EIDE and Western Digital RANT AND RAVE
Dave Nauman
Personal opinion mode on:
Used to be, adding an IDE drive was completely
brainless and painless. I could do the whole thing
in about 5 minutes without even thinking about it.
Now, EIDE has me tremendously confused, even after reading gobs of
information about it. Especially reading all of the
posts here. There is a *tremendous* amount of FUD
(fear, uncertainty, and doubt) floating around about
EIDE. Thanks WD and Seagate, you just made upgrading
your hard drive harder than SCSI. If the situation
is going to be remedied, you need to do the following:
- Get with Seagate and come up with ONE standard, not two.
- Get with the other hardware companies and enforce the
standard and the implementation. Right now, its a total
mess, with drive companies doing one thing, controller
companies doing another, not to mention CDROM companies.
What about these other promised modes? How can you
possibly say that EIDE is a standard, when part of it
hasn't even been implemented yet? Even the controller
and motherboard people have it screwed up, with
different companies having different implementations
(i.e. some only allow 2 drive connections, others allow
4, etc)
- Get with Microsoft, IBM, and the UNIX vendors to
have their operating systems *transparently* support
your standard. This is far from the case today.
In short, you've got a big problem on your hands. And,
like I said, you've taken away the *major* reason for
using IDE in the first place, which was simplicity.
Dave Nauman
Ken Holt
> Personal opinion mode on:
> Dave Nauman
Well said, Dave! I'm sure you echo the feelings of
most of the participants (and lurkers) on this group.
Several months ago I started contemplating getting a
>500mb IDE drive, so I started following this group
to become informed enough to install it. I knew
there were a few things to watch out for, but I didn't
know exactly what they were. And after 3 months of
reading, I still can't say that I feel terribly
confident. I am very disheartened by how incredibly
complex installing an IDE drive has gotten.
I'll probably go ahead and do the deed in another couple
of months, but with a *big* difference. I was really
excited at the prospect before; now the joy is gone.
I'm pretty much dreading it.
To the manufacturers: WHY?
--
+----------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| Ken Holt kh...@telerama.lm.com | Early music lover |
| Pittsburgh, PA | and computer junkie |
+----------------------------------+-------------------------------+
James Chiang
: Well said, Dave! I'm sure you echo the feelings of
: most of the participants (and lurkers) on this group.
: Several months ago I started contemplating getting a
: >500mb IDE drive, so I started following this group
: to become informed enough to install it. I knew
: there were a few things to watch out for, but I didn't
: know exactly what they were. And after 3 months of
: reading, I still can't say that I feel terribly
: confident. I am very disheartened by how incredibly
: complex installing an IDE drive has gotten.
: I'll probably go ahead and do the deed in another couple
: of months, but with a *big* difference. I was really
: excited at the prospect before; now the joy is gone.
: I'm pretty much dreading it.
: To the manufacturers: WHY?
I also agree. I am in the same situation. Thinking of getting a
new 500+ MB HD. Thought I'd check out the newsgroups. Holy, am I lost
now. All these different controllers that do different things and then
drivers , some that work, some that dont' controllers that are trashing
data, some support 4 drives some only 2. I will get my drive but I still
don't know how I'm giong to connect it. I'd like to have 3 HDs going but
I don't even know what I need.
Jim
-- ------------------------
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for the purpose of destroying human life, surely we can keep them emploued
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Tommy Douglas 1945
James Chiang (jch...@uoguelph.ca) {University of Guelph}
Peter Herweijer
>Personal opinion mode on:
Oh gee. A disgruntled user :^)
> [...] Thanks WD and Seagate, you just made upgrading
>your hard drive harder than SCSI. If the situation
>is going to be remedied, you need to do the following:
>
>- Get with Seagate and come up with ONE standard, not two.
There _is_ one standard. It's called ATA-2. Both the hard drive portion
of EIDE and Fast-ATA are derived from this standard.
>- Get with the other hardware companies and enforce the
>standard and the implementation. Right now, its a total
>mess, with drive companies doing one thing, controller
>companies doing another, not to mention CDROM companies.
There is no need for this to be done. It HAS already been done by the
Small Form Factor commitee. IMHO, it is mostly the marketing boys that
made it into a mess. Unfortunately, the SFF was too late to standardize
EIDE interfaces on the register level, so unless you have a mainboard
with integrated EIDE interface we will always need drivers or an on-card
BIOS in the near future.
What's that remark about CDROM companies supposed to mean? The SFF did a
fair job of getting ATAPI at a reasonable degree of maturity before it
hit the market. Even at this stage, ATAPI CDROMs are fairly compatible
with each other and it won't be very long before the wrinkles get ironed
out.
Of course, there will always be companies offering incompabile or
downright buggy products that are a little cheaper, but you seem to be
blaming the wrong people for this. Probably in a year or so the market
has matured sufficiently that you can plug together EIDE hardware with
almost as little problems as with IDE now.
