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A7V333 RAID - Problems

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Jase

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Mar 23, 2002, 8:33:28 PM3/23/02
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I posted a message a little while ago regarding a problem I was having
with the RAID setup on the A7V333. I am beginning to think it's a
Hardware/Motherboard problem and I have just sent the following Email
to ASUS. Anyone here have any ideas/advise ?

+

I have just purchased an A7V333 RAID Motherboard to replace a Gigabyte
7DXR. After fitting the Motherboard everything seemed OK within W98SE
however the hard disks seemed slow (Using RAID 0). After running
Sisoft Sandra it gave the drive a rating of approx 23500 which is half
the rating I used to get.

I am using 2 x 40GB IBM ATA100 Hard Drives (Same models)

I checked the settings within the FastTrak BIOS setup but discovered
that it would not allow me to do anything. It would not allow me to
delete arrays or make any changes. I then FDISKed the drives and
reformatted but still I couldn't change anything within FastTrak. I
then reconnected the drives to the Gigabyte board, tested and deleted
the arrays and reserved sectors from the hard drive (as advised on the
Promise site).

I put the drives back on the A7V333 and FastTrak picked up the drives
and let me create the array/RAID 0. After formatting etc and
re-installing W98SE again the drives were still slow. I checked all
the latest drivers were being used and updated the BIOS but still no
change. FastTrak would still not allow me to delete arrays or anything
after the original creation.

I then reformatted the drives etc and installed Windows XP with the
correct drivers etc. On the first test with Sandra it gave a rating of
approx 30,000 which was better but still not good. I run the test
again after restarting the machine and then got a rating of approx
23500 again. This poor rating is now pretty constant.

The FastTrak BIOS setup still does not allow me to change anything and
I can not delete the array or such like to start from scratch.

Thanks

Jason

AJ

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Mar 23, 2002, 10:18:06 PM3/23/02
to

>
>I posted a message a little while ago regarding a problem I was having
>with the RAID setup on the A7V333. I am beginning to think it's a
>Hardware/Motherboard problem and I have just sent the following Email
>to ASUS. Anyone here have any ideas/advise ?
>
>+
>
>I have just purchased an A7V333 RAID Motherboard to replace a Gigabyte
>7DXR. After fitting the Motherboard everything seemed OK within W98SE
>however the hard disks seemed slow (Using RAID 0). After running
>Sisoft Sandra it gave the drive a rating of approx 23500 which is half
>the rating I used to get.
>
>I am using 2 x 40GB IBM ATA100 Hard Drives (Same models)
>

I have that board, 2 - 40GB 7200 Maxtors(different models) and mine
scores 30663.

Jase

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Mar 24, 2002, 12:11:36 PM3/24/02
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On Sun, 24 Mar 2002 03:18:06 GMT, aj...@hotmail.com (AJ) wrote:


>I have that board, 2 - 40GB 7200 Maxtors(different models) and mine
>scores 30663.

It looks as if I have solved my problem and now getting the decent
results of 38,000+ which I used to. The problems seem to relate to the
VIA USB 2.0. Here's my testing/analysis :

Windows XP Pro
===========

Fresh Install - only promise drivers installed (and Sandra!)

Sandra result : 35860
Sandra result : 35966
Sandra result : 36434

NVidia Video Drivers installed

Sandra result : 36416
Sandra result : 36435
Sandra result : 36408

SBLive Drivers Installed

Sandra result : 36454
Sandra result : 36403

VIA USB 2.0 Drivers Installed

Sandra result : 24365
Sandra result : 24191

VIA USB 2.0 Drivers Unistalled and disabled in device manager

Sandra result : 35964
Sandra result : 36823

USB 2.0 Disabled on motherboard (Jumpers)

Sandra result : 38691
Sandra result : 38447

Well the above will do me (almost the same as it used to be with the
Gigabyte). I have no use for USB 2.0 at the moment but hopefully by
the time I do the above problem will be fixable.

Thanks

Jase

ray

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Mar 25, 2002, 3:25:59 PM3/25/02
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I've a Gigabyte GA-7vrxp motherboard that has the same chipset as the
A7V333. It uses the VIA KT333 chipset and the Promise PDC20276 ATA 133
RAID controller. I have 2 Maxtor ATA133 60GB drive configured as
RAID-0. The SIS Sandra Drive Index result is ~26000. I'll try to
uninstall the USB2.0 driver and will let you know the result.

