Maxtor SATA drive & A7N8X-E Deluxe

[Alex Wilde]

Has anybody actually got a Maxtor SATA hard disc to work with the
A7N8X-E Deluxe?

I couldn't get any speed at all from a new Maxtor Diamond Max 10 drive.
Though XP will install, it takes about 5 minutes to boot the bare
install. Longer if anything extra was on there.

I've googled on this, and found a range of problems people have been
experiencing, with the Sil 3112 RAID chip, and Maxtor drives, but alas,
no solution. Well, not one that doesn't cost any money.

End up, I bought a Seagate drive, and configured both in a RAID 0 array.
This was blisteringly quick compared to the Maxtor alone. For a day.
Then, after restarting from off, the pair of drives behaved as the
Maxtor alone had done. Slow has hell. I've no speed figures to quote,
but it would take 10 minutes to copy a CD of MP3s to the array.

Configuring the pair as a RAID 1 array seems to be working ATM (touch
wood). Obviously the performance isn't as good as the day I had them
working in RAID 0, and it's cost me twice as much!

To reiterate, has anybody got a Diamond Max 10 to work with this
motherboard?

 

[Blobby]

I have the same board and currently have a Maxtor 80GB sata drive and
Maxtor 160 sata drive (not in raid) and all works fine for me. Good
data transfer/access and no problems at all. Previously had two Maxtor
80GB hard drives (again not in raid) and also no problems. I use the
one but last sata drivers (not sure what the version is......). Hope
this helps.

 

[dino]

with the same chipset on rev2.0 not E...I have a pair of SATA120 Maxtors in
RAID 0....no issues. My performance marks are pretty much dead-on with the
standards.

 

[zzipper]

I'm running an 80Gb Maxtor DM9 and have had a 160Gb DM9 on the box as well
to run diagnostics on it. No problems at all here. Don't have a DM10.

 

[Clive Lumb]

Has anybody actually got a Maxtor SATA hard disc to work with the
A7N8X-E Deluxe?

I couldn't get any speed at all from a new Maxtor Diamond Max 10
drive. Though XP will install, it takes about 5 minutes to boot the
bare install. Longer if anything extra was on there.

I've googled on this, and found a range of problems people have been
experiencing, with the Sil 3112 RAID chip, and Maxtor drives, but
alas, no solution. Well, not one that doesn't cost any money.

End up, I bought a Seagate drive, and configured both in a RAID 0
array. This was blisteringly quick compared to the Maxtor alone. For
a day. Then, after restarting from off, the pair of drives behaved as
the Maxtor alone had done. Slow has hell. I've no speed figures to
quote, but it would take 10 minutes to copy a CD of MP3s to the array.

Configuring the pair as a RAID 1 array seems to be working ATM (touch
wood). Obviously the performance isn't as good as the day I had them
working in RAID 0, and it's cost me twice as much!

To reiterate, has anybody got a Diamond Max 10 to work with this
motherboard?

I am running a Maxtor 6Y120M0 on my Sil 3112.
This is on an A7N8X2.0 Deluxe (no "E") with the 1008 "Uber" Bios
If my memory serves me well there was an issue with certain versions of the
Nforce chipset drivers - notably if you followed the wrong upgrade path -
which influenced the SATA speed (note that the problem is with the NForce
drivers, not the Sil ones)
Also I think that the Sil driver that is installed by Windows Update has
some problems too.
Before finding the currrent mix of drivers and disk to disk copy was
painfully slow, however copies on the same disk were fine.
I have also heard of people having trouble due to Zone Alarm Pro.

My Sil driver version is 1.0.0.50 dated 12 May 2004, SilSupp.cpl is version
3.0.0.15

With HDTach I get a burst speed of 112
Sequential starts at 60 falling to 40, average 48
(This is with everything running: Em*le, AV, firewall etc.)

A trip to www.nforcershq.com/forum is well worth while.

Clive

 

[Alex Wilde]

Okay, thanks for the replies.

Did anybody do anything different than put the Sil 3112r drivers (which
ever version) on a floppy and press F6 during XP install?

I can't, for the life of me, think how I got this set-up working for a
while. (RAID 0) Numerous reboots without problem.

Switch off for the night, and back to snails pace.

I've googled plenty about the Maxtor drive not being native SATA, but
rather PATA with a bridge chip, kinda like AGP gfx cards being made to
work with PCI-E. This, in combination with the Sil 3112 controller,
giving insurmountable problems. Solution seems to be running the Maxtor
drive in any kind of RAID array, either hard - or software, either
alone, or with another drive of same or different type.

I haven't tried a software RAID array (0+1 AFAIK) with the DM10, but a
hardware RAID 1 set-up seems to be working beautifully. Downside? I've
taken a double hit. 200 GB for the price of 400. Slower performance for
more cost. I'm not all that bothered about the extra data security. I
make regular backups.

Can anybody advance anymore?

 

[dino]

yes...I did not install the IDE part of the unified drivers due to
performance loss..forgot about that..if you try and remove...ewww...I am
also running a non-stock BIOS on rev 2.0...Red dwarf...has updated SATA
BIOS.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michael.mcclay/

here is the UBER BIOS's..I have also ran them.