Mac Pro SATA Performance Fixed under Windows XP

This seems to be a driver issue, why can't we just simply 'Update Driver' after Windows is installed? Is there some step I am missing, where these devices don't act like any other Windows device?

This seems to be a driver issue, why can't we just
simply 'Update Driver' after Windows is installed? Is
there some step I am missing, where these devices
don't act like any other Windows device?

With the soundcard, that's basically what you are doing, only pointing Windows to the correct driver. Sometimes Windows defaults to the wrong driver, as was the case with the Bluetooth driver for the Macbook after installing Bootcamp 1.1.

The SATA issue, of course, is a completely different animal. The problem there is that the driver must be provided at the point of install, not through device manager after the install is completed.

Hi,

thanks for the info - now it works (I forgot the Path for the Mac-Drivers and have searched in a wrong folder).

But I have another question: I have yellow exclamation points for a "basis system device" and "Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI express x4 Port 3 - 25E3 (4 times)" - is this normal ?

Those are the exact same indications that I have in Device Manager. One Unknown Device (yellow question mark), and 4 exclamation points by PCI Express x4 Ports. I think these might be for the unused PCI slots on the motherboard? But who knows... Anyway, I'm not all that concerned as the performance seems great!

This is crap, I've spent several days trying to get this **** thing to work, following the instructions to a T...

I get Multi-Word DMA Mode 2 in the properties, and the performance still stinks, there must be more to this!?!

Why would it matter what version of XP you have as long as it installs?

SH

I have the same issue what am I doing wrong?

Is everyone getting MULTI-WORD DMA MODE 2, just with better performance than others??

Also when choosing the drivers, you cannot pick AHCI and RAID, only 1 or the other for the SATA, and when choosing the MOBO drivers, are you excluding the Vista/2003 ones?

This is a steaming pile of crap from Apple...

SH

Is everyone getting MULTI-WORD DMA MODE 2, just with
better performance than others??

I too am getting MULTI-WORD DMA MODE 2. Benchmarking with SiSoft Sandra gives a drive speed of 55MB/s and random access time of 7ms. Windows is installed on its own WD SATA II drive. I don't know what the speed should be but this seems a little slow but compared to PIO it's infinitely better.

Sorry to hear you are having troubles getting it to work. Mine is running in UDMA Mode 5. I ran the HD Tune utility and it reports 16.9MB/sec minimum, 70.9MB/sec maximum, 55.0MB/sec average and a "burst rate" of 155.2MB/sec. Much faster than any other Windows box I have around.

When you did the install, did you reformat and install, or just re-install? I reformatted the partition using NTFS. When slipstreaming the disk, I just selected the SATA RAID driver in the text setup that was indicated in the original instructions, and left all the chipset drivers in there.

Does it say UDMA Mode 5 in your Device Manager or just in HD Tune? What does your HD Tune report?

SH

I followed the instructions and reformated my drive and installed windows again. It now says Multi-Word DMA Mode 2 but I am getting 50-60mb/s off a fat32 partion on the mac OS drive. I installed my 2 SATA drive raid from my windows machine and they are running 120 mb/s! (raid).
I used bootcamp to give me the 30gb FAT32 partition on the Mac drive so I could share files between OSX and XP, but loaded windows on an IDE drive I put in the other CD/DVD spot. When I loaded windows, I first unpluged the SATA drive, then installed windows from the CD that I made with the SATA intel drivers. I am now running my Video Editing software on the PC flawelessly. (HDV fottage)
The only other problem II am having is my firewire drives are very slow using the mac port(less than 8mb/s). I installed a generic firecard and it gives me 36mb/s. Can anyone see if they get better results? What driver is listed as being used? Does anyones FW800 work?

For Me Windows Reports under the stupid device manager that it is Multiword Dma 2 but under HD tune it detects the Active Mode as UDMA Mode 7 under the ATA/ATAPI-7 -SATA II standard so I think this is a case of windows being stupid and HD tune being right.. cuz burst of 150 MB/s is definatly UDMA not anything else....

Mac Pro 2.66 stock Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I finally got it, but what drives are you getting 150MB/s burst from, I have a 36GB Raptor with NCQ and the burst is only 110MB/s...

SH

The drive I get burst of 150MB from is a seagate 7200.10 Sata II 320GB, I also get 150 Burst from a 250 WD that came with the system. These run in UDMA Mode 6 or whatever HD tune says is really really fast. Dont believe what Windows Tells you about Multiword DMA mode 2 it just cant understand, running HD tune proves that it is running correctly. Thank god for Slipstream I added all of the drivers from boot camp and have a fully working system without actually doing any work.

Hi Spyhunter et all,

What did you do to get it working?

I've been slipstreaming Service Packs and extra drivers for a couple of years, so I know what I'm doing... But still not getting anywhere, with Windows on Mac Pro.

HD test shows it's supposedly running UDMA mode 5 (capable of 6) but still only transferring 3.7 Mb/s!!!

I just don't know what I'm doing wrong here.