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Ide To Sata Adapter Comparison


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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.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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

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  • 2 weeks later...

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 by Incursion64
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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 by KaosEngineer
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  • 1 month later...

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.

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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 5 months later...

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 by big F
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  • 5 weeks later...
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 by blmlozz
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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 by KaosEngineer
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  • 3 months later...

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.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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 by Brewskii2117
Answered my own question.
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