DVD burner vanished

  • Thread starter Thread starter Linea Recta
  • Start date Start date
L

Linea Recta

I have a strange problem with my DVD burner since yesterday.
When running Windows I can't open the tray anymore.
Also, the device seems vanished from Windows explorer and from hardware
configuration.

But when I boot into BIOS, it is still recognised and then I can also open
the tray normally.

What can I do?


Windows XP SP3
LG GSA-H44N


--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os
 
Linea said:
I have a strange problem with my DVD burner since yesterday.
When running Windows I can't open the tray anymore.
Also, the device seems vanished from Windows explorer and from hardware
configuration.

But when I boot into BIOS, it is still recognised and then I can also open
the tray normally.

What can I do?


Windows XP SP3
LG GSA-H44N
Click to expand...

It helps to know what "interfering" software you've installed.
Tools which mount virtual CD images, can upset burner operation.
Don't know about tray buttons though.

http://forum.daemon-tools.cc/f19/dvd-tray-wont-open-29555/

On Linux and Unix boxes, the tray button can be disabled,
to prevent media with "busy" files, from being removed
and causing the dependent software to crash. So as far as
the phenomenon of a button that doesn't work goes, this
is not unexpected. The button can be disabled by software
quite easily. It's not like the button is just tied to the
tray motor directly. If you boot a Linux LiveCD for example,
by default the button on the tray of the drive with that CD
in it, will be disabled.

Sometimes it can be a hardware failure, but your BIOS check
shows that's not the case.

Paul
 
Paul said:
It helps to know what "interfering" software you've installed.
Tools which mount virtual CD images, can upset burner operation.
Don't know about tray buttons though.

http://forum.daemon-tools.cc/f19/dvd-tray-wont-open-29555/

On Linux and Unix boxes, the tray button can be disabled,
to prevent media with "busy" files, from being removed
and causing the dependent software to crash. So as far as
the phenomenon of a button that doesn't work goes, this
is not unexpected. The button can be disabled by software
quite easily. It's not like the button is just tied to the
tray motor directly. If you boot a Linux LiveCD for example,
by default the button on the tray of the drive with that CD
in it, will be disabled.

Sometimes it can be a hardware failure, but your BIOS check
shows that's not the case.
Click to expand...


I now write from my notebook.
The PC has been having bizarre behavior this evening, being clicking sounds
(I suppose one of the hard disks) and spontaneous rebooting. The DVD burner
itself must be OK, because I could boot up from a Macrium Reflect boot DVD.

This is bad news, I suppose old fashioned IDE hard drives are not sold
anymore I suppose?

A glimpse at the concerning PC:


--
regards



PC
Windows XP Pro SP3 - mobo: Asus P4B266 - cpu: Intel P4 1,6 GHz. - RAM: 1512
MB. - video: Matrox Marvel G450eTV 32 MB. (AGP) - monitor: 19-inch Medion
Akoya MD 20119 - sound: SB Audigy 1394 (PCI) - hd: 2 X Maxtor 60 GB. -
DVD/CD-ROM: Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1712 - DVD+RW/+R: LG GSA-H44N - analog:
Dynalink Lucent Win Modem 56k6 (PCI) - printer: HP DeskJet 720C (parallel) -
scanner: HP ScanJet 2200C (USB) - keyb: PS/2 MS Internet Keyboard - mouse:
Logitech Pilot Wheel Mouse Optical (USB) - webcam: Logitech QuickCam Zoom
(USB) - removables: Maxtor One Touch 120 GB (USB) - Medion 500 GB (USB) -
Iomega ZipDrive 100 (parallel)
 
Linea said:
I now write from my notebook.
The PC has been having bizarre behavior this evening, being clicking
sounds (I suppose one of the hard disks) and spontaneous rebooting. The
DVD burner itself must be OK, because I could boot up from a Macrium
Reflect boot DVD.

This is bad news, I suppose old fashioned IDE hard drives are not sold
anymore I suppose?

A glimpse at the concerning PC:
Click to expand...

A good root cause, is +12V power supply rail out of spec. That
makes the clicking noise.

This can be caused by placing too many heavy loads on one Molex
chain. I had that happen when my ATI video card was powered by
the same Molex power cable chain, as several hard drives. The
hard drives started clicking. Once the video card was put on its
own chain, there was "peace in the valley".

