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Groups > comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage > #2358

Re: IDE or AHCI ?

Date 2012-01-09 20:04 -0500
From Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com>
Newsgroups comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Subject Re: IDE or AHCI ?
References (4 earlier) <9mjrq7F90aU1@mid.individual.net> <5YadnVh378gqYJjSnZ2dnUVZ8uadnZ2d@giganews.com> <9mnj16F3v8U1@mid.individual.net> <4f0b06c1$1@news.bnb-lp.com> <9n18bqFvnaU1@mid.individual.net>
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On 09/01/2012 5:34 PM, Rod Speed wrote:
> Yousuf Khan wrote
>> Rod Speed wrote
>>> Yousuf Khan wrote
>>>> Too bad you can't run benchmarks as your applications.
>
>>> You can however use what you care about the speed of as the benchmark.
>
>> Unfortunately there is nothing from benchmarks that are relevant to
>> real-world apps, therefore there is nothing in them that I care about.
>
> Thats the opposite of what I was talking about. You should take whatever
> it is that you care about the speed of, and USE THAT AS THE BENCHMARK.
>
> Take whatever real world work you care about the
> speed of AND USE THAT AS THE BENCHMARK.

Well, in the real world, what I care about most is multitasking, when 
several apps would be hitting the disk(s) at the same time. When they 
decide to hit the disk(s) is unpredictable. There are various apps 
running automatically in the background that hit the disk, from virus 
scanners, to streaming media services, to disk backups, bittorrents, 
etc., plus whatever app I'm using at the time in the foreground. I've 
had them all hit simultaneously at times. This cannot be adequately 
modelled by any single benchmark. If I were to run several instances of 
the benchmark at the same time, then it might work.

>>>>>> I monitor the disk subsection of the Resource Monitor regularly,
>>>>>> and very often when the disk is busy the Disk Queue Length is
>>>>>> over 1.00 (meaning more than 1 process is actively waiting on the disk) and the Active Time is pegged  near 100%.
>
>>>>> Doesnt mean that NCQ doesnt help in that situaiton.
>
>>>> When I'm talking about the disk queue being higher than 1.00, I don't mean just something minor like 1.01, or 1.10,
>>>> but I'm talking about 5.00, or even 10.00! There could be 10 process waiting on the disk queue at any given time.
>
>>> I just dont believe that that happens all that much for long to matter.
>
>> I really don't care what you believe. I know what I have seen and what I've measured.
>
> And the only example you have actually been able to list where
> that actually happens for long enough to matter is with the boot,
> and there are lots of ways to avoid that happening enough to matter.

It's the only example that's easy to describe, every other instance this 
happens is random processes running simultaneously at random times.

>> It also happens after a standby or hibernate resume,
>
> Like hell it does with 10 different processes competing for drive access.
>
>> not just during full boot. It's a little less intense with hibernate,
>
> It doesnt happen at all with a return from hibernate, JUST
> ONE process is using the drive to load the content of ram
> from the  hibernate file and its just from one file too, so
> there isnt even access to multiple files going on either.
>
>> and even less with standby,
>
> None at all with suspend to ram in fact.

After they come back from standby or hibernate, the OS still does a 
rescan of the hardware to see that everything is still there, you'll see 
large plateaus in the disk activity graphs during this time that can 
last upto 10 seconds. My system is unusually huge, more a server than a 
desktop really: 6 internal hard drives, 2 internal optical drives, and 
various external USB & eSATA hard drives. It's probably not a system 
that should be running a desktop Windows really, more likely it should 
be running a Windows Server. In fact, that's probably the reason why 
running Linux on this system seems to be so much smoother on it.

>> but it's still there.
>
> That is just plain wrong.

It's only wrong because your little world view doesn't allow for it. 
What's beyond your horizon doesn't exist for you.

>>> Thats just plain wrong with modern hard drives. Very
>>> minor delays in fact with modern fast seeking drives.
>
>> "Modern fast seeking hard drives" are the biggest burdens on modern PCs there is.
>
> Wrong again, the user is.

Then why is the user waiting for things to get done when the hard drives 
get busy?

