Ide To Sata Adapter Comparison

[OGXbox Admin]

 

Results Below!  I compare load times while controlling all variables of the startech ide2sat2 adapter vs the cheap adapter that most people recommend. There are significant differences in both price and performance.

cheapo
    ux bootup 2:28 - 3:09 = 41 seconds
halo 2 load   4:11 - 4:56 = 45 seconds
coinops dd3   5:42 - 6:25 = 43 seconds

startech
    ux bootup 8:00 - 8:20 = 20 seconds
halo2 load    10:05 - 10:25 = 20 seconds
coinops dd3   10:57 - 10:40 = 43 seconds

CoinOps was 43 seconds for both tests. This implies that the wait isn't due to throughput of the storage device but rather the zip extraction of the cpu.

[big F]

I have never had any luck with the cheapo adaptors, I think I have maybe 8,  although they work fine in my pc's so they just hate Xboxes.

Gonna have to buy the Startec ones as my supply of ide drives is drying up.

 

Thanks  for the video

[PsyKos]

Hello and thank you for these clarifications!

I have a generic IDE2SATA adapter with a 2Tb hard drive and IDE 80 cable but UnleashX needs to take about a minute to start.

Is this normal (for a 2Tb hard drive)? Or it comes from the adapter and I should rather change it for a Startech?

Thank you in advance for your answers.

cordially

[Incursion64]

I use the cheapy ones with the jumpers (amazon or ebay) and have used Startech also.  I have not seen a noticeable difference in boot times.  Your boot times in general seem slow.  Are you running custom icons and have a lot of Xbox Backups on the drive?  I ran into this issue where it was 30-40 seconds and I believe it was Rocky5 that mentioned that UnleashX caches all the images.  I had to add a delayload in my config file for everything and it cut my boot times quite a bit.. Also I noticed that that more Xbox games, the slower it booted. I typically run a 2TB setup. The the F has all of my emulators and about 150-200 xbox games. The G folder has all Xbox games.  I remember when I had transferred half the content (filling up just F), the Xbox booted a lot faster than when I had both folders full.  The delay load worked great and cut those times down quite a bit.  I have since gone to XBMC as my dashboard of choice, it boots so much faster than UnleashX. 

Edited October 11, 2017 by Incursion64

[big F]

I think I may revisit my generic adaptors, my new chip has drive tools onboard where as before it was down to the DVDs when setting up the drive.

It  may well work this time.

I only have one 250gb ide drive left so need to get a solution for SATA drives.

[XC-3730C]

Incursion64,

How do you add a delayload bit your config file? I will also be using a 2TB drive.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

[h0ly lag]

Interesting. I had been using the same cheap IDE adapter but maybe I will buy a startech to test. I never thought my Xbox was booting particularly slow though. 

[KaosEngineer]

On 11/15/2017 at 12:22 AM, XC-3730C said:

Incursion64,

How do you add a delayload bit your config file? I will also be using a 2TB drive.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 

I think Incursion64's talking about Delayload in Unleash's Config.xml file.

Rocky5 posted:

Quote

Re: Slow Xbox start up
Thu Mar 31, 2016 1:25 pm

How many games or emulators are there on this system?

UnleashX pre caches them all on load, you can disable this by adding Delayload="True" in the header of each <list tag>

ie, <list text="Games" Sort="On" Delayload="True">

The latter will make booting into unleashx almost instantly, only issue is when entering these menus there will be a slight delay as it caches the titles.

 

Edited November 17, 2017 by KaosEngineer

[wikati]

I've found most of the cheapos to be buggered. one in 5 actually work pretty well.

Your initial load with the cheapo is super slow. I've had them booting faster than that... BUT you read my thread about it zapping a drive and ive recently received 4 that were completely totaled. They ruined a hard drive for me so im really nervous about ever using a cheap adapter ever again.

Anyways, i didnt really inspect them until after the damage was done and they are all just horrifying.

[markee123]

Thanks for the info on the startech ide2sat2 adapter. I was about to but a cheapo.  :-)

 

[neighbor]

Is there any similar comparison between using 40 and 80 wire ribbon cables? checked google, didn't find anything precisely measured, just "Yes, it's faster" and  "no not really"

[big F]

Its supposed to be faster, I didnt really notice the difference but now only use 80 wire.  

using the sata adaptors you'll find it works more readily as some of the adaptors only seen to work correctly with 80 wire. 

Edited July 19, 2018 by big F

[rattyjunk]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/STARTECH-COM-Drive-Optical-Adapter-Converter/dp/B00EOJNGC2/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1534628814&sr=1-1&keywords=startech+ide2sat2+adapter

Is this the same card mentioned in the video?

