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Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic?

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  Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Jax <remove.bear.bottoms1@gmail.com> - 2014-12-06 14:44 +0000
    Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? philo  <philo@privacy.net> - 2014-12-06 09:44 -0600
      Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? notbob <notbob@nothome.com> - 2014-12-06 19:37 +0000
        Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? philo  <philo@privacy.net> - 2014-12-06 14:54 -0600
        Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Jax <remove.bear.bottoms1@gmail.com> - 2014-12-06 22:50 +0000
          Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? notbob <notbob@nothome.com> - 2014-12-06 23:13 +0000
        Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? philo  <philo@privacy.net> - 2014-12-07 04:57 -0600
          Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-12-07 16:52 +0100
            Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? philo  <philo@privacy.net> - 2014-12-07 09:59 -0600
              Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-12-07 17:10 +0100
                Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? philo  <philo@privacy.net> - 2014-12-07 10:48 -0600
                  Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-12-07 18:37 +0100
                    Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? philo  <philo@privacy.net> - 2014-12-07 12:28 -0600
                    Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2014-12-07 21:46 +0100
                      Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-12-07 22:27 +0100
                        Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2014-12-08 00:36 +0100
                          Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2014-12-08 09:26 +0000
                            Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-12-08 11:31 +0100
                              Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2014-12-08 10:53 +0000
                                Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> - 2014-12-08 17:48 +0100
                                  Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2014-12-08 17:28 +0000
                              Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Robert Nichols <SEE_SIGNATURE@localhost.localdomain.invalid> - 2014-12-08 08:43 -0600
                              Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2014-12-09 11:02 +0100
                              Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2014-12-09 23:35 +0000
                                Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? philo  <philo@privacy.net> - 2014-12-09 17:43 -0600
                                  Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? philo  <philo@privacy.net> - 2014-12-09 17:54 -0600
                                  Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2014-12-10 20:22 +0000
                                  Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2014-12-10 20:27 +0000
                                    Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? philo  <philo@privacy.net> - 2014-12-10 16:40 -0600
                                Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Thomas Richter <thor@math.tu-berlin.de> - 2014-12-10 11:06 +0100
    Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Baho Utot <baho-utot@invalid.com> - 2014-12-06 13:39 -0500
      Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Jax <remove.bear.bottoms1@gmail.com> - 2014-12-06 22:51 +0000
    Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Johnny <johnny@invalid.net> - 2014-12-06 13:02 -0600
    Re: Bad Hitachi disk.... how so from a pic? Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> - 2014-12-06 16:04 -0800

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#2600

Aragorn <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> writes:
> I did say that I misworded that part.  And yes, I don't know *all* the 
> details, but I wasn't aware that this was a requirement for me to be 
> allowed to speak about the differences between SCSI and ATA on Usenet.

You can say what you like, of course, but when it’s wrong, the chances
are high that someone will correct you.  If you don’t like that then I
can only suggest doing a bit more research; at least in this case no
deep special knowledge is required - even Wikipedia’s article on PATA is
pretty clear on the point.

-- 
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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#2596

On 12/08/2014 04:31 AM, Aragorn wrote:
 > Command queuing for instance is a controller task, and when it comes to
> IDE disks, the kernel will take care of that.  When it comes to SCSI or
> SAS, the controller card does all of that, leaving the mainboard CPU
> free to do other things.

SATA drives have had Native Command Queuing (NCQ) for some time now.
In fact, one of the problems SSD drives had with the SATA command set
was that the "Trim" command was specified as non-queueable, so if you
had your OS configured to issue a Trim automatically whenever a file
was deleted you took a big performance hit because the whole queue
was blocked while the lengthy Trim command was executed. (This was
corrected in the SATA 3.1 spec, which provides a queued Trim command.)