But if the power supply is going out, then a slightly low (11V on 12V
rail) power output, can be enough to upset storage.

Think back to what wiring changes you've made recently. It could be
you reconfigured the wiring, while adding storage.

Also, if it is the power supply failing, twice now I've received
advanced warning. If you use fixed speed fans in the computer, you'll
notice the fixed speed fans start to "wander", and go up and
down in frequency slightly. The human ear is sensitive to the
tone of the fan. On my first power supply failure, I noticed
the fans started to wander, many days before the power supply
no longer had enough +12V to do anything. The last time
I tested that (failed) supply, it can't even put out 1 amp of
current on +12V, before the output voltage begins to drop. So
the output became very weak, and the current now, isn't even
enough to run one disk drive all by itself. If you sit the
supply on the bench, with no load, all the voltage read right.
But if you put even a tiny electrical load on it, it goes
out of spec. It's more suited to running a flashlight bulb
now, than 100-200 watts of computer gear. At least it didn't "blow"
and take stuff with it.

Paul
 
Paul said:
A good root cause, is +12V power supply rail out of spec. That
makes the clicking noise.

This can be caused by placing too many heavy loads on one Molex
chain. I had that happen when my ATI video card was powered by
the same Molex power cable chain, as several hard drives. The
hard drives started clicking. Once the video card was put on its
own chain, there was "peace in the valley".

But if the power supply is going out, then a slightly low (11V on 12V
rail) power output, can be enough to upset storage.

Think back to what wiring changes you've made recently. It could be
you reconfigured the wiring, while adding storage.
Click to expand...


I have made no hardware changes recently. About a year ago I replaced the
power supply. I think I even posted that event in this group. Since that
time everything worked fine.

I have now extracted the "bad tooth" being drive D: which was configured as
primary slave. Luckily this wasn't the system drive. I can still boot from
C: and I have changed the swap file back to C: again.
Also, both DVD devices work again.

The hard drives were both Maxtor 6L060J3 IDE/ATA 60 GB.
I had the drives monitored by 'Hard disk sentinel' and already noticed some
time ago that D: was reported as less than 100%.
For C: it still reports 'exellent' at this time.



Also, if it is the power supply failing, twice now I've received
advanced warning. If you use fixed speed fans in the computer, you'll
notice the fixed speed fans start to "wander", and go up and
down in frequency slightly. The human ear is sensitive to the
tone of the fan. On my first power supply failure, I noticed
the fans started to wander, many days before the power supply
no longer had enough +12V to do anything. The last time
I tested that (failed) supply, it can't even put out 1 amp of
current on +12V, before the output voltage begins to drop. So
the output became very weak, and the current now, isn't even
enough to run one disk drive all by itself. If you sit the
supply on the bench, with no load, all the voltage read right.
But if you put even a tiny electrical load on it, it goes
out of spec. It's more suited to running a flashlight bulb
now, than 100-200 watts of computer gear. At least it didn't "blow"
and take stuff with it.
Click to expand...


That sounds like a 'burn out'. BTW I feel like that myself :-((
For the moment I assume it's not the power supply, because I'm not going to
replace the power supply on a yearly basis.

Some time ago I wrote here about an old hard disk with a broken IDE pin,
wondering wether the drive would still work. I tried it as a replacement,
but it was not detected in any way by the BIOS. So tha's another drive I can
throw away.

If I can't find some replacement for the broken hard disk, It's inevitable
I'll have to look out for a modern PC...






--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os
 
Linea said:
I have made no hardware changes recently. About a year ago I replaced the
power supply. I think I even posted that event in this group. Since that
time everything worked fine.

I have now extracted the "bad tooth" being drive D: which was configured as
primary slave. Luckily this wasn't the system drive. I can still boot from
C: and I have changed the swap file back to C: again.
Also, both DVD devices work again.

The hard drives were both Maxtor 6L060J3 IDE/ATA 60 GB.
I had the drives monitored by 'Hard disk sentinel' and already noticed some
time ago that D: was reported as less than 100%.
For C: it still reports 'exellent' at this time.



That sounds like a 'burn out'. BTW I feel like that myself :-((
For the moment I assume it's not the power supply, because I'm not going to
replace the power supply on a yearly basis.

