SATA RAID and SATA DVD burner

[thermite88]

I have a new P5B-E MB flashed to 1202 BIOS version. I have 3 SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, 320GB, 7200RPM drives plugged into SATA port 0, 1 and 5. I have a Samsung SATA Model SH-S183L DVD burner plugged into SATA port 4 or 2. (On the P5B-E, SATA Port 0,1,4,5 are Intel ICH8R and Port 2,3 are JMicron) I then set 'Configure SATA as' to RAID. I save and restart, proceed to go into the Intel Matrix Storage control panel thing (Ctrl+I) and I set up a RAID5 with the 3 hard drives. I then go back into BIOS and set up the priority boot order to Samsung and then the INTEL: P5BRAID (what I named the RAID volume). I then restart and try to boot a Windows XP install CD. After all the boot tests it gets to the 'booting' screen, which has a flashing underscore in the top left. I can see the optical drive being accessed for a few seconds, then it stops and the IDE light turns on for a few seconds, then I get the dark screen

What have I done wrong? Or is there problems with a SATA RAID and a SATA optical drive?

 

[lopri]

In theory (and generally) there shouldn't be any issue with SATA HDD and SATA optical drive when setting up a RAID array. But it certainly depends on how individual boards and BIOS are configured by the manufacturer. Why ASUS would have mixed up the order of ports like that is beyond me.

Said that,, I would first try turning off JMicron controller completely and doing with ICH8R only. Next up would be using port 0, 1, 4 or 1, 4, 5 for RAID and JMicron for CD-ROM drive. And if that fails, you can try installing the OS using an IDE (PATA) CD-ROM, leaving SATA to HDDs only. It could be tricky (and frustrating) because as you can tell, most (all?) SATA ports are 'paired'. Do you also have a problem with RAID 0 or 1?

 

[vailr]

@thermite88: You don't mention using the F6 floppy driver install for Intel Matrix Raid?
Use the latest Intel Matrix Raid, Intel Chipset and JMicron drivers.
Do not rely on the outdated drivers found on the CD from the motherboard manufacturer.
Download the above-mentioned drivers from:
http://www.station-drivers.com/

 

[thermite88]

Originally posted by: vailr
@thermite88: You don't mention using the F6 floppy driver install for Intel Matrix Raid?
Use the latest Intel Matrix Raid, Intel Chipset and JMicron drivers.
Do not rely on the outdated drivers found on the CD from the motherboard manufacturer.
Download the above-mentioned drivers from:
http://www.station-drivers.com/

I used the latest download from Asus dated July 2006. The version is 6.0.0.1022. I know that it is not the latest, but later IMSM may not be compatible with the P5B-E.

Be ware of the station-drivers.com. It dumped more AD ware to my browser in one minute than all I got elsewhere in a whole year.

So far, I have not been able to find ONE single incident of successful boot from a SATA optical drive when a SATA RAID was setup. I am puzzled. Wouldn't it be one of the most popular hardware config?

 

[lopri]

Well, 680i has no problem doing away without PATA altogether.

 

[thermite88]

18 months and 3 replacement hard drives later, I still do not have a stable system. The drives in question are SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, 320GB, 7200RPM drives with model number ST3320620AS. I got these (4 of them) drives after reading early glowing reports of them and now come to regret it. When I finally called Seagate customer service to complain about the unreliable drive, I heard a whole bunch of excuses. I told the tech that I used a Lian-Li 1200 case with plenty of cooling. He finally said that the AS series of SATA drives are consumer grade and not supposed to be used in server environment. Even I am running a single end user computer at home, I am NOT SUPPOSED TO USE RAID-5 with these drives. RAID-5 is for server only.

For many years, I ran a RAID-5 system using MegaRaid card and 4 SCSI-wide drives at 10K rpm under W2K. It was absolutely stable.

I know that I need to upgrade the OS when MS stopped supporting W2K a few years ago. I cannot keep the MegaRaid/SCSI because there was no Vista driver for the card. A newer SCSI Raid card can easily double my hardware update. SATA HD are now cheaper, better, faster, more reliable, right?? No, absolutely not true.

The Windows Vista Ultimate is not helping either because it locked me out and complaint about invalid license whenever I tried to recover from a hardware failure. It is almost as bad as running an Apple computer.

Is the AS comsumer grade hard drive really that bad? What can I do with my $320 HD investment? What reliable SATA hard drive will you recommend for RAID-5 under Vista Ultimate?

 

[vailr]

I've read good reports of Areca branded SATA Raid cards.
Newegg has several to choose from, starting at about $200.
Those should provide a better idea of whether the HD crashes are due to the motherboard's HD controller, or due to the SATA drives themselves. Could be due to overheating the Raid chip on the motherboard.

 

[AsianriceX]

Originally posted by: thermite88
18 months and 3 replacement hard drives later, I still do not have a stable system. The drives in question are SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, 320GB, 7200RPM drives with model number ST3320620AS. I got these (4 of them) drives after reading early glowing reports of them and now come to regret it. When I finally called Seagate customer service to complain about the unreliable drive, I heard a whole bunch of excuses. I told the tech that I used a Lian-Li 1200 case with plenty of cooling. He finally said that the AS series of SATA drives are consumer grade and not supposed to be used in server environment. Even I am running a single end user computer at home, I am NOT SUPPOSED TO USE RAID-5 with these drives. RAID-5 is for server only.

For many years, I ran a RAID-5 system using MegaRaid card and 4 SCSI-wide drives at 10K rpm under W2K. It was absolutely stable.

