New A7N8X Deluxe - SATA and Raid HD Tach 2.61 Questions

[George]

Barton 2500+ (200 fsb)
Vantec Aeroflow cooler
A7N8X Deluxe Rev 2.0 1005 bios
Enermax 450W power supply
2 x 512 pc3200 ram Generic
WD 120 SATA HD WDC 1200JD (primary) non raid
WD 80 PATA HD WDC 800 JB (slave)
Win XP pro sp 2.1

Out of the box this baby hits 200 fsb like a charm with only a slight
bump in core voltage to 1.675 needed to make prime 95 run 100% stable
for days. Going from a Thermaltake Volcano 7 cooler to the Vantec
Aeroflow dropped my temps 10C under prime 95 load. I now hit 43C max
under full Prime 95 load no other case fans. I leave the side of the
case off.

I have a few questions and observations.

I know the first one has been asked before but I cannot find answers
that solve my problem.

I loaded the sata driver after F6 when doing a clean install on a new
sata drive. Loaded windows and everything works except for a yellow
flag in device manager saying other devices/raid controller. This is
after loading the latest all in one drivers.

How do I make the yellow flag go away and give the raid controller the
driver windows is looking for?

Problem #2
When I bench each drive using HD Tach 2.61 I get very weird results.

the 120 gig yeilds the following:

Random Access Time 20ms (this is very crappy)
Read Burst Speed 73.0 Mb (also crappy)
Read Speed Maximum 60,041 kps
Minimum 29,524 kps
Average 47,529 kps (Great read speed results)

80 gig yeilds the following:

Random Access Time 12.8ms
Read Burst Speed 80 Mb (maxes out probably closer to 100)
Read Speed Maximum 52,646 kps
Minimum 24,848 kps
Average 40,505 kps

Do I need to change a setting or driver?

I remember in windows 98 if you did not select dma in the drive
properties box you would get lousy HD bench marks.

Something is wrong here.

Sandra gives the sata drive higher benchmarks than the pata drive.

Help/suggestions appreciated

 

[Ben Pope]

Barton 2500+ (200 fsb)
Vantec Aeroflow cooler
A7N8X Deluxe Rev 2.0 1005 bios
Enermax 450W power supply
2 x 512 pc3200 ram Generic
WD 120 SATA HD WDC 1200JD (primary) non raid
WD 80 PATA HD WDC 800 JB (slave)
Win XP pro sp 2.1

Out of the box this baby hits 200 fsb like a charm with only a slight
bump in core voltage to 1.675 needed to make prime 95 run 100% stable
for days. Going from a Thermaltake Volcano 7 cooler to the Vantec
Aeroflow dropped my temps 10C under prime 95 load. I now hit 43C max
under full Prime 95 load no other case fans. I leave the side of the
case off.

I have a few questions and observations.

I know the first one has been asked before but I cannot find answers
that solve my problem.

I loaded the sata driver after F6 when doing a clean install on a new
sata drive. Loaded windows and everything works except for a yellow
flag in device manager saying other devices/raid controller. This is
after loading the latest all in one drivers.

How do I make the yellow flag go away and give the raid controller the
driver windows is looking for?

Is the SiI 3112A listed in device manager under SCSI controllers? If not,
update the driver with the SiI 1.0.0.32 driver.

If it is, then remove both that one and the one with the yellow flag from
device manager and reboot.

Problem #2
When I bench each drive using HD Tach 2.61 I get very weird results.

the 120 gig yeilds the following:

Random Access Time 20ms (this is very crappy)

Yes, it is.

Read Burst Speed 73.0 Mb (also crappy)

Yeah, but won't affect performance much since it's greater than the maximum
sustained read.

Read Speed Maximum 60,041 kps
Minimum 29,524 kps
Average 47,529 kps (Great read speed results)

Thats not at all bad. My Raptor is ~48.5MB/s average. (Seek is ~8ms)

80 gig yeilds the following:

Random Access Time 12.8ms
Read Burst Speed 80 Mb (maxes out probably closer to 100)
Read Speed Maximum 52,646 kps
Minimum 24,848 kps
Average 40,505 kps

Do I need to change a setting or driver?

I remember in windows 98 if you did not select dma in the drive
properties box you would get lousy HD bench marks.

Without DMA performance is crap on all OSs.

Something is wrong here.

Sandra gives the sata drive higher benchmarks than the pata drive.

Help/suggestions appreciated

Try updating to the 1007 BIOS, it has a later SATA firmware too. Oh and get
your driver sorted.

Ben

 

[George]

Is the SiI 3112A listed in device manager under SCSI controllers? If not,
update the driver with the SiI 1.0.0.32 driver.

