Varoom...and they're off. IBM's 7200 rpm model takes the early lead in the race. But wait, what's this? Quantum's slower Fireball ST is gaining on it. But how? In this tweak guide (a revision of one originally written by the Tweak Monkey, Dan Kennedy) I will explain to you how to speed up your overall system performance by tweaking your HD to the max. This guide will help you turn that '73 Ford Pinto of a hard drive into a '00 Dodge Viper GTS.
Note: these tweaks are designed with Windows 98 in mind, other versions of Windows may have varying results.
General Hard Drive Tweaks
Go to the Control Panel / System applet (Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System) and go to the Device Manager tab. Under the Disk Drive subheading, choose the listing of your hard drive and open it by double clicking on it. Go to the settings tab and make sure that DMA is enabled. Warning: This setting may cause problems on older hard drives. Make sure your drive supports DMA before continuing.
To make sure that DMA doesn't cause any internal Windows conflicts (assuming the drive supports DMA), you are going to need to add these two lines to the Mshdc.inf file at the bottom of the [ESDI_AddReg] tag:
HKR,,IDEDMADrive0,3,01
HKR,,IDEDMADrive1,3,01
If you are concerned that your hard drive doesn't support DMA (usually only a concern with hard drives that are less than 4 GB), there are several tests mentioned on Windows-Help.net. Then go to the Performance tab and click on the File System button. This will bring up a box called File System Properties. In the Hard Disk tab, set the Typical role of this computer to Network Server (this setting will later be changed by Cacheman, but put it to this for now) and set the Read-ahead optimization to full.
Within the BIOS, make sure your hard drive is configured to Master and that any supported UDMA settings are turned on (for most newer hard drives, that would be UDMA 33 - UDMA 66 hard drives are just starting to hit the market and should be even faster). If you aren't sure if your hard drive supports UDMA (or your BIOS doesn't have the setting), try out the settings first using TweakBIOS. This program may also help you configure your hard drive when used on an overclocked system (see below).
CAS Latency
CAS latency has to do with how fast your computer can access a column of data in your RAM. Generally the lower the number, the better. The problem is, most BIOS's don't allow the user to specify the CAS latency of their RAM (and this can be a big deal if you spend extra money on CAS 2 RAM). Once again, TweakBIOS can be used to play with this setting. If you have a lousy BIOS, this is definately a program to invest in.
Enable Hard Disk Block Mode
Most newer BIOSes support the enabling of block mode, which allows multiple hard disk sectors to be transferred on a single interrupt. This feature is controlled with this BIOS setting.
Usually block mode can be set to either 16 or 32 sectors per interrupt. If your hard disk currently has block mode disabled, you can try enabling it to see if performance improves, but you may have to turn it off again.
Enable 32-Bit Hard Disk Transfers
A feature available on most newer BIOSes is the so-called 32-bit transfer mode. This feature provides a small performance improvement when enabled via this BIOS setting; the feature itself is described here. Try enabling 32-bit transfers for a small performance improvement, as long as it does not cause any problems.
Note: This optimization has nothing to do with Windows 3.x's "32-bit disk access" or "32-bit file access", which refer to something different entirely.
Freeing Leaked RAM
A reader sent me this information several months ago, but for the life of me I can't remember who. Anyhow, he sent me information on writing a 1 line VBasic program (doesn't even need to be compiled assuming you have the runtime files on your system. I played around with it a little bit until I found a value for the program's variable that worked best for my system - I encourage you to do the same if this program isn't as effective for you (I believe the original value for the space string was 16000000). To write this program, open up notepad and create a new file. Then insert this line:
Mystring = Space(80000000)
recommended settings is
below 16 MB - Not to use this
16 - 32 MB - half of memory size
32 - 64 MB - 3/4 of memory size
above 64 MB - 80% to 90% of memory size
eg. on 64 MB it would be around 50331648 (64 x 1024 x 1024 x 3 / 4)
Save the file under the name memory.vbs. If your system begins to feel sluggish, close all of the programs you can and run this little program, and it should free up most of the RAM that is leaked out by bugs in Windows and the applications that you are running.
Optmize memory for dos programs - Do not load extra unneed drivers in your startup files i.e. config.sys and autoexec.bat. Here is my config.sys and autoexec.bat file on P-II - 64 MB - win 98.
Config.sys
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\himem.sys
DOS=HIGH,UMB
rem device=tricd.sys /d:cdrom ----------> my cdrom driver not needed, only in rare case
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS ----------> Loaded by windows default
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\DBLBUFF.SYS ----------> Loaded by windows default
Autoexec.bat
@echo off
smartdrv 8192 16 ----------> Speed up booting process
set TEMP=c:\temp ----------> Temp file directories
set TMP=c:\temp ----------> Temp file directories
That's all and see the improvements. I don't recommend using emm386.exe though it could recover more memory at dos prompt but it do cause some instability and caused few crashes.
Swap File (Virtual Memory)
Begin by creating a permanent swap file on your hard drive. Go into the Control Panel / System applet and go to the performance tab. From there, click on the Virtual memory button. Select the "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings" radio button. I personally recommend setting the size of the file between 128 and 256 Megabytes. Set both the Minimum and Maximum to the same value so that Windows doesn't spend time resizing the swap file. If you experience any problems, try increasing the size or setting it back to "Let Windows manage my virtual memory settings". Do full Defrag before and after this to avoid fragmentation of swap file.
