A8V Promise annoyance.

[RonK]

I have the A8V Deluxe with a 160 gig Sata drive on the Via controller and
another 160 gig Sata on the Promise controller.
When I boot the system, the Via controller shows the hard drive immediately
but when it's the Promise controllers turn it takes approx 30 to 40 seconds
to show the hard drive connected to it. Occasionally it shows within 2 or 3
seconds.
I have flashed the bios to the newest and also tried the Beta Bios and the
same thing occurs. The system is very fast and stable. I have XP installed
twice for dual boot.
One on the Via and the other on the Promise.
Any suggestions besides connecting both drives to the Via ?

Thanks
Ron

Running
A8V Deluxe
Athlon 3500+
1 gig pc 3200 in Dual Channel.
XP SP2.

 

[m.marien]

I have the A8V Deluxe with a 160 gig Sata drive on the Via controller and
another 160 gig Sata on the Promise controller.
When I boot the system, the Via controller shows the hard drive
immediately but when it's the Promise controllers turn it takes approx 30
to 40 seconds to show the hard drive connected to it. Occasionally it
shows within 2 or 3 seconds.
I have flashed the bios to the newest and also tried the Beta Bios and the
same thing occurs. The system is very fast and stable. I have XP installed
twice for dual boot.
One on the Via and the other on the Promise.
Any suggestions besides connecting both drives to the Via ?

Thanks
Ron

Running
A8V Deluxe
Athlon 3500+
1 gig pc 3200 in Dual Channel.
XP SP2.

It's a Promise thing. 30 - 40 seconds does seem excessive. I have a SATA on
the Promise controller K8V Deluxe), plus I have some Promise TX2 cards in
other systems. If there is a problem, the detection takes plenty of time.
However, if the drives are fine, it detects them within 10 seconds.

Booting is a different story. The Promise drives take forever to boot. I
added a PATA and boot from there - much much faster.

 

[Chris Catt]

Hi, what's wrong with connecting both of the drives to the Via Sata? I'm
sure you can run them both without having to create an raid array, at least
you can on my A8V. Then you'd be able to disable the promise thus speeding
up your bootup times....
Chris C

 

[RonK]

Hi Chris.
I could connect both to the Via but I wanted to do some benchmarks to see if
there were any performance differences between the 2.

 

[Chris Catt]

Hi again, the Via chip has the reputation for being the quicker of the two
according to what I've read in other forums. I think this is the one
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=91
Cheers,
Chris C

 

[Chris Catt]

Hi, bty, I'm getting over 111,000KB/sec from my raid setup on the via....
Chris C

 

[RonK]

OK - Thanks Chris, I'll put them both on the Via and I might as well Raid0
them as well.
I did benchmark them and the Promise was about 10% slower than the Via.

 

[Chris]

Way to go!!! Let me know how you get on....
Chris C

 

[RonK]

Hi Chris,

I changed the Promise drive over to the Via Sata connection and my slow boot
has dis-appeared. I was surprised that I did not have to re-install XP on
that drive after I changed connections. I did have to edit the Boot.ini to
have it show the correct Operating System locations.
Both Installs work great and I will Raid0 when I have more time.

Thanks
Ron

PS - Are you in Great Britain ?

 

[RonK]

You were right about the boot time on the Promise. I have both drives on the
Via and everything is fast nowThanks

 

[Chris]

YW
Chris C

You were right about the boot time on the Promise. I have both drives on
the Via and everything is fast nowThanks