If it is, then remove both that one and the one with the yellow flag from
device manager and reboot.

In device manager the drive is listed under disk drives and is
labelled with the model number then says scsi disk drive. There is no
scsi folder in device manager.

 

[Ben Pope]

In device manager the drive is listed under disk drives and is
labelled with the model number then says scsi disk drive. There is no
scsi folder in device manager.

Right, then you have no driver installed... so update the driver on the
device thats not working.

The 3112A should appear as a SCSI controller.

Ben

 

[George]

Right, then you have no driver installed... so update the driver on the
device thats not working.

The 3112A should appear as a SCSI controller.

Ben

Ben I hate to bother you but when I load the 1.0.0.32 driver on a
floppy and update the raid controller driver that has the yellow flag
windows hangs on the re-boot andI have to go bacxk to the previous
installation that worked. I have seen others post the same problem.

I have copied the contents of the unbzipped file to a floppy then
updated from device manager on the yello0w flagged raid controller
device then hang on re-boot.

What am I doing wrong?

Is the 1007 bios worth going to from the 1005 and would this eliminate
this hassle with the scsi driver?

 

[Ben Pope]

Ben I hate to bother you but when I load the 1.0.0.32 driver on a
floppy and update the raid controller driver that has the yellow flag
windows hangs on the re-boot andI have to go bacxk to the previous
installation that worked. I have seen others post the same problem.

Doesn't bother me... it's your problem

I have copied the contents of the unbzipped file to a floppy then
updated from device manager on the yello0w flagged raid controller
device then hang on re-boot.

What am I doing wrong?

Dunno, but I wouldn't bother with the floppy. Just extract the zip to a
directory and point add hardware wizard there.

Is the 1007 bios worth going to from the 1005 and would this eliminate
this hassle with the scsi driver?

I'd have thought it'd have no effect.

I've not heard of the problem before... of course, you could try the .29s or
an even older version, but I wouldn't expect it to work (because I wouldn't
expect the .32s to cause problems).

Hmm. What version does
C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\SI3112r.sys
Have?

I take it you're installing the "raid" drivers and not the "sata" ones?
http://12.24.47.40/utility/getfile.asp?rid=1634

Ben

 

[George]

Ben C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\SI3112r.sys lists the driver version as
..22 not .32

Again whenever I update the driver (using 3x12_x86_[1].win_rdvr-10032)
on the yellow flagged raid controller i cannot boot and have to revert
to a previous installation. Is there anyting I can do other than
re-load windows and use the 10032 when I get the call for f6?

 

[Ben Pope]

Ben C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\SI3112r.sys lists the driver version as
.22 not .32

Again whenever I update the driver (using 3x12_x86_[1].win_rdvr-10032)
on the yellow flagged raid controller i cannot boot and have to revert
to a previous installation. Is there anyting I can do other than
re-load windows and use the 10032 when I get the call for f6?

I really don't see how that would change anything... same driver, same
problem, I assume. Looks like the older version loads.

But the new version either doesn't load, or breaks windows.

The old version must be being loaded, but for some reason the driver isn't
installed correctly.

I'm at a loss to be honest. Try searching nforcershq.

Ben

 

[George]

Ben I formatted the drive and re-installed windows with the 32 sata
driver and now no yellow flags. My HD tach scores are still exactly
the same which pissees me off especially the Random Access Time 20ms.
There must be a setting wrong here. Any ideas?

 

[Ben Pope]

Ben I formatted the drive and re-installed windows with the 32 sata
driver and now no yellow flags. My HD tach scores are still exactly
the same which pissees me off especially the Random Access Time 20ms.
There must be a setting wrong here. Any ideas?

Don't have any idea why seek is bad. You got acoustic management or
something silly on? (OK so one idea)

Ben

 

[6bal]

Ben I formatted the drive and re-installed windows with the 32 sata
driver and now no yellow flags. My HD tach scores are still exactly
the same which pissees me off especially the Random Access Time 20ms.
There must be a setting wrong here. Any ideas?

Why do you have them on the RAID controller ?
If they aren't setup as an array try the EIDE ports and see how they
work.

 

[George]

I have the 120 set on the sata/raid controller and the 80 on the ide
channel.

Since they are not the same they are not set to raid.

 

[BoB]

What chipset/nvidia driver version are you using?
I was benching my buddy's old raid pata stripe with HD Tach
when one of his IBM 60 giggers bit the dust! Whoops!

 

[George]

I am using the all-in-one 1.16 drivers.

What chipset/nvidia driver version are you using?
I was benching my buddy's old raid pata stripe with HD Tach
when one of his IBM 60 giggers bit the dust! Whoops!

 

[BoB]

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp