Wow Iwill XP333 mobo onboard IDE controller REALLY DOES suck!
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2003 10:02 pm
Since I built a new workstation, I'm in the process of converting my old IWill XP333 system over for use at LAN parties.
I'm swapping the 80Gb drive in there for a 160. Doesn't look like the controller on the IWill mobo had any problem recognizing the 160 (BIOS and Norton Ghost both reported the correct size) but when I started copying data from the 80 to the 160 using Ghost (both drives connected to the the two seperate onboard IDE ports) the data transfer rate was only 200Mb/min!!!!!! WTF?
Drive to drive transfers with modern hardware are usually around 500Mb/min and up (I do a lot of this). I haven't seen data transfer rates that low since P-233 days.
Well I popped a Promise ATA100 contoller in there and connected the 160Gb drive to it (I left the 80Gb drive connected to the onboard IDE) and low and behold, Ghost's data transfer rate is ripping along at 1000Mb/min.
Guess I will DEFINATELY be using the Promise controller instead of the onboard.
Great mobo, but I've had a lot of problems with IDE performance. The onboard controller wouldn't talk to my Sony DVD-RW properly either - I had originally installed that Promise controller just for the DVD-RW to overcome that problem.
I'm swapping the 80Gb drive in there for a 160. Doesn't look like the controller on the IWill mobo had any problem recognizing the 160 (BIOS and Norton Ghost both reported the correct size) but when I started copying data from the 80 to the 160 using Ghost (both drives connected to the the two seperate onboard IDE ports) the data transfer rate was only 200Mb/min!!!!!! WTF?
Drive to drive transfers with modern hardware are usually around 500Mb/min and up (I do a lot of this). I haven't seen data transfer rates that low since P-233 days.
Well I popped a Promise ATA100 contoller in there and connected the 160Gb drive to it (I left the 80Gb drive connected to the onboard IDE) and low and behold, Ghost's data transfer rate is ripping along at 1000Mb/min.
Guess I will DEFINATELY be using the Promise controller instead of the onboard.
Great mobo, but I've had a lot of problems with IDE performance. The onboard controller wouldn't talk to my Sony DVD-RW properly either - I had originally installed that Promise controller just for the DVD-RW to overcome that problem.
