SATA2 controller?
Dariusz Piatkowski
The MB is a Asus A7N8X-Deluxe version with the SIL3112 controller. I was able to
upgrade to the latest BIOS.
I have 1 EIDE HD:
1) Maxtor DiamondMax 9 - 160Gig
I have 2 SATA HDs:
1) WD VelociRaptor 300Gig (SATA-2)
2) Samsung 160 Gig (SATA-1)
Running Dani 1.8.5 latest drivers.
I moved my OS2 stuff to the new WD drive, however I keep on getting intermittent
hardware locks...and by running 'diskinfo c' I can tell that there are a bunch
of READ & BUSY errors. Basically, the system does NOT hard-lock, instead I'll
get a beep from the speaker, drive light goes ON and stays on, and the cursor
becomes very jumpy...this goes on for about 10-15 secs and then the PC returns
to normal.
The other day things finally took a major dump on me...to the point that the
drive wouldn't even boot up...I had to restore from backup...I would prefer to
avoid this route as much as I can.
Dani has stated in my correspondence with her that the SIL311x controllers are
very poor as far as reliability goes, apparently the nForce2 chipset doesn't
help either. The WD VelociRaptor drive is also a SATA-2 drive, and I'm thinking
it may have something to do with my problems.
I have been using teh Samsung drive as a live 'backup' to my old Maxtor. This is
a SATA-1 drive and never had any problems there, the errors only occur on the
new SATA-2 WD drive.
So my question is: is anyone out there using a SATA-2 PCI controller? There are
some Promise controllers out there that I am thinking of trying, Dani appears to
support some of them...but I would like to hear first-hand if anyone is running
these reliably before I plunk some cold cash for this hardware.
Thanks!
Percival P. Cassidy
> Trying to get the WD VelociRaptor 300Gig drive working with my system.
>
> The MB is a Asus A7N8X-Deluxe version with the SIL3112 controller. I was able to
> upgrade to the latest BIOS.
>
> I have 1 EIDE HD:
> 1) Maxtor DiamondMax 9 - 160Gig
>
> I have 2 SATA HDs:
> 1) WD VelociRaptor 300Gig (SATA-2)
> 2) Samsung 160 Gig (SATA-1)
>
> Running Dani 1.8.5 latest drivers.
>
> I moved my OS2 stuff to the new WD drive, however I keep on getting intermittent
> hardware locks...and by running 'diskinfo c' I can tell that there are a bunch
> of READ& BUSY errors. Basically, the system does NOT hard-lock, instead I'll
> get a beep from the speaker, drive light goes ON and stays on, and the cursor
> becomes very jumpy...this goes on for about 10-15 secs and then the PC returns
> to normal.
>
> The other day things finally took a major dump on me...to the point that the
> drive wouldn't even boot up...I had to restore from backup...I would prefer to
> avoid this route as much as I can.
>
> Dani has stated in my correspondence with her that the SIL311x controllers are
> very poor as far as reliability goes, apparently the nForce2 chipset doesn't
> help either. The WD VelociRaptor drive is also a SATA-2 drive, and I'm thinking
> it may have something to do with my problems.
>
> I have been using teh Samsung drive as a live 'backup' to my old Maxtor. This is
> a SATA-1 drive and never had any problems there, the errors only occur on the
> new SATA-2 WD drive.
>
> So my question is: is anyone out there using a SATA-2 PCI controller? There are
> some Promise controllers out there that I am thinking of trying, Dani appears to
> support some of them...but I would like to hear first-hand if anyone is running
> these reliably before I plunk some cold cash for this hardware.
I don't know anything about the Promise controllers, but ...
Some SATA drives have a jumper to throttle them back to SATA-1 speed;
the Seagate drives I've bought have all had this jumper installed by
default.
Does the WD make provision for such a jumper?
Perce
Dariusz Piatkowski
<nob...@notmyISP.invalid> wrote:
> On 04/11/09 11:19 am Dariusz Piatkowski wrote:
>
> > Trying to get the WD VelociRaptor 300Gig drive working with my system.
<snip>
> > The other day things finally took a major dump on me...to the point that the
> > drive wouldn't even boot up...I had to restore from backup...I would prefer to
> > avoid this route as much as I can.
>>
> > So my question is: is anyone out there using a SATA-2 PCI controller? There are
> > some Promise controllers out there that I am thinking of trying, Dani appears to
> > support some of them...but I would like to hear first-hand if anyone is running
> > these reliably before I plunk some cold cash for this hardware.
>
> I don't know anything about the Promise controllers, but ...
>
> Some SATA drives have a jumper to throttle them back to SATA-1 speed;
> the Seagate drives I've bought have all had this jumper installed by
> default.
>
> Does the WD make provision for such a jumper?
>
> Perce
I just got off the phone with WD tech support, they directed me to 2 support
notes: 1461 & 1337.
Note 1337 specifically shows which pins to jumper...off I go to give that a
try...let's see what happens.
Peter Wadsack
:> There are
:> some Promise controllers out there that I am thinking of trying, Dani appears to
:> support some of them...but I would like to hear first-hand if anyone is running
:> these reliably before I plunk some cold cash for this hardware.
I have an older Promise controller, with Dani's drivers, running well; nothing SATA
about it, AFAIR. Haven't actually turned it on since I went to a VM a year ago.
Peter
*/------------------------------------------------------
Peter Wadsack <wadsac...@attglobal.net>
------------------------------------------------------*/
and replace "attglobal" by "tds"
Dariusz Piatkowski
I was not able to get my on-board SATA controller to work reliably...even after
jumpering the WD VelociRaptor HD down to SATA-1 I was consistently getting
READ/BUSY errors showing up through the DANI drivers.
Eventually, based on her driver supported SATA chipset list I took a gamble on
the Promise TX2300 FastTrak controller. It's a PCI interface card, supports NCQ
and SATA2 standard, it is a software (dummy) RAID controller, however it can be
easily (by default) used in JBOD (Just Bunch Of Drives) mode, which is how I am
using it in OS2.
I am happy to report that my VelociRaptor drive is now working reliably and more
importantly, the PCI interface of the Promise controller does NOT appear to have
any any impact on the HD throughput rate...of course that doesn't say that the
controller is great, just that it is no worse then the motherboard built-in
SIL3112 chipset.
One thing that I did need to tweak through the DANI driver was the assignment
order of the drives...by default my Port 1 & Port 2 on the controller card were
getting reversed in OS2...Dani explained that this is because of the numbering
scheme and that the driver is simply assigning the drive number as per the list
of the devices on the bus. I was able to fix this to keep things in sync by
using the '/A:n /LOC:x:x.x#x' parameter setting, see the actual driver line
below:
BASEDEV=DANIS506.ADD /A:0 /U:0 /PF:3 /MR:730 /A:3 /LOC:1:8.0#0 /APM:254 /LPM:3
/PF:3 /A:4 /LOC:1:8.0#1 /APM:254 /LPM:3 /PF:3 /VLL
Where:
A:0 U:0 is my EIDE Maxtor drive
A:3 is my Promise SATA Port 1
A:4 is my Promise SATA Port 2
without the above parameters the drives show the following assignment:
A:0 U:0 is my EIDE Maxtor drive
A:3 is my Promise SATA Port 2
A:4 is my Promise SATA Port 1
-Dariusz