-- 
Bob Nichols         AT comcast.net I am "RNichols42"

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#2601

Aragorn a écrit :
> On Monday 08 December 2014 10:26, Richard Kettlewell conveyed the 
> following to comp.os.linux.hardware...
> 
>> Pascal Hambourg <boite-a-spam@plouf.fr.eu.org> writes:
>>> Aragorn a écrit :
>>>> In the event of a machine with an ATA hard disk, almost everything
>>>> on account of disk I/O is handled by the CPU on the mainboard, while
>>>> in the event of a SCSI controller, the operating system offloads a
>>>> great deal of those low- level tasks onto the controller itself,
>>>> which (of course) has its own dedicated (and typically specialized)
>>>> processor(s).
>>>
>>> Is this still true with modern AHCI SATA host controllers ?  What are
>>> these low-level tasks that are performed by a SCSI host controller
>>> but not by a SATA host controller ?
>>
>> AFAIK it hasn't been true since the 1980s.  The "integrated" in
>> Integrated Drive Electronics (i.e. the original name for PATA) refers
>> to the integration of the controller into the drive.
> 
> No, not the controller.  That which is integrated into the drive are the 
> most elementary drive electronics - voltage regulators and such - which 
> is not the same thing as an actual disk controller.

I think you're misinformed. What you describe looks like the simple
electronics of a floppy drive, not of an ATA or SCSI disk drive. An
integrated controller is much more elaborated, with a specialized
processor, RAM... and processes high level commands.

> Command queuing for instance is a controller task, and when it comes to 
> IDE disks, the kernel will take care of that.  When it comes to SCSI or 
> SAS, the controller card does all of that, leaving the mainboard CPU 
> free to do other things.

Command queuing is performed by the integrated controller. ATA has
commands such as READ DMA QUEUED (queued read of a sector range using
DMA for transfer) which are sent to and executed by the disk itself.

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#2610

In article <m63ulf$lhv$1@dont-email.me>,
Aragorn  <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:
>No, not the controller.  That which is integrated into the drive are the 
>most elementary drive electronics ─ voltage regulators and such ─ which 
>is not the same thing as an actual disk controller.  For that matter, 
>SCSI disks are IDE disks too, and yet they require a separate controller 
>─ whether installed on the motherboard or on a plug-in adapter card.  

There's quite a bit more integration in modern (and many not-so-modern)
drives than you're letting on.  There was enough logic built into the drive
that ISA IDE controllers were often little more than some bus transceivers
and a very small amount of glue logic.  Consider this one, for instance:

https://ancientelectronics.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/wang3.jpg

It's fuzzy, but it looks like the only active components are some 74LS245s
(or '244s?) and a smallish programmable-logic device.  The intention with
IDE was to provide a nearly direct connection between the ISA bus and a hard
drive.

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/           Top-posting!
 \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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#2611

On 12/09/2014 05:35 PM, Scott Alfter wrote:
> In article <m63ulf$lhv$1@dont-email.me>,
> Aragorn  <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:
>> No, not the controller.  That which is integrated into the drive are the
>> most elementary drive electronics ─ voltage regulators and such ─ which
>> is not the same thing as an actual disk controller.  For that matter,
>> SCSI disks are IDE disks too, and yet they require a separate controller
>> ─ whether installed on the motherboard or on a plug-in adapter card.
>
> There's quite a bit more integration in modern (and many not-so-modern)
> drives than you're letting on.  There was enough logic built into the drive
> that ISA IDE controllers were often little more than some bus transceivers
> and a very small amount of glue logic.  Consider this one, for instance:
>
> https://ancientelectronics.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/wang3.jpg
>
> It's fuzzy, but it looks like the only active components are some 74LS245s
> (or '244s?) and a smallish programmable-logic device.  The intention with
> IDE was to provide a nearly direct connection between the ISA bus and a hard
> drive.
>
>    _/_
>   / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
> (IIGS( https://alfter.us/           Top-posting!
>   \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?
>



That item in the photo is not a true IDE controller, it's one of those 
"sound card" controllers often used in 486's

The very first time I installed Linux (Red Hat 5.2) it was on a 486 that 
had one of those controllers. I was surprised that it was even supported 
by Linux.

