M
Mike Huskey
Found this on the Web, it solved my problems.
-------------------
New build had the same Write Delay Failed on my WD3200KS drives. Never an
issue with my two Raptors. I could constantly recreate the issue. I even
create the condition when reading heavily from the drive to write to another.
After 2 days of searching and ruling out everything that it wasn’t, running
diags and on memory and drives, I was down to it being the MS XP driver for
the drives.
Since my Raptor drives worked flawlessly, I ruled out XP settings and any
chipset bottlenecks or heat problems. I looked into the drive capabilities for
differences.
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/...asp?language=en
The Raptor support NCQ, as do the 400GB and 500GB versions of the of WDXX00KS
line (i.e. only on high capacity or high perf drives). The 250GB and 320GB
versions do not. After determining that XP hides these drive settings under
the SATA controller settings, I found that Command Queuing is enabled by
default for these drives.
My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware -> Device Manager
Expand +IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Select -NVIDIA nForce 590/570/550 Serial ATA Controller
Right click and select properties
Under Primary Channel or Secondary Channel you will see Master Drive listed
with Transfer Mode (Serial ATA Generation 2-3G) and 4 checkboxes:
X – Let BIOS select transfer mode
X – Enable read caching
X – Enable write caching
X – Enable command queuing
UNSELECT the command queuing option for your drives that do not support NCQ
and reboot your computer.
Verify your settings after reboot and you should have no more problems.
Apparently when pushed hard, XP started to send queuing commands that the
drives don’t support and then the errors pop up.
If you have followed a few of the Microsoft recommendations and turned off
your system cache for these for these drives, I recommend undoing that. Isee
about 5-20% better performance with it on, depending on the transfer
situation.
Device Manager -> Disk Drives -> WDC WD3200KS-00PFB0
Right click – properties. Policies tab. Optimize for performance.
Reboot again and enjoy a properly working systems (assuming you’ve covered all
of the other gotchas with your new hardware).
Vista - The "Woe" Starts Now.
-------------------
New build had the same Write Delay Failed on my WD3200KS drives. Never an
issue with my two Raptors. I could constantly recreate the issue. I even
create the condition when reading heavily from the drive to write to another.
After 2 days of searching and ruling out everything that it wasn’t, running
diags and on memory and drives, I was down to it being the MS XP driver for
the drives.
Since my Raptor drives worked flawlessly, I ruled out XP settings and any
chipset bottlenecks or heat problems. I looked into the drive capabilities for
differences.
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/...asp?language=en
The Raptor support NCQ, as do the 400GB and 500GB versions of the of WDXX00KS
line (i.e. only on high capacity or high perf drives). The 250GB and 320GB
versions do not. After determining that XP hides these drive settings under
the SATA controller settings, I found that Command Queuing is enabled by
default for these drives.
My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware -> Device Manager
Expand +IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Select -NVIDIA nForce 590/570/550 Serial ATA Controller
Right click and select properties
Under Primary Channel or Secondary Channel you will see Master Drive listed
with Transfer Mode (Serial ATA Generation 2-3G) and 4 checkboxes:
X – Let BIOS select transfer mode
X – Enable read caching
X – Enable write caching
X – Enable command queuing
UNSELECT the command queuing option for your drives that do not support NCQ
and reboot your computer.
Verify your settings after reboot and you should have no more problems.
Apparently when pushed hard, XP started to send queuing commands that the
drives don’t support and then the errors pop up.
If you have followed a few of the Microsoft recommendations and turned off
your system cache for these for these drives, I recommend undoing that. Isee
about 5-20% better performance with it on, depending on the transfer
situation.
Device Manager -> Disk Drives -> WDC WD3200KS-00PFB0
Right click – properties. Policies tab. Optimize for performance.
Reboot again and enjoy a properly working systems (assuming you’ve covered all
of the other gotchas with your new hardware).
Vista - The "Woe" Starts Now.