Mac Pro owners: try this for XP SATA problems...

[Mr. Mister]

http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm

I just saw that linked in the comments section of an AnandTech article, I haven't seen it dismissed or tried by anybody yet, so anybody who has a Mac Pro and wants to see if they can get SATA runing decently, try it and report back.

[BadRambo]

Gonna research this. Nice find. I have seen some commentary about this somewhere else, but cannot remember exactly where.

Thanks !!! :)

[Mr. Mister]

Yeah, I encourage anybody with a Mac Pro to try it and report back to whether it works or not.

[BadRambo]

Some good news. I chose the easy option first, running the VB script to reset the registry values. It appears to have had a MAJOR impact on the disk behavior. Before, prior to running the script, you barely hear the disk drive mechanical activity -- very quiet, nothing like under OS X, where it really "rattles". Well now under XP you can also really hear it, and the speeds of various programs have jumped. I am running a defragment with a utility program under XP as I type here (another computer) and it is really running well.

I am going to do alot more testing, and get a utility which can actually do a disk I/O benchmark.

But at least, straight out of the chute, GOOD NEWS for the MPers. It does appear to work, or at least help some, at first approximation.

Cheers -- more to follow --- Bob :D ;) :D

FOLLOW ON TEST: I did a test using a large game load, as a comparative test between my iMac and the MP both running XP under BootCamp. The MP took about twice as long as the iMac did, to load the same game. So it still says there are major issues with I/O on the MP with the present BootCamp drivers.
Also, checking the mode settings of the IDEs, they are all stuck in PIO mode, and for whatever reason, and not getting into DMA mode, as is the case with the iMac where the two channels are running in DMA MODE 5.

As a follow-on, I again installed the BootCamp drivers, then ran the "dmareset" VB script, and find now that ONE of the primary IDE channels is in ULTRA DMA MODE 4. So, the beat goes on.

[Mr. Mister]

Well at least there's some good news!

[uelef]

On my Mac Pro this unfortunately did not help - the hard drives still are in PIO mode....

[Terrabit]

Hi.,

The problem appears to be that you need to have the appropriate Intel SATA drivers installed on the CD Installation disc used to install XP. Don't ask me why, i don't know. But i know that i have full speed SATA on my system when following the steps described here:

http://web.mac.com/terrabit/iWeb/macpro/


Please let me know if it works for you.
Terrabit!

p.s. This also fixes the problem of users only having Windows XP Service Pack 1 installation discs.

[Mr. Mister]

Just wondering terrabit, has that worked for anybody yet?

[waremaster]

Just wondering terrabit, has that worked for anybody yet?


Yes it worked for me.

Thank You! Terrabit