Ray


Jase <Jase@**DeleteThis**netcomuk.co.uk> wrote in message news:<g02s9u0ko6cv0otaj...@4ax.com>...

Jase

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Mar 25, 2002, 3:36:09 PM3/25/02
to
On 25 Mar 2002 12:25:59 -0800, rl...@yahoo.com (ray) wrote:

>I've a Gigabyte GA-7vrxp motherboard that has the same chipset as the
>A7V333. It uses the VIA KT333 chipset and the Promise PDC20276 ATA 133
>RAID controller. I have 2 Maxtor ATA133 60GB drive configured as
>RAID-0. The SIS Sandra Drive Index result is ~26000. I'll try to
>uninstall the USB2.0 driver and will let you know the result.

I'd be interested to hear how you get on..

Good luck.

Jase


AJ

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Mar 25, 2002, 6:38:29 PM3/25/02
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>I've a Gigabyte GA-7vrxp motherboard that has the same chipset as the
>A7V333. It uses the VIA KT333 chipset and the Promise PDC20276 ATA 133
>RAID controller. I have 2 Maxtor ATA133 60GB drive configured as
>RAID-0. The SIS Sandra Drive Index result is ~26000. I'll try to
>uninstall the USB2.0 driver and will let you know the result.
>
>Ray
>

I don't know it this applies to your board, but VIA has a patch that
greatly boosts IDE performance.

AJ

ray

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Mar 26, 2002, 3:18:08 PM3/26/02
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I disable the VIA USB2.0 chip in BIOS on my Gigabyte GA-7VRXP
motherboard. The Drive Index improved by 15% to ~30k, but it is still
behind what I can get from my ASUS A7V-266E motherboard. It has a
drive index of 40k.

Ray


aj...@hotmail.com (AJ) wrote in message news:<3c9fb12a...@news.pa.comcast.giganews.com>...

Gabe

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Mar 29, 2002, 6:58:15 PM3/29/02
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"The FastTrak BIOS setup still does not allow me to change anything and
I can not delete the array or such like to start from scratch."
I'm having that exact same problem.

I have one drive in Array 1 and the second drive in array 2.

I assume they need to be both in array one.

I say this because I tried installing XP and it saw two seperate drives.

If you could tell me what you did to get around this?

Thanks


Jase <Jase@**DeleteThis**netcomuk.co.uk> wrote in message news:<6vaq9u0mqqneqa4nn...@4ax.com>...

Gabe

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Apr 2, 2002, 5:24:18 PM4/2/02
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I have two 60GB Maxtor ATA133 7200rpm drives running in a Raid 0
configuration on the A7V333 board.

After reading this I downloaded Sandra and ran the disk test.

note: I have not yet disabled USB 2.0.

My sandra score is 21989

Anyone else running Raid 0 with this board may want to download sandra
also and check their HD performance.

I emailed asus too and will post any responce I get.

p.s. Jase, thanks for the detailed summary of everything you did.

Gabe

Jase <Jase@**DeleteThis**netcomuk.co.uk> wrote in message news:<6vaq9u0mqqneqa4nn...@4ax.com>...

Ruel Smith

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Apr 2, 2002, 6:09:06 PM4/2/02
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Did you defrag first?

Do a fresh defrag with anything other than the built-in defragger (I like
Speed Disk myself) and run it again.

"Gabe" <itt...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:120a318c.02040...@posting.google.com...

Ray

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Apr 5, 2002, 12:04:17 AM4/5/02
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These sound similar to a problem I am having. Has anyone seen this?

I received my A7V333 2 days ago. I have installed and reinstalled XP
pro (RAID0) at least 12 times. Everytime I get a similar result...My
PC Hangs and for no apparent reason and those few time I could see the
event logs they literally said nothing. It seemed to be a Video
problem (GeForce4 TI 4600) because I would get the BSOD when trying to
run 3DMARK, but I messed with the Bios and seemed to fix it enough to
run 3DMARK but then crashed again. Here is my set up

A7V333(RAID0)
2 x 60GB Maxtor 7200RPM
AMD XP 1700+
512MB DDR2100 RAM
Sound Blaster Live value
3Com 3c9xx combo

I updated to BIOS 1005, and used the Promise drivers from Asus's web
site. I was able to get the VIA drivers on there but that didn't seem
to make a difference. I am currently loading it on the IDE channel to
see if it coud be a bad RAID controller.

