In the constant pursuit of trying to understand and improve the slow
performance of my Maxtor 13.6 [Ultra66] vs the old WD [non-Ultra]
I've added a Promise 66 and doing a lot of cache/memory tweaking.

Inside Windows, using Sisoft Sandra, the two hard drives are almost
the same:  Maxtor at 56mb/sec, and the old WD at 53mb/sec.

Neither number makes any sense to me, as according to various users
and comparisons, the Max should be getting over 70 [at least 66] and
the WD should NOT be getting anything better than 18 or 20.  During
boot, the DOS screen indicates the Maxtor running at mode 4, and the
WD is only at mode 2.

But they are almost the same, regardless of how I test them, ie,
having both online, or one at a time, or on the same ribbon, or on
separate ribbons and/or connectors.  I find this odd.

On the Promise site, they have a downloadable hard drive test program
called CoreTest v3.03 at:

http://www.promise.com/support/testutilities.htm#u66flash

This is exclusively a DOS program, so after booting to pure DOS, I get
big diiferences:  the Maxtor at 56mb/sec in Windows gets 48 in DOS,
and the WD drops from 53 in Windows to just 21 in the DOS test.

I am assuming here that something in Windows is enhancing the
performace of both hard drives, which makes sense, which leads me to
the question:  What is enhancing the perfomance?  Cache control?  The
swap file?  Configuration?

Obviously, if that *something* can affect the hard drives that much,
then with tender loving card and feeding, one could improve even more.

Any suggestions?  

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