Some time ago I wrote here about an old hard disk with a broken IDE pin,
wondering wether the drive would still work. I tried it as a replacement,
but it was not detected in any way by the BIOS. So tha's another drive I can
throw away.

If I can't find some replacement for the broken hard disk, It's inevitable
I'll have to look out for a modern PC...
Click to expand...

1) There are still IDE drives for sale. They've been out of production
for some time, so it's hard to say where they're coming from.

2) You can also use a SATA drive, and put an adapter in the back of it.
I have one of these, and so far it's worked with everything I tried it on.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200156

StarTech IDE2SAT

The black part goes into the new SATA drive. The bare gold pins on the back,
are for a 40 pin IDE connector. It's a bit hard to get the connector on and off
the gold pins. There is a "Master:Slave" jumper as well. So if you want, you
can buy two of those, two SATA drives, and connect two SATA drives to one 80 wire
IDE cable.

Comes with power cable in the box, for daisy chain connecting it.

http://ca.startech.com/media/img/products/gallery_large/IDE2SAT.C.jpg

The main impediment to drive shopping, is whether your system has any drive
capacity limits. My oldest system, only drives up to 137GB work properly. It
was limited to 64GB or so, before the BIOS flash update. Most other systems
here, work past that point. Really old systems, might freeze if a 33GB or larger
drive was connected, in which case you could try the IDE jumper block "CLIP" jumper.
That jumper changes the geometry declaration enough, to make the drive work.

This is an example of a weird one. It claims to be a 7200.10 generation
drive, yet it has an IDE controller. 80GB capacity. So they're still selling
IDE drives.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148236

HTH,
Paul
 
Char said:
Ouch, they really punish you on the price. 80 GB for $100.
Click to expand...

Yup. You really have to love that old computer.

I'd probably have trouble finding that disk locally, as the big
box stores won't touch IDE now. And I think my usual supplier of
hard drives, doesn't have any IDE left either.

So when you find some product, you really can't complain too much.
If you have to repair someones old machine, without screwing with
it too much, it's probably not that bad a deal. Not everyone wants
my style of "adapter solution". And mechanically, there isn't always
room to fit an adapter. Some of the smaller cases wouldn't allow it.
My Sonata with the side mount trays, I don't think it would fit in
there. Even regular drives, the side panel presses on the cabling.

Paul
 
I have a strange problem with my DVD burner since yesterday.
When running Windows I can't open the tray anymore.
Also, the device seems vanished from Windows explorer and from hardware
configuration.

But when I boot into BIOS, it is still recognised and then I can also open
the tray normally.

What can I do?


Windows XP SP3
LG GSA-H44N
Click to expand...


1. Click Start, and then click Run.

2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.

3. In the navigation pane, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

4. In the right pane, click UpperFilters.

Note You may also see an UpperFilters.bak registry entry. You do not have to remove that entry.
Click UpperFilters only. If you do not see the UpperFilters registry entry, you still might have
to remove the LowerFilters registry entry. To do this, go to step 7.

5. On the Edit menu, click Delete.

6. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

7. In the right pane, click LowerFilters.

Note If you do not see the LowerFilters registry entry, unfortunately this content cannot help
you any further.

8. On the Edit menu, click Delete.

9. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

10. Exit Registry Editor.

11. Restart the computer.

Unk
 
Unk said:
1. Click Start, and then click Run.

2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.

3. In the navigation pane, locate and then click the following registry
subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

4. In the right pane, click UpperFilters.

Note You may also see an UpperFilters.bak registry entry. You do not have
to remove that entry.
Click UpperFilters only. If you do not see the UpperFilters registry
entry, you still might have
to remove the LowerFilters registry entry. To do this, go to step 7.

5. On the Edit menu, click Delete.

6. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

7. In the right pane, click LowerFilters.

Note If you do not see the LowerFilters registry entry, unfortunately this
content cannot help
you any further.

8. On the Edit menu, click Delete.

9. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

10. Exit Registry Editor.

11. Restart the computer.

Unk
Click to expand...



I had this done yesterday by Fixit, which did not find any problem...