>What about these other promised modes? How can you
>possibly say that EIDE is a standard, when part of it
>hasn't even been implemented yet?
ATA-2 hasn't been finalized yet. I don't know enough about EIDE (in the
narrow sense) to comment on its stability. ATA-3 is already being worked
on (as is SCSI-3, so...) Also, remember that the standard leaves room
for growth: a drive can tell the interface software exactly what modes
it's capable of.
> Even the controller
>and motherboard people have it screwed up, with
>different companies having different implementations
>(i.e. some only allow 2 drive connections, others allow
>4, etc)
Don't blame this on WD or Seagate; that is because the market demands
interfaces that are $5 cheaper because they have no secondary IDE
channel. WD is clear enough in its promotion of dual-ported adapters.
>- Get with Microsoft, IBM, and the UNIX vendors to
>have their operating systems *transparently* support
>your standard. This is far from the case today.
There is a standard, the Enhanced BIOS specification. Everyone can get
copies of it. It is now up to the OS writers to support it. You cannot
expect the drive vendors to do this for IBM or Microsoft. Of course, it
is relatively new, so you cannot expect years old operating systems to
be magically retrofitted with the necessary code.
BTW, right at the moment I'm using Linux with three drives, one of which
is >504MB, a translating BIOS doing LBA, and an ATAPI (IDE) CD-ROM. It
works seamlessly, with the whole rigmarole tightly integrated in the OS
kernel. It may take some time for mammoths like Microsoft to get this
far :^)
>In short, you've got a big problem on your hands.
In short, you've written a largely unwarranted article which is mostly
directed at the wrong people to boot.
>And, like I said, you've taken away the *major* reason for
>using IDE in the first place, which was simplicity.
I reply that there was no way of progressing _without_ complicating
matters. The speed barrier; the 504MB barrier; the inability to handle
devices other than harddisks; all these issues have been addressed. If
these things could've been handled in a way that seamlessly integrates
with older hard- and software these problems wouldn't have existed in
the first place. (BTW, I think that ATAPI _is_ pretty seamless and
compatible). Take SCSI-1 vs SCSI-2... there were plenty of headaches
involved in that transition too.
No, WD, Seagate and whoever else did a fine job, IMHO. Blame their
marketing departments for messing things up by introducing Fast-ATA and
EIDE. Blame the marketing boys of most other companies, too, for
slapping "Enhanced" and "Fast" tags on every bit of hardware that they
want to sell and which remotely satisfies one of the EIDE requirements.
Blame the consumers for blindly purchasing anything that says "Enhanced"
(e.g. a Quantum Maverick in preference to a ProDrive for Gawd's sake).
Finally, blame the net.users who once read an article about this in some
obscure mag while waiting at the dentists' for daily posting horribly
deformed versions of the truth as if it were gospel straight from the
SFF documents.
- Peter Herweijer
pie...@sci.kun.nl
S. Hansen
I'm not a manufacturer, but part of the answer is simple: Nobody
considered hooking up 1gig plus hard disks when the IBM PC BIOS was
written in 1982. The majority of the problems adding the new drives are
caused by the fact we're still running basically the same software 12
years (and counting) later. IDE was simply a repackaging of the 1982
design, the software still thinks it's talking to an old WD controller.
Skip
John Wehman
>
[snip]
>
>No, WD, Seagate and whoever else did a fine job, IMHO. Blame their
>marketing departments for messing things up by introducing Fast-ATA and
>EIDE. Blame the marketing boys of most other companies, too, for
>slapping "Enhanced" and "Fast" tags on every bit of hardware that they
>want to sell and which remotely satisfies one of the EIDE requirements.
>Blame the consumers for blindly purchasing anything that says "Enhanced"
>(e.g. a Quantum Maverick in preference to a ProDrive for Gawd's sake).
>Finally, blame the net.users who once read an article about this in some
>obscure mag while waiting at the dentists' for daily posting horribly
>deformed versions of the truth as if it were gospel straight from the
>SFF documents.
>
> - Peter Herweijer
> pie...@sci.kun.nl
Peter H has done a fantastic job of summarizing the problems with the net.storage mess. Speaking from
Seagate's standpoint, everything he said is right on the money. I just wanted to congratulate Peter in public
for his fine editorial, and just to say "listen when that boy speaks".
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\___/ (_) `\___x___/
John F. Wehman -The opinions I express are solely
jwe...@picosof.com my own and in no way reflect those
john_...@notes.seagate.com of my employer's. (I think)
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Kevin Martinez
>There _is_ one standard. It's called ATA-2. Both the hard drive portion
>of EIDE and Fast-ATA are derived from this standard.