I know that I need to upgrade the OS when MS stopped supporting W2K a few years ago. I cannot keep the MegaRaid/SCSI because there was no Vista driver for the card. A newer SCSI Raid card can easily double my hardware update. SATA HD are now cheaper, better, faster, more reliable, right?? No, absolutely not true.

The Windows Vista Ultimate is not helping either because it locked me out and complaint about invalid license whenever I tried to recover from a hardware failure. It is almost as bad as running an Apple computer.

Is the AS comsumer grade hard drive really that bad? What can I do with my $320 HD investment? What reliable SATA hard drive will you recommend for RAID-5 under Vista Ultimate?

You should have opted for the ES line of hard drives if you were planning on RAID-5. WD's RE3's are a good bet as well.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/10748/1

In addition to different cache segmentation, the ES's firmware offers a handful of RAID-specific features that you won't find in the Barracuda 7200.10. Among them is Error Recovery Control, which limits the drive's error recovery time to 12 seconds. This prevents prolonged error recovery attempts from causing drives to be prematurely dropped from RAID arrays. Similar functionality is available on Western Digital's enterprise-class Serial ATA drives, although WD recommends disabling the feature for single-drive operation. Error Recovery Control apparently doesn't hinder the Barracuda ES in single-drive systems.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the AS line of drives, it's just that the ES line is better for RAID configurations due to the RAID specific features Seagate includes in its firmware.

 

[thermite88]

Originally posted by: AsianriceX

You should have opted for the ES line of hard drives if you were planning on RAID-5. WD's RE3's are a good bet as well.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/10748/1

In addition to different cache segmentation, the ES's firmware offers a handful of RAID-specific features that you won't find in the Barracuda 7200.10. Among them is Error Recovery Control, which limits the drive's error recovery time to 12 seconds. This prevents prolonged error recovery attempts from causing drives to be prematurely dropped from RAID arrays. Similar functionality is available on Western Digital's enterprise-class Serial ATA drives, although WD recommends disabling the feature for single-drive operation. Error Recovery Control apparently doesn't hinder the Barracuda ES in single-drive systems.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the AS line of drives, it's just that the ES line is better for RAID configurations due to the RAID specific features Seagate includes in its firmware.

AsianriceX, thank you for the insight. It is very helpful.

Since I am not smart enough to purchase the ES drives and am now stuck with 4 320GB AS drives. I would like to have data redundance. Instead of RAID-5, what is the best drive configuration with 3 or 4 drives for me?

 

[vailr]

Maybe Seagate could provide ES firmware, so the AS drives could be flash converted to ES.
They would provide the firmware file for making a bootable floppy (or bootable USB thumb drive), and the firmware flash is done in DOS.
Don't know if it's even possible, but it may be worth an email or phone call to Seagate.

 

[thermite88]

Originally posted by: vailr
Maybe Seagate could provide ES firmware, so the AS drives could be flash converted to ES.
They would provide the firmware file for making a bootable floppy (or bootable USB thumb drive), and the firmware flash is done in DOS.
Don't know if it's even possible, but it may be worth an email or phone call to Seagate.

No luck. get on the phone with Seagate customer service today. The tech said that there is no firmware update for the AS. When I pressed for clarification about the product page's statement: "Good for Desktop Raid System". She would only promised to send an email to clarify. No mail yet. Will post again when I receive it.

When I talked to another Seagate tech a week or so ago, he is not convinced that I had a problem. He reqested that I run SeaTool for DOS and do a thorough check on the drive. Unfortunately, SeaTool for DOS can't find the drive even though the software seems to run fine. Seagate provide an ISO file to burn a bootable CD.

 

[thermite88]

OK, guys, I am back. I am in the process of deciding on a replacement set of either the Samsung Spinpoint F1 RAID or WD Caviar Black. The 500 GB drives are priced about the same from different vendors. Both are slightly less than what I paid for my Seagates in 2007.

The Samsung is the choice by Tom's Hardware editors and the WD Anandtech's choice for RAID.

I tried the Seagates in single drive mode using AHCI. Making a little progress that the Vista 32 completed installation and all the upgrades except Service Pack 1. The installation of any of the language packages failed too. I still constantly get blue screen of death. It happened whenever the disk access light came on for a long time and, then, another memory dump and reboot. I tried putting the SATA speed jumper back on and it did not improve the system stability.

I still have two of the Seagates in somewhat working condition. About the others, one is lost by USPS in return to Seagate who decline to help. Another one is a DOA replacement from Seagate. I have been on the phone half a donzen times to get a pre-paid mailing label. Seagate always said that they will email it, but never did. The 5-years warranty is good, but no substitute for reliable drives.

 

[thermite88]

I hope that this the final chapter of my post. I have a RAID5 system using 3 Seagate 7800.10 320GB running stably in the past month. After 18 months and 4 under warranty exchanges, I finally got 3 of these drives that passed the SEATOOL for DOS long SDT test. Once I did, the RAID5 setup was a breese.

The Samsung Spinpoint F1 RAID HE502IJ 500GB drives were a flop. I went to RAID5 setup directly and it failed during Vista formatting. All 3 drives failed Samsung's ESTOOLS test. All were properly recognized by ESTOOLS. 2 refused to run the test. The only one that ran the test failed with RAM error message. I was very disappointed with the Samsung warranty. No direct dealing with Samsung. The drives must be returned to the seller. It took me 10 days to get an RMA number from NEWDIRECTION. They have received the drives 10 days ago and still no receipt nor refund. I called them and was asked to be patient. I am unlikely to buy from them again.