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os
 
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. In the navigation pane, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
4. In the right pane, click UpperFilters.
Note You may also see an UpperFilters.bak registry entry. You do not have to remove that entry.
Click UpperFilters only. If you do not see the UpperFilters registry entry, you still mighthave
to remove the LowerFilters registry entry. To do this, go to step 7.
5. On the Edit menu, click Delete.
6. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
7. In the right pane, click LowerFilters.
Note If you do not see the LowerFilters registry entry, unfortunately this content cannot help
you any further.
8. On the Edit menu, click Delete.
9. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
10. Exit Registry Editor.
11. Restart the computer.
Unk
I had this done yesterday by Fixit, which did not find any problem...
Click to expand...

Did you manually check to see if it actually deleted those filters???

Unk
 
Paul said:
1) There are still IDE drives for sale. They've been out of production
for some time, so it's hard to say where they're coming from.

2) You can also use a SATA drive, and put an adapter in the back of it.
I have one of these, and so far it's worked with everything I tried it
on.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200156

StarTech IDE2SAT

The black part goes into the new SATA drive. The bare gold pins on the
back,
are for a 40 pin IDE connector. It's a bit hard to get the connector on
and off
the gold pins. There is a "Master:Slave" jumper as well. So if you
want, you
can buy two of those, two SATA drives, and connect two SATA drives to
one 80 wire
IDE cable.

Comes with power cable in the box, for daisy chain connecting it.

http://ca.startech.com/media/img/products/gallery_large/IDE2SAT.C.jpg

The main impediment to drive shopping, is whether your system has any
drive
capacity limits. My oldest system, only drives up to 137GB work properly.
It
Click to expand...



I have been looking in the mainboard manual but I can't find any hard
information about drive capacity limit.
Asus P4B266 - cpu: Intel P4 1,6 GHz. - RAM: 1512 MB



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os
 
Linea said:
I have been looking in the mainboard manual but I can't find any hard
information about drive capacity limit.
Asus P4B266 - cpu: Intel P4 1,6 GHz. - RAM: 1512 MB
Click to expand...

It's defined by year of origin, amongst other things.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040418...t/support/english/techref/48bithdd/index.aspx

"Note: Model manufactured after 1st January, 2003 will all
support 48bit HDD (137 GB HDD)."

That is interpreted to mean, "designed" after Jan.1,2003. The idea being,
the IDE interfaces support "double-pumped" register access, which is how
the drive acquires 48 bit addressing and the handling of larger drives.

Since your P4B266 is in the table, it supports >137GB IDE drives,
if BIOS 1007 or later is installed. So P4B266 needed a BIOS update.
That possibly helps, if booting a partition above 137GB. Not really
sure what else would matter in there.

P4B266 Yes 1007

For earlier motherboards, I have another old FAQ page which listed
a few motherboards and their limits. Anything after 2003, on IDE, is
supposed to be OK.

And for SCSI drives, they don't have the same issue, as the
command interface is different. Even pseudo-SCSI interface
devices such as RAID controller chips, when in RAID mode, can
"hide" the large drive issue. In this case, I'm assuming
we're still dealing with the IDE ribbon cable interface.
If you install a Promise Ultra133 TX2 IDE card, in a non-compliant
motherboard, that's another way to fix it. As the Ultra133 TX2 is
ATA/ATAPI 6 level of interface, and handles large drives. (Some
of my older computers, have a card like that installed. At one
point, Maxtor even bundled a controller card, with one of
their ridiculously priced retail hard drives.)

The support needed, to send 48 bit addresses, is described in
this proposal. This would pre-date the inclusion of 48 bit
addresses in the ATA/ATAPI spec. Most of the magic, seems
to be in the hard drive part.

http://www.t10.org/t13/technical/e00101r6.pdf

Paul
 
Paul said:
It's defined by year of origin, amongst other things.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040418...t/support/english/techref/48bithdd/index.aspx

"Note: Model manufactured after 1st January, 2003 will all
support 48bit HDD (137 GB HDD)."

That is interpreted to mean, "designed" after Jan.1,2003. The idea being,
the IDE interfaces support "double-pumped" register access, which is how
the drive acquires 48 bit addressing and the handling of larger drives.

Since your P4B266 is in the table, it supports >137GB IDE drives,
if BIOS 1007 or later is installed. So P4B266 needed a BIOS update.
That possibly helps, if booting a partition above 137GB. Not really
sure what else would matter in there.