Defragmenting and Reorganizing Your Files
Windows 98 includes a much-improved version of its Disk Defragmenter. In association with Intel (why, I don't know, but it is), they designed in a file reorganization technique that is quite similar (and just as good) to the one in Norton's SpeedDisk. Norton's program is still faster, but who cares, the one included in Windows 98 is FREE!
To run the Disk Defragmenter, click Start, Run, then type defrag. After that, instructions will appear on your screen.
To make sure file reorganization is on before you start defragmenting, click on the "Settings" button and check the "Reorganize program files so my programs start faster" box. Then run Disk Defragmenter as normal. I would recommend running Scandisk in standard mode on all the hard drives you intend on defragmenting before continuing - it will save time in the long run.
It doesn't hurt to defragment your drive often, but there's no reason to do it more than daily. If you really must have every bit of speed, defragment your hard drive(s) each night as you sleep. (because it takes a bit of time)
VCache
Windows splits your RAM into two sections, the cache and the executable section. The cache stores information on programs that you have already loaded so that if you restart them, they execute faster. This is a great concept, but Windows doesn't manage the cache well, so I recommend manually setting the Cache setting. Go to Start Menu/Run and type sysedit and go to the system.ini file. Find the [VCache] header and insert these three lines:
Chunksize=512
MinFileCache=8192
MaxFileCache=8192
These settings stop the cache from growing too large and slowing down the system, freeing up system resources for other things. Chunksize allocates the smallest amount of space that a program can take up in the cache. If a program takes up too many chunks, the speed of the system will degrade; but if the chunks are too large, a lot of RAM is wasted. 512 is a good setting for most users, the only people that might consider changing it would be people with a large amount of RAM (256 Mb's or more) or people who are dealing solely with very small files. Users with 32 Mb's or less may want to use a setting that is slightly lower (4096). Power users (those with 128 Mb's of RAM or more) may get better results out of the settings 12288 or 16384.
I used to do this by hand, but Outer Technologies created this great little program called Cacheman - it does the VCache stuff and more, so I will describe how to use it instead. It has several standard settings for many different types of computers (whether you have a low memory system or you mainly use it as a CD burner), but here are my personal favorite settings.
Min Cache Size 8192
Max Cache Size 8192
Chunk Size 256 or 512
Name Cache 2048
Directory Cache 48
Go to the file menu and click save and you are done.
Hard Drives and Overclocking
The following information was included in Dan's original Hard Drive tweaking guide.
Only follow these steps if you're overclocking! They will decrease your hard drive and overall system speed. Ignore these steps if your hard drive does fine while overclocked.
If you're an avid overclocker you probably have had some bad experiences. Most bad experiences may be caused by the ram not being able to handle the high speeds, heat, or even voltage.
But one problem that is very annoying is hard drives that do not like to be overclocked. The culprit is usually UDMA, or certain brands (in my experience, Fujitsu and IBM (non 7200 RPM drives) have been known to cause awful problems).
Running a hard drive at a higher speed requires a more precise timing. By overclocking the PCI bus you're running a risk for your hard drives. Some brands actually will lose all the data, or scramble it completely. Since this is obviously very annoying, a little tweaking is necessary.
First you must understand why these problems occur.
Look at the table below, demonstrating the PCI speed of 1/2 bus clock speed (remember FSB means the bus speed of your PCI would be 66 x 1/2 = 33 MHz).
Keep in mind that your PCI bus is supposed to run at 33 MHz.
Bus Speed PCI Speed
66 MHz 33 MHz
75 MHz 37 MHz
83 MHz 41 MHz
100 MHz 33 MHz
112 MHz 37 MHz
124 MHz 41 MHz
133 MHz* 44 MHz
* - All Camino chipset based motherboards (i820) and some BX motherboards include a 1/4th multiplier for the PCI bus, bringing the speed down to 33 mhz
No hard drives should have problems at 33 MHz, few will fail at 37 MHz, and quite a few can fail at 41/44 MHz. Enabling UDMA / bus mastering often leads to even more problems when running at these speeds, because it gets more complicated for the system. The worst things that I have seen overclocking do to hard drives can be solved by fdisk/formatting the drive.
How to prevent it:
You cannot entirely prevent it, but you can take precautions. Although no hard drive really works 100% of the time at these speeds, usually the best hard drives for these speeds are Seagate, Western Digital, and Quantum.
Some motherboards like the ABit BH6 and ASUS P2B claim to offer a 1/4 PCI speed multiplier. This is a great idea, and surely avoids all problems with overclocking & hard drives in the near future.
If you've never ran your hard drive at 37 MHz / 41 MHz / 44 MHz bus before you should take extra precaution. Back up all important data in case you happen to lose everything. It is VERY important to at first remove all UDMA / bus mastering.
The next strategy is to lower the PIO mode settings and disable UDMA in your BIOS.
Change the option Master Drive (or whatever drive, etc.) PIO Mode. Usually motherboards have it set to "Auto" as default. Set this to 4, or if you know your hard drive will encounter very bad problems set this lower. The lowest it can go is 0. This will slow the speed of the hard drive, but increase the stability and decrease the probability of a crash.
Disable any options concerning UDMA, whether they say "Auto" or "Enabled", DISABLE them all.
It will slow down your hard drive, but in return give a stable system. There's nothing worse than trying a high bus speed and corrupting all the data on your hard drive.
Booting CD Rom System Cleanup CPU & Motherboard Hard Disk Sound Card
Modem Monitor Mouse System Enhancements Windows Shell
Some part of this document is taken from www.tweak3d.net and www.pcguide.com.
