Hi.

Silicon Image 680 IDE controller card in a Win XP w/SP2 box.
Drivers for the card installed with no problems.
There was a standard driver, and a WinNT driver - I installed the WinNT driver, as XP uses NTFS.

Copying files is painfully slow.

A 1GB DivX movie took 6 minutes to copy from a partition on the motherboard's built-in IDE controller.

The movie did copy, and does play, but for a card which is supposed to be ATA133, this is a little slow...

I downloaded the latest driver I could find from SI for this device and updated it, but this has not sped things up at all, in fact has made matters worse, as now the card's BIOS sees two drives, but Windoze now does not see the 2nd one, whereas it did before.
*sigh*

Hokey pokey, after plugging in another drive, the newly added drive PLUS the one I could not get to show up before now does.

Interestingly, this was on the card's PRIMARY IDE channel.
The PRIMARY channel had one drive set as SLAVE(no master drive connected)
The reason for that, was that I pinched the primary-master drive for a new build, but it would seem that the XP won't talk to the card, unless there is at least one IDE device connected as primary-master. I know this is kinda what they say anyway: "When installing only one drive, it must be set to MASTER.", however, the fact that the card's BIOS can see the drive, but XP can't is a bit of a dilemma.

Anyhow, this aspect of the trouble is now fixed.

Still wanting anyone's comments as to the copying speed.

What rating is the [properly] connected [and properly jumpered] HDD?
Also ATA133?

80-wire IDE cable in use?
DMA rather than PIO in use?

What rating is the [properly] connected [and properly jumpered] HDD?
Also ATA133?

80-wire IDE cable in use?
DMA rather than PIO in use?

Yep, all drives are Seagate Baracudas 7200RPM ATA133.
Yep, 80-wire cables on both primary and secondary channel.

Not sure about DMA vs PIO.
Is there a way I can check?

My PC took 41 seconds to copy a file of 716,000 kB from one partition to another.
Drive & controller [SiI 0680 Ultra-133 Medley Raid Controller card, no mention of DMA or PIO in properties] both ATA133.
And I have an old, slow PC [800 MHz] running Win2000Pro.

"DMA vs PIO...Is there a way I can check?"
Take a look in Device Manager at the "Properties" of your IDE Drive Controllers[s].
e.g. Below shows mine for my "Primary" on which is connected only my DVD-RW optical drive.
[Display your devices "By Connection"]
.

Transfer mode is "DMA mode 5", if that helps.

Takes 9 minutes, to move a 1.5GB file from the on-board IDE, to a drive on the PCI IDE controller.

THIS IS WAY TOO SLOW.

Any other ideas?

Go through everything pertinent checking if you can see anything amiss.
e.g.
1. Hardware
All fitted correctly and properly jumpered? [See 4 below]

2. BIOS configuration settings
All correctly set?
e.g. PCI Specification version in use?

3. Device Manager
Everything looking good?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. "from the on-board IDE, to a drive on the PCI IDE controller"
(a) Is that a HDD that is being read on the on-board IDE controller?
Is it alone on that controller?
And is it jumpered as Master?
I vaguely remember that if you use a PCI to IDE controller card [and put any HDD on that], you must NOT use the on-board IDE controllers[s] for HDD's. [I think that is explained somewhere in the documentation with the controller]
For that reason, I have never had anything other than optical drives on the internal IDE controllers.
I also only ever fit one drive to a controller so that they can [if necessary] all run concurrently rather than a controller running this drive then that.

5. "Transfer mode is "DMA mode 5""
Is that for the on-board IDE controller or what?

OK, will check those things again, just to make sure, and will check in the BIOS, but from what I remember, it is just bog-standard PCI settings.

3. Device Manager
Everything looking good?

Yep.
Controller shows up under SCSI and RAID controllers, Silicon Image SiI 0680 ATA/133 Controller.

Driver version is the updated one, that being version 1.2.29.0
The driver on the install CD that came with the card was version 1.0, and prompted the "Not digitally signed by Microsoft" message.
The current driver did not trip this message when installed, and shows up in the device properties as digitally signed by MS, so this is probably the driver to use.
IE: I won't roll back to version 1.0

Interestingly, when I ask for a list of devices by resource use, I get the following list:

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/3818/irqyi4.gif

Although there are no IRQ conflicts per-se, note that the on-board IDE's seem to be on the ISA bus. I thought that all IDE controllers were on the PCI bus?
I did not think that the ISA bus was fast enough for ATA133?