>> If you take a look at the Windows 7 Experience Index, which rates the speed of components from 1 to 7.9, slow to fast
>> respectively; yes it's a benchmark like any of the others and
>> arbitrary in its measurements, but it is a common benchmark for everyone. It bases the overall experience number on
>> the slowest component number in the system.
>
> Its just some fool's 'index' of nothing meaningful at all.
>
>> In modern systems, that's invariably the hard drive system.
>
> Pity that in the real world, with most disk activity actually being media
> files, where the file is accessed linearly, and the speed of access is
> entirely determined by the media play speed, the drive has no effect
> whatever on the speed at which the media is played.
>
>> It doesn't matter whether you have the latest top-line CPU, or hottest new GPU which are running close to the
>> theoretical top 7.9 number, every system these days will be stuck
>> with a 5.9 rating if they use a hard drive to boot up from.
>
> The boot time is completely irrelevant for anyone with even half
> a clue, because they arrange for that boot to happen when they
> arent using the system.

The WEI disk benchmark is always based on the system disk, i.e. the boot 
disk. The boot times are irrelevant here, it's just measuring the raw 
performance of the boot disk, but not during boot. You could conceivably 
have an SSD as a secondary data disk, while still booting from an HD, 
and your SSD's speed will be ignored completely and the times will be 
based completely on the HD's speed, because that's what you boot from.

It actually makes sense to use this disk as the benchmark target, as 
most or all of the Windows system files are located on the boot disk. 
Also, the applications are most often located on this drive too. So it's 
quite likely to be the most accessed drive in the system.

	Yousuf Khan

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Thread

IDE or AHCI ? Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2012-01-03 12:30 -0600
  Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-03 21:05 +0000
    Re: IDE or AHCI ? "arno fucker" <af@arnofucker.com> - 2012-01-04 12:41 +1100
  Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-04 12:58 +1100
  Re: IDE or AHCI ? Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com> - 2012-01-04 00:07 -0500
    Re: IDE or AHCI ? David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> - 2012-01-04 08:53 +0100
      Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-04 20:32 +1100
        Re: IDE or AHCI ? David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> - 2012-01-04 14:44 +0100
          Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-05 07:37 +1100
            Re: IDE or AHCI ? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-01-04 22:56 +0100
              Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-05 09:48 +1100
              Re: IDE or AHCI ? Ed Light <nobody@nobody.there> - 2012-01-04 21:40 -0800
              Re: IDE or AHCI ? Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2012-01-05 05:37 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-05 17:37 +1100
      Re: IDE or AHCI ? Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com> - 2012-01-04 09:29 -0500
        Re: IDE or AHCI ? David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> - 2012-01-04 16:04 +0100
          Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-04 19:19 +0000
            Re: IDE or AHCI ? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-01-04 23:14 +0100
              Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-05 08:47 +0000
          Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-05 07:51 +1100
        Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-04 19:16 +0000
        Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-05 07:41 +1100
          Re: IDE or AHCI ? Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com> - 2012-01-05 14:44 -0500
            Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-06 17:35 +1100
              Re: IDE or AHCI ? Krypsis <krypsis@optusnet.com.au> - 2012-01-07 00:05 +1100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-06 20:04 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2012-01-06 21:13 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? cjt <cheljuba@prodigy.net> - 2012-01-06 20:42 -0600
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-01-07 13:48 +0100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-07 14:09 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2012-01-07 14:36 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Krypsis <krypsis@optusnet.com.au> - 2012-01-08 02:11 +1100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2012-01-09 12:06 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-09 16:27 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2012-01-09 17:36 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2012-01-09 17:41 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Winniethepooh@100acrewoods.net (GMAN) - 2012-01-09 19:07 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-01-09 20:12 +0100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2012-01-09 21:00 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com> - 2012-01-09 11:31 -0500
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-01-07 17:10 +0100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2012-01-10 14:18 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com> - 2012-01-09 11:23 -0500
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-09 16:30 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-01-09 20:16 +0100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? cjt <cheljuba@prodigy.net> - 2012-01-09 17:13 -0600
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-07 08:11 +1100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Krypsis <krypsis@optusnet.com.au> - 2012-01-08 01:23 +1100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-08 06:43 +1100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? JW <none@dev.null> - 2012-01-09 05:23 -0500
              Re: IDE or AHCI ? Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com> - 2012-01-09 10:24 -0500
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-10 09:34 +1100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com> - 2012-01-09 20:04 -0500
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2012-01-10 15:33 +1100
            Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-06 09:48 +0000
              Re: IDE or AHCI ? Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com> - 2012-01-09 11:35 -0500
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-01-09 20:23 +0100
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-10 11:31 +0000
                Re: IDE or AHCI ? Yousuf Khan <bbbl67@spammenot.yahoo.com> - 2012-01-20 06:54 -0500
      Re: IDE or AHCI ? Arno <me@privacy.net> - 2012-01-04 19:14 +0000

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