Actually it is still a draft and hasn't even been submitted as a standard
yet. I see it is still getting edits this week. The EIDE, FAST-ATA and
FAST ATA-2 marketing programs are derivatives of this draft.
>There is a standard, the Enhanced BIOS specification. Everyone can get
>copies of it. It is now up to the OS writers to support it. You cannot
>expect the drive vendors to do this for IBM or Microsoft. Of course, it
>is relatively new, so you cannot expect years old operating systems to
>be magically retrofitted with the necessary code.
Nor will there be any efforts whatsoever to assist people who have
already handed over their cash to the OEMs. This would put a dent in
sales of new hardware and, therfore, next quarter profits. Don't kid
yourself into thinking that the OEM sees beyond this. If they had any
foresite at all, this EIDE/FAST-ATA/FAST-ATA2 mess would have been taken
care of last year at a meeting planned to do just such a thing. (little
was resolved as far as I can tell) The previous poster was exactly right
in his complaint about the current state of affairs in the low
budget/high volume PC storage/IO industry: The original premise was low
cost and simplicity with respect to SCSI. Now both are slipping away...
>BTW, right at the moment I'm using Linux with three drives, one of which
>is >504MB, a translating BIOS doing LBA, and an ATAPI (IDE) CD-ROM. It
>works seamlessly, with the whole rigmarole tightly integrated in the OS
>kernel. It may take some time for mammoths like Microsoft to get this
>far :^)
The Linux developers have done an excellent job with their implementation
of >528 MB drives and older BIOS compatibility. Since there is no money
to be made at this, don't expect much commercial help. It sure would put
a smile back on my face to see the the Linux movement continue to rub
soil in the faces of the blindly profit oriented PC hardware/software
industry. It seems as if this is the only way to make the OEMs wake up to
the fact that end users are often customers and sometimes even can think
for themselves without cbeing brainwashed by hype and marketing.
(Yes, as say this as a member of the abovementioned industry)
Once again, the original poster said:
> >And, like I said, you've taken away the *major* reason for
> >using IDE in the first place, which was simplicity.
>I reply that there was no way of progressing _without_ complicating
>matters.
Sure there is: SCSI. Show the OEMs what a narrow minded view next "quarter
profits" is. There's a suprising amount of industry support to push ATA
devices at the expense of SCSI. A OEM rep (who shall remain nameless) has
been seen to encourage this within the current ATA-2 working group.
>No, WD, Seagate and whoever else did a fine job, IMHO. Blame their
>marketing departments for messing things up by introducing Fast-ATA and
>EIDE. Blame the marketing boys of most other companies, too, for
>slapping "Enhanced" and "Fast" tags on every bit of hardware that they
>want to sell and which remotely satisfies one of the EIDE requirements.
>Blame the consumers for blindly purchasing anything that says "Enhanced"
>(e.g. a Quantum Maverick in preference to a ProDrive for Gawd's sake).
>Finally, blame the net.users who once read an article about this in some
>obscure mag while waiting at the dentists' for daily posting horribly
>deformed versions of the truth as if it were gospel straight from the
>SFF documents.
In this you are exactly on the mark! Hype and marketing seem to be able
to overcome common sense and intelligence (at least in the sort term).
Need proof? Look at any magazine rack with computer industry periodicals.
Most have decayed to very liitle more than 500 pages of advertising that
they have convinced users to not only read, but hand over some cash for
the ability to be brainwashed!! (Now that's marketing genius!!)
Just say NO! to all this nonsense until the OEMs get their sh*t together!
--
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Kevin Martinez Warning: Intel Inside
l...@rahul.net I owe all my success to Roly Poly Fish Heads!
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Anthony Brewster
>Stratto...@comm.hq.af.mil (Dave Nauman) writes:
>
>No, WD, Seagate and whoever else did a fine job, IMHO. Blame their
>marketing departments for messing things up by introducing Fast-ATA and
>EIDE. Blame the marketing boys of most other companies, too, for
>
> pie...@sci.kun.nl
It seems to me that you can't praise WD and Seagate and then complain
about the marketing depts. Who do you think these marketing people
work for?? WD and Seagate!!!! If the engineers and standards people
had really done such a good job, the marketing people would not have
to play these games. I have found that marketing promotions are for two
reasons: either overhype actual performance or gloss over product
limitations(ie Intel). A lot of work needs to be done if the problems
people are having just trying to use two drives is as commonplace as it
seems to be in this group.
Anthony
Peter Berger
On the bright side, maybe this will encourage more people to migrate to
SCSI. Then, if you ever need to purchase a non-intel computer, you'll
still be able to use your drive...
--P
--
......................................................................
Peter G. Berger, Esq. Telerama Public Access Internet, Pittsburgh
Internet: pet...@telerama.lm.com Phone: 412/481-3505 Fax: 412/481-8568
http://www.lm.com/~peterb