P4B266 Yes 1007
Click to expand...


OK, I have bios version 1010. This is the latest version exept for one,
which is branded as "beta".

Furtermore, according to this reply:

http://support.asus.com/faq/detail....a&os=&no=FC4F308B-BA9D-73EF-EAE2-112D10B69093

the P4B266 is able to work with 200 GB drives. So I could consider getting
this drive:

http://www.informatique.nl/110610/western-digital-160gb.html

Although the price is high per MB base...


For earlier motherboards, I have another old FAQ page which listed
a few motherboards and their limits. Anything after 2003, on IDE, is
supposed to be OK.

And for SCSI drives, they don't have the same issue, as the
command interface is different. Even pseudo-SCSI interface
devices such as RAID controller chips, when in RAID mode, can
"hide" the large drive issue. In this case, I'm assuming
we're still dealing with the IDE ribbon cable interface.
If you install a Promise Ultra133 TX2 IDE card, in a non-compliant
motherboard, that's another way to fix it. As the Ultra133 TX2 is
ATA/ATAPI 6 level of interface, and handles large drives. (Some
of my older computers, have a card like that installed. At one
point, Maxtor even bundled a controller card, with one of
their ridiculously priced retail hard drives.)

The support needed, to send 48 bit addresses, is described in
this proposal. This would pre-date the inclusion of 48 bit
addresses in the ATA/ATAPI spec. Most of the magic, seems
to be in the hard drive part.

http://www.t10.org/t13/technical/e00101r6.pdf
Click to expand...


Concerning 48 bit HDD, this seems supported by P4B266:

http://support.asus.com.tw/technicaldocuments/technicaldocuments_content.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&NO=501



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os
 
Linea said:
"Paul" <[email protected]> schreef in bericht


OK, I have bios version 1010. This is the latest version exept for one,
which is branded as "beta".

Furtermore, according to this reply:

http://support.asus.com/faq/detail....a&os=&no=FC4F308B-BA9D-73EF-EAE2-112D10B69093

the P4B266 is able to work with 200 GB drives. So I could consider getting
this drive:

http://www.informatique.nl/110610/western-digital-160gb.html

Although the price is high per MB base...
Click to expand...

The ones still available here, are a little expensive too.

*******

One thing that's nice about the smaller drives, is they won't
have the 4KB sectors on them. I was cursing the two drives I got
here, with the 4KB sectors and "512e" emulation, because they're
so slow when dealing with small files. Took twice as long as
usual to do a backup. They claim you can align partitions on 4KB
boundaries, and that is supposed to help, but I have multiple
partitions under WinXP, and I don't think there is any fix for that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format#512e

There's nothing "Advanced" about that format. It's just a nuisance.

Paul
 
Paul said:
The ones still available here, are a little expensive too.

*******

One thing that's nice about the smaller drives, is they won't
have the 4KB sectors on them. I was cursing the two drives I got
here, with the 4KB sectors and "512e" emulation, because they're
so slow when dealing with small files. Took twice as long as
usual to do a backup. They claim you can align partitions on 4KB
boundaries, and that is supposed to help, but I have multiple
partitions under WinXP, and I don't think there is any fix for that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format#512e

There's nothing "Advanced" about that format. It's just a nuisance.
Click to expand...



I managed to order a Seagate 160GB IDE 2MB ST3160215ACE on line for 49
Euros.
Today I received the drive and I have built it into the PC.
It was detected by the BIOS properly.

I did have a few surprises though...
The drive seemed already formatted.
Pagefile.sys was back on D: even before I put it back there manually.
I ran Hard Disk Sentinel test program, which also reads SMART data.
Performance and Health are excellent, but it also displays "Power on time
913 days"(!)
I got no information from the web shop that the drive was second hand...




--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os
 
Linea said:
I managed to order a Seagate 160GB IDE 2MB ST3160215ACE on line for 49
Euros.
Today I received the drive and I have built it into the PC.
It was detected by the BIOS properly.

I did have a few surprises though...
The drive seemed already formatted.
Pagefile.sys was back on D: even before I put it back there manually.
I ran Hard Disk Sentinel test program, which also reads SMART data.
Performance and Health are excellent, but it also displays "Power on time
913 days"(!)
I got no information from the web shop that the drive was second hand...
Click to expand...

