In a message of  Ivan Wheelwright (3:800/443) wrote to All:

 IW> I was wondering about some of the strange differences between IDE and
 IW> SCSI and if i can fix some noticable differences.

 IW> History:
 IW> I have had 5 SCSI drives on my A3000 for about 3 years.

 IW> I now have transferred everything to my A4000, i have 2 IDE drives.

 IW> OK. Firstly it seems that if i resume downloading a file using an FTP
 IW> program, it crashes, no explaination. No change in software, just
 IW> hardware.

Which drives are you dl'ing to?  What are you using for a SCSI controller?

 IW> If i have a large directory, reading the directory is very quick, much
 IW> quicker, but if i am to copy a file into a directory that has a lot of
 IW> files, say more than 400 files, then i find the copy process is
 IW> speedy, but the actual searching part is damn slow, like it is trying
 IW> to find a place to copy the file or something, it pauses at the start
 IW> and end of the file for anything up to 3 seconds when it was instant
 IW> with SCSI drives. Can be a pain when copying several files at once.

Which drives are you reading or searching?  What are you using for a SCSI controller?

 IW> When i formatted the new IDE drives, i did select directory cache
 IW> which i do not think i did on the SCSI drives, could this be a
 IW> problem?

Yep.  Dir caching is not desirable on HDs.  It is generally there to speed
up floppy access.

 IW> What's the safest addbuffers amount you should have. If i have 100
 IW> buffers set in HDtoolbox on each drive, should i still addbuffers in
 IW> startup-sequence and how much is too much, i have plenty of memory
 IW> (about 10 meg free after bootup)

That should be adequate for most uses.  Too much is when you run out of
memory :-)  You might want to try one of the caching programs like
HyperCache if you can find it.

My guess as to your problem is the SCSI controller.  There are several
patches around for GVP and C=2091 cards in A4000s and you may have to
update your ROM if it is a GVP.

Cheers,

Arnie

arnie{at}euphoria.bay.net.au
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