Any ideas?
Thanks! Please help

Ray

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Apr 6, 2002, 12:38:33 PM4/6/02
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Update.....Apparently My Sound Card was the root of the problem. Thx

Kerry Sanders

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Apr 6, 2002, 3:04:47 PM4/6/02
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itt...@hotmail.com (Gabe) wrote in message news:<120a318c.02032...@posting.google.com>...

> "The FastTrak BIOS setup still does not allow me to change anything and
> I can not delete the array or such like to start from scratch."
>

> I say this because I tried installing XP and it saw two seperate drives.


At least you got Windows XP install to see your drives. I couldn't
get it to see any of my drives last night. I tried flashing to the
v1005 BIOS and succeeded in producing a large, expensive paper weight.

Underhill

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Apr 9, 2002, 7:43:26 AM4/9/02
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Hi,
I've got 2 Maxtor 80 Gbytes ATA 133 in RAID 0 with the ASUS A7v333 and
Sandra reported a total score of 24556. Awful!

Paolo

On 2 Apr 2002 14:24:18 -0800, itt...@hotmail.com (Gabe) wrote:

[...]

Gabe

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Apr 9, 2002, 7:17:44 PM4/9/02
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So it seems that several are having this RAID 0 performance problem
but none of the tech sites seem to be reporting it nor has ASUS tech
support gotten back with me GRRRRRR

Gabe


nwa...@freemail.it (Underhill) wrote in message news:<3cb2d384...@powernews.libero.it>...

Ruel Smith

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Apr 9, 2002, 10:53:19 PM4/9/02
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You know, someone informed me of similar RAID performance problems on the
Gigabyte GA-8IRXP (the board I have) and I passed the info on to a Gigabyte
tech support guy and was told not only by him, but others that the problem
lies in the fact that so many options the board has is tied into the PCI bus
and is hitting a bandwidth limitation problem. Apparently, when you have all
these nice features such as USB, USB 2.0, etc. they use up bandwith on the
PCI bus and there is only so much to go around. Turning off USB 2.0 has
shown to dramatically increase RAID performance on my board. I personally
like all the features and have gotten my RAID to a 33,000 Sandra disk index,
and am satisfied. Others haven't been so lucky. Older boards that have only
USB 1.1 post much better RAID results.

"Gabe" <itt...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:120a318c.02040...@posting.google.com...

Gabe

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Apr 10, 2002, 2:44:27 PM4/10/02
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I just spoke with someone at Asus Tech support and sent him a link to
this thread. He is going to pass this to R&D so maybe we can get
responce/fix for this issue.

by the way there was a new beta bios 1006.003 released today but no
informtaion on what it does.

Gabe


Jase <Jase@**DeleteThis**netcomuk.co.uk> wrote in message news:<g02s9u0ko6cv0otaj...@4ax.com>...

Gabe

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Apr 10, 2002, 5:37:12 PM4/10/02
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I made a post at the http://www.amdmb.com - ASUS forums about this
performance problem.

http://www.amdmb.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=117681

Hopefully we can get a lot of detail for our ASUS R&D guys


Jase <Jase@**DeleteThis**netcomuk.co.uk> wrote in message news:<g02s9u0ko6cv0otaj...@4ax.com>...

Benjamin

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Apr 17, 2002, 7:50:34 AM4/17/02
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Hello,

whats about APIC-Mode?? Is it active? Does the Promise Raid has an own IRQ??
THX!!

Scott

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Apr 20, 2002, 3:18:58 PM4/20/02
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The drives need to be on physically seperate channels but in the same
position. For example, if you only have two drives on your RAID
controller, then you need to have them both set as Master, one on IDE
1 and the other on IDE 2. It takes two cables that way but that is
how it works. SCSI systems use the same cable. It can be confusing.
Hope that this helps.

- Scott

itt...@hotmail.com (Gabe) wrote in message news:<120a318c.02032...@posting.google.com>...

Hosewol

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Apr 22, 2002, 3:45:38 PM4/22/02
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Jase <Jase@**DeleteThis**netcomuk.co.uk> wrote in message news:<6vaq9u0mqqneqa4nn...@4ax.com>...

Same problem happened to me, you can download a raid patch from via
arena, this fixed the problem for my harddrives SisoftSandra rating
40k+ (I do have two WD 120 GB with 8 mb cache!)

Hosewol

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Apr 22, 2002, 3:46:55 PM4/22/02
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Jase <Jase@**DeleteThis**netcomuk.co.uk> wrote in message news:<6vaq9u0mqqneqa4nn...@4ax.com>...

PS, do not install the USB2.0 controller this kills performance

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