The performance was quite terrible, but I did get a "command line" 
install functioning.

BTW: That drive was so slow that an installation of Win95 that I tried 
first to install from CD never completed even after running all night.
I later installed Win95 from floppies and it wend much faster.

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#2612

<snip>

> The very first time I installed Linux (Red Hat 5.2) it was on a 486 that
> had one of those controllers. I was surprised that it was even supported
> by Linux.
>
> The performance was quite terrible, but I did get a "command line"
> install functioning.
>
> BTW: That drive was so slow that an installation of Win95 that I tried
> first to install from CD never completed even after running all night.
> I later installed Win95 from floppies and it wend much faster.


Forgot to add:


That type of controller has no HD support and also requires a special cd 
rom designed for it.

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#2632

In article <m681f8$kb7$1@dont-email.me>, philo   <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>On 12/09/2014 05:35 PM, Scott Alfter wrote:
>> There's quite a bit more integration in modern (and many not-so-modern)
>> drives than you're letting on.  There was enough logic built into the drive
>> that ISA IDE controllers were often little more than some bus transceivers
>> and a very small amount of glue logic.  Consider this one, for instance:
>>
>> https://ancientelectronics.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/wang3.jpg
>>
>> It's fuzzy, but it looks like the only active components are some 74LS245s
>> (or '244s?) and a smallish programmable-logic device.  The intention with
>> IDE was to provide a nearly direct connection between the ISA bus and a hard
>> drive.
>
>That item in the photo is not a true IDE controller, it's one of those 
>"sound card" controllers often used in 486's

This one, though, isn't a sound card...pretty sure the RCA jacks are there
just to bring out the audio from a CD-ROM drive.  I've had a similar card in
the past that didn't have the audio-out jacks.

>The performance was quite terrible, but I did get a "command line" 
>install functioning.

With the bus running at 8 MHz, it won't exactly be a speed demon. :-P

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/           Top-posting!
 \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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#2633

In article <m681f8$kb7$1@dont-email.me>, philo   <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>That item in the photo is not a true IDE controller, it's one of those 
>"sound card" controllers often used in 486's

I was going to link this:

http://abcresellers.com/store/product21.html

but went with the other one as you could more easily read out the types of
chips on it.  This one's clearly identified as an IDE interface.  It won't
be bootable since it has no boot ROM and the BIOS of the machine in which
it's installed won't know anything about it, but it'd work with any IDE
device.

(They're smoking crack if they think people are going to fork over the
better part of $160, though.)

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/           Top-posting!
 \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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#2638

On 12/10/2014 02:27 PM, Scott Alfter wrote:
> In article <m681f8$kb7$1@dont-email.me>, philo   <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>> That item in the photo is not a true IDE controller, it's one of those
>> "sound card" controllers often used in 486's
>
> I was going to link this:
>
> http://abcresellers.com/store/product21.html
>
> but went with the other one as you could more easily read out the types of
> chips on it.  This one's clearly identified as an IDE interface.  It won't
> be bootable since it has no boot ROM and the BIOS of the machine in which
> it's installed won't know anything about it, but it'd work with any IDE
> device.
>
> (They're smoking crack if they think people are going to fork over the
> better part of $160, though.)
>
>    _/_
>   / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
> (IIGS( https://alfter.us/           Top-posting!
>   \_^_/                              >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?
>



yep , that looks like an IDE controller all right and I don't foresee it 
being sold at that price.

