Slow Barracuda - intermittantly? Weird problem

[jbond]

Hi,

If anyone has any suggestions on how I should tackle the following I'd appreciate it very much.

I have a Performa 6400/200 running 8.6, Orange Micro Ultrawide SCSI card, Seagate Barracuda 9GB Ultrawide SCSI drive, HDST 3.1.1 driver. The drive feels sluggish. Benchmarking with HDST QuckBench or the benchmarking tool within HDST reports INTERMITTANT slow performance. Sometimes it chugs along just fine, around the 15 MB/s throughput range. Other times it's WAY slow, around 2-4 MB/s range. I can't find any correlation between the different speeds and any kind of usage of the computer. Wide/Ultra transfers are not disabled in HDST. Same types of strange results when using ATTO ExpressPro Tools to run a benchmark.

Any ideas/suggestions? I e-mailed Intech but no response from them.

Many thanks in advance for any leads.

-Jeremy

[crazyeights]

Hi there Jbond....

Has life with that drive in your 6400 always been this way?

If you can provide a more detailed history of the problem, and any changes in your system config/devices/ OS, etc...it might help with troubleshooting.......standby.....I'm sure on eof the guys will be a long presently.......meantime......more history of problem.

Best,

Dave

[magician]

I doubt it is an Intech problem. I would be more inclined to suspect the firmware on the OM card.

have you talked to Orange Micro?

[PENDRAGON18]

I know my C600/280G3 can see slow at times, but then my other Macs are 300Mhz+ http://macgurus.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

I would try running SoftRAID in single drive mode and/or even Apple's drivers, with the latest drive formatting UT. SoftRAID is a bit more flexible because you can install the drivers, but not have to reformat... I think you have to reformat with Apple's stuff. Of course it goes without saying that you need to back up this drive.

You might want to check your disk cache. Set it at 1MB or lower.. other good settings are 128KB, 96KB and NONE - if you can. It may slow down some Finder operations, but who knows? These tricks often help vintage Mac owners deal with IDE/ATA-PCI card upgrades.

Of course SoftRAID normally runs $150 separetly. You might try contacting INTECH and or posting to XLR8YOURMAC.COM to see if they have any info. XLR8YOURMAC has an extensive drive database. You could check for any other issues like your's and/or post your current results so others may have it better off.



------------------
Have fun storming the castle!

[jbond]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

I have turned the system disk cache down to 128K (lowest it will go) and still I have the same problem (intermittently.)

I have e-mailed Orange Micro with the description of the problem. I'll see what they have to say about it.

As for history of the problem... I have only just run an actual benchmark. I was using the drive in Narrow mode previously with a 68-50 adapter off the internal bus. That seemed too slow, so I bought the Orange Micro UW card and hooked it up with the 68-pin connector. When even that seemed slow, I tried using the Apple driver and then Anubis. Then I saw HDST was getting good comments so I bought that. Only then did I run the benchmark and see the odd results.

Thanks again for your suggestions. I'll let you know if I get anything resolved through Orange Micro.

-Jeremy

[jbond]

My problem is solved.

Orange Micro e-mailed me back and told me there are some problems with newer firmware revisions on non-G3/G4 PowerMacs and to try reflashing with the oldest revision (v3.20). So far, that has done the trick. I am no longer seeing the intermittent slow throughput (after 4-5 days with the new firmware.)

It is interesting, however, to note that the firmware I am now using is earlier than the version that came with the card when I bought it. Further, it is prior to the release which reportedly added support for HFS+, although the drive on the Orange Micro SCSI card is HFS+ format and it's working fine so far.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

-Jeremy