Just to clarify you use a 40pin 80 wire ide cable? 

‘Is the jumper set to master, slave or cable select?

 

cheers

[XPeter]

Heard about incompatibility issue with Cheapo type of converter,  So bought 2 pieces of Cheapo (just in case one fails).  Both haven't been tested yet.    But never know the speed is slower.  Thanks for the post, I will take note of it. 

[DeeLaRoc]

Yeah the cheapos sometimes have duds, esp the HDE ones

[blmlozz]

On ‎7‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 11:07 AM, neighbor said:

Is there any similar comparison between using 40 and 80 wire ribbon cables? checked google, didn't find anything precisely measured, just "Yes, it's faster" and  "no not really"

the IDE specification for 40 wire cables are such that the data transfer caps a 66MB/s Theoretical. 80 wire cables (which just ground each data cable) have Theoretical caps of up to 133MB/s.

IDE drives made during the days of the Xbox were already beyond that (UMDA66) but just barely. These days almost any brand name laptop drive even can completely saturate a UMDA133 bus however.

I've no idea what the Xbox actually supports in terms of IDE specification but the Nvidia MCP southbridges of the day supported UMDA100 .

Edited August 22, 2018 by blmlozz

[KaosEngineer]

7 hours ago, blmlozz said:

the IDE specification for 40 wire cables are such that the data transfer caps a 66MB/s Theoretical. 80 wire cables (which just ground each data cable) have Theoretical caps of up to 133MB/s.

The additional lines don't ground each data line of the cable.  They provided a shield, separation, between each signal line of the cable to prevent crosstalk - interference from an adjacent wire's high-speed data switching levels being added to its own making it hard for the detector to determine the correct digital data value being transferred across any given line.

As to the data transfer rate, I always thought, not confirmed by myself though, that the Xbox does support ATA100 transfer rates.

Some had shown they received a 15% improvement in when using an UltraATA cable (80-wire 40-pin) compared to the stock 40-wire 40-pin cable.  However, other's suspect the improved performance was only achieved from the cached game files already present on the X, Y or Z drives. 

If one runs a game, powers down and runs the game again to test for a speed improvement without clearing the content of those cache partitions, a speed up will be noticed.  The Xbox does not need to create those files again to play the game.

To do a true speed test, the X, Y and Z drive content needs to be deleted between each timed run of the game's startup.  Or, better yet, have an IDE hardware testing device connected to monitor the IDE bus signalling to verify the  transfer data rate in use.

Edited August 22, 2018 by KaosEngineer

[Brewskii2117]

Can you use a larger drive then 2TB with the Xbox? Just wondering if I should get a 3 or 4 tb drive so I don't have to worry about it again.

[John7272]

We can use a larger Hard drive as long as we make sure all of the partitions do not add up to more than the system recognizes. This includes the C, D, E, F, and G partitions. D being the info the unit sees on your DVD drive. If you use a USB flash drive with it you need to include the space you need it to see for that.

I have partitioned a 3TB Seagate at 2.2TB and packed it with games with no problem. It read the games and the DVD but I never tested to see if it would be able to see a flash drive with all that.

Normally I partition the drive so all of the partitions, flash drive, and DVD equal 2.0TB. I never run into problems with this configuration.

This goes for any larger hard drive as far as my own testing, I am using a 4TB Seagate in one of mine. I would try to get a 3TB, but if the 4TB is cheaper it is fine.

 

As a note, I have never tested to see what happens with partitions over 2.2TB. and have mostly used Seagate hard drives.

[XC-3730C]

Every Xbox I set up, I install a B003AG79GO adapter + long 80-wire IDE cable. 17 second boot up time from when I hit the power button. Exiting back to the Dash (XBMC4gamers in my case) is also every quick.

 

 

 

 

[Brewskii2117]

I ended up installing a 2 terabyte sata drive, I formatted extended partition 6 and 7 to 927 gb a piece with 64 kb clusters as I thought I'm supposed to keep them under 1 terabyte.

However the G drive ends up reporting 0 free space on the dashboard? Obviously I'm doing something wrong? 

Thanks

Edited December 30, 2018 by Brewskii2117
Answered my own question.

[Brewskii2117]

Needed to decrease the size of g by 1 gig, write it then go back and increase by 1 gig and write it. Now both partitions are (F and G) are showing the correct sizes.

[canadish]

I have had success with the cheap ones. Here is latest with ssd.

[XC-3730C]

Damn, amazing work!

 

 

 

 

[Krassi]

7 hours ago, canadish said:

I have had success with the cheap ones. Here is latest with ssd.

Is it working without plugged DVD? Saw somewhere thatneed to have the DVD plugged.