I recently purchased an all-in-one mobo with a quad core CPU plus 8 gigs 
of RAM for about $160

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#2614

Am 10.12.2014 um 00:35 schrieb Scott Alfter:
> In article <m63ulf$lhv$1@dont-email.me>,
> Aragorn  <thorongil@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:
>> No, not the controller.  That which is integrated into the drive are the
>> most elementary drive electronics ─ voltage regulators and such ─ which
>> is not the same thing as an actual disk controller.  For that matter,
>> SCSI disks are IDE disks too, and yet they require a separate controller
>> ─ whether installed on the motherboard or on a plug-in adapter card.
>
> There's quite a bit more integration in modern (and many not-so-modern)
> drives than you're letting on.  There was enough logic built into the drive
> that ISA IDE controllers were often little more than some bus transceivers
> and a very small amount of glue logic.

IDE was exactly designed for this use-case, namely to provide an "as 
cheap as possible" disk adapter for the ISA bus. As you observed, it 
only required bus drivers to isolate the IDE output of the drive from 
the ISA bus. All data was manually transported from the disk to the host 
memory by the CPU - no DMA at all, everything is PIO (programmed I/O).

Actually, this is also pretty much how the "IDE interface" of some Amiga 
models "work".

Greetings,
	Thomas

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#2573

Jax wrote:

> Someone I know who says he knows about computer hardware says
> "Hitachi disks are sh*t". As proof he posted this picture of two
> Hitachi disks in another thread here.

No, all he proved is he is an idiot.

> 
>    http://osama-is-dead.net/images/bad_hitachi.jpg
> 
> Is he right? How can a picture of a disk can show it is bad?
> 

No

I have three 500GB Hitachi drives that have over 50,000 hours on each one 
them and they are still working.  They have been in 5 different computers.
Smartmontools reports show no errors, no remapped sectors, no dead sectors.


I also have 5 of the HGST models all currently working, all showing no 
issues on smartmontools reports.

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#2578

Baho Utot <baho-utot@invalid.com> wrote in
news:i3vblb-qdr.ln1@raspberry-pi.bildanet.com: 

> Jax wrote:
> 
>> Someone I know who says he knows about computer hardware says
>> "Hitachi disks are sh*t". As proof he posted this picture of two
>> Hitachi disks in another thread here.
> 
> No, all he proved is he is an idiot.
> 
>> 
>>    http://osama-is-dead.net/images/bad_hitachi.jpg
>> 
>> Is he right? How can a picture of a disk can show it is bad?
>> 
> 
> No
> 
> I have three 500GB Hitachi drives that have over 50,000 hours on
> each one them and they are still working.  They have been in 5
> different computers. Smartmontools reports show no errors, no
> remapped sectors, no dead sectors. 
> 
> 
> I also have 5 of the HGST models all currently working, all
> showing no issues on smartmontools reports.

Baho.... thanks for the interesting counter-facts to the origial 
assertion I read!

-- 
Jax        

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#2574

On Sat, 06 Dec 2014 14:44:04 GMT
Jax <remove.bear.bottoms1@gmail.com> wrote:

> Someone I know who says he knows about computer hardware says
> "Hitachi disks are sh*t". As proof he posted this picture of two
> Hitachi disks in another thread here. 
> 
>    http://osama-is-dead.net/images/bad_hitachi.jpg 
> 
> Is he right? How can a picture of a disk can show it is bad? 
> 

The one I have has been a good one, I've been using it since 2008.  

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#2580

On 2014-12-06, Jax <remove.bear.bottoms1@gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone I know who says he knows about computer hardware says
> "Hitachi disks are sh*t". As proof he posted this picture of two
> Hitachi disks in another thread here. 
>
>    http://osama-is-dead.net/images/bad_hitachi.jpg 
>
> Is he right? How can a picture of a disk can show it is bad? 

Even if a picture can show that one drive is bad, it's certainly not
evidence that the entire line of drives is bad.  If he wants to claim
that Hitachis are bad, he needs to show hard numbers that back his
claim, like showing an abnormally high failure rate among a large number
of Hitachi drives compared to other manufacturers.

--keith

-- 
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

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