahci "Many SATA controllers offer selectable modes of operation: legacy Parallel ATA emulation, standard AHCI mode vendor-specific RAID" WinXP has two drivers available for legacy parallel ATA emulation. One driver handles compatible mode (I/O space, INT14 and INT15), while the other driver handles PCI space, INTA#. In cases where a chip happened to not support that emulation, then a vendor specific driver would be needed. ******* What will improve the performance of SATA/ESATA devices, would be a caching controller, where the OS doesn't know caching is occurring. But that's not a practical solution. Using an SSD for the boot drive, is the most practical. At least one poster to USENET, has switched entirely to SSD, and owns multiple of them. Whereas I own zero of them Paul I bought a Kingston 128gb SSD kit for my MSI CR620 and it was initially lovely. Rummaged around, made sure that TRIM was working etc. And just after fitting it, as a precaution, I spashed out on Acronis TrueImage and imaged the 128gb SSD onto the 256gb hd now in the external usb caddy supplied with the kit, ......after a couple of weeks Laptop refused to boot !!! ...so had to restore hard disk partitions from external 256gb 5,600 rpm hd, to SSD in Laptop. I suppose I could have left original 256gb 5,600rpm? hd as it was and then refitted it to Laptop, and gone through the whole procedure again but, having used Acronis to image the SSD as a precaution, ....that turned out to be a a wise and time saving precuation !!! So I have no idea why SSD suddenly refused to boot, after being in there a couple of weeks, and since restoring SSD image external 256gb hd, it's performed flawlesslly for over 6 months, and never refuses to boot !!! regards, Richard I would never advise anyone to swap to a SSD unless, IMMEDIATELY after fitting it, one imaged the thing onto another drive, and kept that image up to date. |
#5
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eSata drivers for internal eSata drives under WinXP SP3
RJK wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message ... Docster wrote: Does Microsoft have available for download drivers which will improve the performance of eSata internal harddrives. As shipped originally WinXP was probably not equipped to handle eSata, but years later there are many things available for use under WinXP SP3 which the old drivers won't optimize. ESATA is the same thing as SATA. How they differ, is the electrical levels are slightly different. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#eSATA "transmit amplitude... 500–600 mV" "receive amplitude... 240–600 mV" The purpose of doing that, is to support a 2 meter cable, instead of a 1 meter cable. The difference between launch and receive sensitivity, gives room for the loss caused by a longer cable. While an Intel spec happens to repeat that info, there is nothing that I could find, to suggest a port was programmable as SATA or ESATA (i.e. change the receiver or transmitter characteristics). I have to conclude from that, the port runs ESATA levels at all times, even when regular SATA drives are connected. I don't think the port is in a position to "guess" what is connected. And unless I can find a register that sets those levels, then I have to conclude it uses ESATA levels, so it is ready for ESATA when it shows up. ******* What WinXP is not equipped with, is AHCI drivers. You have to use a manufacturer AHCI driver for that. And it's debatable whether that gives an actual performance improvement. The workload on a desktop, probably doesn't build enough queue depth, for native command queuing to gain an advantage. And while the hot plug feature of AHCI is fun, it has to be done with some care, so the drive doesn't get damaged in handling (bump the drive while the platter is spinning). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahci "Many SATA controllers offer selectable modes of operation: legacy Parallel ATA emulation, standard AHCI mode vendor-specific RAID" WinXP has two drivers available for legacy parallel ATA emulation. One driver handles compatible mode (I/O space, INT14 and INT15), while the other driver handles PCI space, INTA#. In cases where a chip happened to not support that emulation, then a vendor specific driver would be needed. ******* What will improve the performance of SATA/ESATA devices, would be a caching controller, where the OS doesn't know caching is occurring. But that's not a practical solution. Using an SSD for the boot drive, is the most practical. At least one poster to USENET, has switched entirely to SSD, and owns multiple of them. Whereas I own zero of them Paul I bought a Kingston 128gb SSD kit for my MSI CR620 and it was initially lovely. Rummaged around, made sure that TRIM was working etc. And just after fitting it, as a precaution, I spashed out on Acronis TrueImage and imaged the 128gb SSD onto the 256gb hd now in the external usb caddy supplied with the kit, .....after a couple of weeks Laptop refused to boot !!! ...so had to restore hard disk partitions from external 256gb 5,600 rpm hd, to SSD in Laptop. I suppose I could have left original 256gb 5,600rpm? hd as it was and then refitted it to Laptop, and gone through the whole procedure again but, having used Acronis to image the SSD as a precaution, ....that turned out to be a a wise and time saving precuation !!! So I have no idea why SSD suddenly refused to boot, after being in there a couple of weeks, and since restoring SSD image external 256gb hd, it's performed flawlesslly for over 6 months, and never refuses to boot !!! regards, Richard I would never advise anyone to swap to a SSD unless, IMMEDIATELY after fitting it, one imaged the thing onto another drive, and kept that image up to date. That seems to be the failure pattern. The SSD is more likely to fail suddenly. And not in response to "wear out". A typical failure mechanism is firmware related. The firmware version inside the SSD has a problem. When you buy an SSD, the first thing you do, is investigate how many firmwares were released, and what problems they have. Your symptoms are a bit different, in that the device still functions. Now, maybe there was a bad block in the flash, and that bad block has been spared out (taking one of your boot files with it). The drive has a certain amount of redundancy, and spare flash blocks are available. Maybe that is why it works today. In any case, "do frequent backups". That's my advice for SSD. Some brands seem to be pretty well designed, but there are a fair number of "sad stories" out there, of data loss. On a hard drive, if you check the SMART statistics once in a while, you can get a warning that the drive is developing problems. And perhaps, before they become visible in normal operation. While SSDs have SMART (the parameters aren't the same set as with a hard drive), I don't think there is any parameter that warns about "sudden failure" type problems. Paul |
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