Quantum Fireball ST performance, why so slow?

[cr...@ebhon.jnst.uor.edu]

I have a SCSI drive that identifies itself as a
Quantum Fireball ST2.1S. Dropping by the Quantum
website and pulling down the fireball_st.pdf file,
I see the following specs listed (I have the Ultra SCSI-3
model):

Typical Seek Times(ms)
Average <10
Track-to-Track 2
Full Stroke 20
Average Rotational Latency (ms) 5.56
Rotational Speed (RPM) 5,400
Internal Data Rate (Mb/sec) Up to 132
Data Transfer Rates (Buffer-to-Host)
ATA (MB/sec)
PIO Mode 4 16.6
DMA Mode 2 16.6
Ultra DMA/33 33.3
Ultra SCSI-3 (MB/sec) 20
Buffer Size (KB) 128
Typical Power On to Drive Ready (sec) 15

According to the drive's spec sheet, it's
AV ready.

The drive is hooked into an AdvanSys 3050B PCI
SCSI controller (the controller built into the
Iomega Buz). It is the only drive on the
internal cable (50-pin); there is also an
Iomega Zip drive on the external connector.
I'm running Windows 98 and the driver for the
AdvanSys that Windows 98's setup program installed
by default.

I ran Adaptec's ThreadMark benchmark on a freshly
formatted FAT32 partition on the drive (a full 2.1GB)
and received very disappointing results, a mere 1.91MB/sec
data transfer rating. The Western Digital 5.1GB UDMA
drive on the IDE controller clocks in at 4.3MB/sec.

Any thoughts as to why my performance is so low,
and what (if anything) I can do about it? My only
experience with SCSI was hooking devices into the
back of my Macintosh Performa eons ago, so I'm a little
out of my league here. Any assistance would be
greatly appreciated! Thanks!

- Chris

--
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R. Christopher Harshman : cr...@ebhon.jnst.uor.edu

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[Miguel Tavares]

That drive is really one of the slowest SCSI drives I have seen. No doubt
the fact that the platters rotate at only 5400 rpm has a big influence...

[Martin Payne]

I don't know your controller at all, but is it an ISA card?

I have an Adaptec 1542 which is supposed to be a pretty good all-round Bus
Master card if you happen to have an all-ISA system (you can still buy them,
but they now cost more than a 2940UW!!!)

Unfortunately, if your system is PCI (and I presume it must be since you are
using U-DMA) then the ISA bus is badly strangled and the controller is doing
pretty well to manage nearly 2MB/s. (I can't squeeze this out of my system).

Martin

cr...@ebhon.jnst.uor.edu wrote in message
<732e89$dd0$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...

[w gulezian]

I've got a scsi 2 fireball 1080s that i used for digital audio/video
and get pretty good performance. Is this different than the st?

[cjt&trefoil]

Miguel Tavares wrote:
>
> That drive is really one of the slowest SCSI drives I have seen. No doubt
> the fact that the platters rotate at only 5400 rpm has a big influence...

5400 isn't that slow IMHO. And a lot depends on the bit density.

JMHO.

[zaw]

PUT ST's or SE in your system.. you'll be doing much better AV.

w gulezian wrote:

> I've got a scsi 2 fireball 1080s that i used for digital audio/video
> and get pretty good performance. Is this different than the st?
>