Honesty is hard to find.

Brand new drives, can come formatted. So that part is not unusual.
But the power on hours would be set to zero at the factory, before
the drive shipped.

I don't know about refurbished drives though. For example, if
you got a warranty return from Seagate, do they reset the SMART
on those ? I don't know the answer to that. Check the label
and see if it says "Refurbished" on it somewhere.

Paul
 
Paul said:
Honesty is hard to find.

Brand new drives, can come formatted. So that part is not unusual.
But the power on hours would be set to zero at the factory, before
the drive shipped.

I don't know about refurbished drives though. For example, if
you got a warranty return from Seagate, do they reset the SMART
on those ? I don't know the answer to that. Check the label
and see if it says "Refurbished" on it somewhere.
Click to expand...


On the web shop it doesn't say anything about 'refurbished'. It even looks
new. Today I had them on the phone about this, and the guy told me it was a
refurbished drive indeed. He said I could have known because it says
'warranty 6 months' on the web shop. They offered me money back, but I
decided to keep it and get 5 euro's off because of the unclear conditions. I
do hope it lives longer than 6 months though...
The drive performs very fast, in fact much faster than the existent C:
drive.



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os
 
Linea said:
"Paul" <[email protected]> schreef in bericht


On the web shop it doesn't say anything about 'refurbished'. It even
looks new. Today I had them on the phone about this, and the guy told me
it was a refurbished drive indeed. He said I could have known because it
says 'warranty 6 months' on the web shop. They offered me money back,
but I decided to keep it and get 5 euro's off because of the unclear
conditions. I do hope it lives longer than 6 months though...
The drive performs very fast, in fact much faster than the existent C:
drive.
Click to expand...

Enjoy your 512 byte physical/512 byte logical drive :-)

That's the "old fashioned" type.

I have about four 500GB drives here, SATA drives. I suspect,
based on behavior, they all have 4K sectors underneath.
Although one of them claims to be 512 byte physical/ 512 byte logical,
it has the same crappy behavior as the latest drives I got.
(Doesn't run "smooth" as it should. Transfer rate is like
"waves of the ocean". Up n' down until you're seasick.)

The latest drives are 4096 byte physical/512 byte logical,
otherwise known as "512e" or 512 byte emulated drives. Seagate
does read/modify/write operations, so at the user level, it
still looks like a 512 byte sector that an older OS can use. But
such a scheme exacts a performance penalty.

Western Digital, I think they make 4096 physical/4096 logical,
which works seamless on Windows 7 with patch, but needs
"alignment" elsewhere.

I've been experimenting the last few days, trying to get the
4096/512 drive to behave better. And so far I haven't succeeded.
I crudely aligned a FAT32 partition, using a change to reserved
sector count, and that didn't do squat for me. Much to my surprise.
I'm left to conclude, that the cache handling inside the hard
drive, is about as effective as SMARTDRV from DOS days - it
needs to dump the cache at regular intervals, causing a several
second delay until more files can be handled.

I haven't cracked the performance puzzle yet.

The fact you've got a 512/512 drive, is something to be happy about.
I'd be doing a happy dance around the computer right now, if
that's what I had in front of me. Mainly because I could just
use it, and no more experiments would be required.

Paragon makes an alignment utility, but they want $30 for it.
My problem with that, is I'm particular about who I give
my credit card details to. And I won't be dealing direct with
Paragon, because they're in Germany as far as I know. The last
time I tried to buy software from Germany, my card was declined,
and I got a phone call later from the credit card company. That
kinda takes the fun out of it. At the time that happened,
I actually ended up getting double billed, and it took forever
to resolve. So I'd just like to buy from someone who
uses a North American credit card processor.

Paul
 
The latest drives are 4096 byte physical/512 byte logical,
otherwise known as "512e" or 512 byte emulated drives. Seagate
does read/modify/write operations, so at the user level, it
still looks like a 512 byte sector that an older OS can use. But
such a scheme exacts a performance penalty.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised to learn that the OS knows or cares about such low level
details. I had expected the IDE interface to hide (abstract) all of
that from the OS.
 
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