A8N32-SLI, "Error51 paging error", Helpful Hint

My new system based on the A8N32-SLI Deluxe was slow to boot up about half of the time, with boot-up times ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. It was very annoying, especially when trying to test overclocks or install software.

I discovered the cause. As it turns out, the NVidia NForce4 chipset assumes that if you have a Sata hard drive that it is native command queuing capable. Well, it just so happens that if you have older model hard drives like me that are pre-Sata2 you can get some errors. The one I was encountering was Error 51 which is a paging error.

Type: Warning. Event_ID: 51 Source: Disk
Description:
"An error was detected on device DeviceHarddisk1D during a paging operation."

Well, I happened to notice that in the Primary Channel and Secondary Channel tabs for the NVidia Serial ATA RAID controller driver, there is a checkbox for "Enable command queuing"
It was checked for both, and I knew that my drives weren't capable of this, so I unchecked them then rebooted.

Results: No performance decrease, but, boot times are now consistent and MUCH faster. It's been a few days now and many super fast reboots since then and I haven't seen the error again in Event Viewer either.

If you have older Sata 1 drives in a RAID configuration, please uncheck these boxes to save yourself some headaches and potential problems down the road.

A quick update.

I have learned from another thread that some Sata 1 drives do support NCQ, so this isn't necessarily a Sata1 vs Sata 2 situation. It's purely NCQ yes/no. You just need to check the specs for your drives.

And, you could have NCQ capable drives on one channel and non-NCQ capable drives on the other. Just be sure which one is which and disable apprporiately.