That is a little strange...

4. "from the on-board IDE, to a drive on the PCI IDE controller"
(a) Is that a HDD that is being read on the on-board IDE controller?
Is it alone on that controller?
And is it jumpered as Master?

Drive on ON-BOARD controller being read, and data written to drive on the PCI-IDE controller.
So, moving a file from the m/board's built in IDE controller, to a drive connected to the PCI-IDE card controller.

Hope that clarifies.
:)

I vaguely remember that if you use a PCI to IDE controller card [and put any HDD on that], you must NOT use the on-board IDE controllers[s] for HDD's. [I think that is explained somewhere in the documentation with the controller]

Well, I added the PCI IDE card, so that I can add HDD's.
There are 4 HDD's on all 4 positions on the on-board controller.
There are 3 HDD's on the first 3 positions on the PCI IDE controller.
(PRI-MASTER, PRI-SLAVE, SEC-MASTER)

I simply can't remove the HDD's on the on-board IDE - I added the card, to give more IDE channels, so unplugging the on-board IDE's is not an option.

Files do copy, and essentially, this is a file-server, dishing up files from whatever drive to the network, so super speed is not really a requirement, and I feel I should be very clear: the files do copy, and I can access all data on all drives on both the on-board and the IDE card, it's just that copying is so slow.

...but it does complete, and the copy/move is successful.

5. "Transfer mode is "DMA mode 5""
Is that for the on-board IDE controller or what?

Yes.
I checked using both the method you described, and also the SiliconImage Control Panel applet, which lets you see info on each of the 3 drives currently connected. All 3 are "ultra DMA mode 5"

Perhaps I will just resign myself to the fact that it will be slow.
So long as it works...
(which it does)

Perhaps I should not tempt fate?
:p

See screenshots below of my own PC's IRQ settings.
Notice...

1. I have my on-board Primary IDE channel in use [running a DVD-RW] and mine too is on the ISA bus.
I can't remember whether the ISA bus is an extension of the PCI bus [via a bridge] or vice-versa.
Since my system works fine like this I guess it's OK.

2. My PCI to ATA controller card is the only device using its IRQ [16], so no sharing of that IRQ, therefore no possible resulting slowdown.
I notice yours is sharing IRQ18.
Perhaps you need to re-arrange the use of IRQ's?
I notice you have COM ports using IRQ's 3 & 4.
If those are not in active use you could perhaps disable them [either in the BIOS or in Windows] to free up those IRQ's.
What kind of control in the BIOS Setup for [auto?] allocation of IRQ's?

3. I'll try to remember/find where I saw those instructions about not using the internal IDE controllers for HDD's [when using the controller card for HDD's].
My Silicon Image Ultra ATA 100/133 IDE RAID PCI Host Controller Card (http://www.sabrent.com/products/specs/SBT-RDIT.htm).
The manual for my card (http://www.sabrent.com/drivers/SBT-RDIT-4.pdf).

"I downloaded the latest driver I could find from SI for this device and updated it, but this has not sped things up at all, in fact has made matters worse...The current driver did not trip this message when installed, and shows up in the device properties as digitally signed by MS, so this is probably the driver to use"
I found in the past that the "digitally signed by Microsoft" driver is not necessarily the best.
I had to revert to the older OEM driver for a sound card because it provided much better control and configuration features.

"There was a standard driver, and a WinNT driver - I installed the WinNT driver, as XP uses NTFS"
The latest Win 2000/XP drivers [for 32-bit Windows IDE (RAID and) non-RAID cards] are listed HERE (http://www.siliconimage.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid=31&cid=3&ctid=2&osid=4&).
Don't know what a BASE driver is. :confused:
You need to choose one that matches your cards' BIOS version.

I have both RAID [v1.0.1.7] and non-RAID [v1.0.0.12] drivers supplied on a mini-disk that came with my card [the two at the bottom of the list in the linked web page].
I'm using the RAID driver, but you should be using the non-RAID [v1.0.0.12].