XP Pro and RAID

[stan03]

For those of you who use RAID and have XP PRO, how man times does the blue thing circle around on boot up? before i had raid, it went around 4 times, now it goes around 9 times.... whats the problem? and norton antivirus also takes forever, wayyy slower. i don't know what info i need to post besides stripe size (16k). help or comments would be appreciated.

 

[GooGobbler]

1.5 times. 2x Seagate 160GB 7200.7 SATA RAID0 16k stripe.

I have no idea why you're drives would be running slower though, sorry.

 

[Sonny]

Only .8X with 2 X 7200.7 40G Seagates.

 

[tuskenraider]

Half here. Sounds like a driver issue, double check the jumpers as well.

 

[nikhsub1]

Have you run bootvis? If not, go to the MS web site and search for it and run it.

 

[voodoomelon]

As you can see, I have the same setup as you, using XP Pro also, and have no problems.
The blue circle only passes twice I think, nearly twice as fast as before. Only thing I can suggest is to reinstall the Promise Drivers like tuskenraider says. (Assuming your using Promise RAID).
Make sure both drives are set to Master. You could also try setting the stripe size to a bigger value.

 

[stan03]

well it seems everyone uses 16K stripe, but how do i reinstall raid drivers? i don't know what raid i have, its onboard....


edit: from my other thread, i found that my hds were not in udma mode... how do i fix this?

edit 2: now every time i reboot it says found new hardware and tries to reinstall the riad drivers...???

 

[stan03]

bump

 

[JigPu]

You can either let XP install it's own RAID drives (and then update), or install the latest version on your own to begin with.

I would check out your mobo manufacturer's web site for drivers, they should have links to sem9-recent RAID drivers I would think. Also, try googling for whatever XP detects your RAID as. You might find some newer drivers that way as well.


Definatly run bootvis though if you havent I went from about 10 passes on XP Home on a fresh install to currently about 3 (1x WD800JB). Makes a HUGE difference.

JigPu

 

[stan03]

i thought bootvis caused some problems with windows...?

 

[PAWO]

My server can go from off to fully booted in windows in about 12-15 seconds, it only flashes the bar across not even one time. Haven't seen it do that in a long time tho, as its on its 138th day of uptime Its got Quad 160 gig Baracuda 7200RPMs in Raid 1....other Specs are in my Sig.....

 

[PAWO]

My Main Rig does about 3-4 passes of the bar usually, used to be almost 8 or 9 before I went to RAID on here.

 

[stan03]

ok, i installed some programs (norton sysworks) and now its up to 10 times. i don't understand, every time i put one program on there , the bar passes another 3-4 times.... whtas wrong here? also my atto scores are dropping like crazy??? whats going on here

 

[stan03]

and what scores in hdtach should i be getting? i get an average read speed of only 56 mb/s

 

[Sonny]

i thought bootvis caused some problems with windows...?

Correct, Bootvis does cause problems with RAID0 setups so I suggest you stay away from it. What RAID BIOS & Driver revisions do you have? How are you installing the drivers, during or after the OS install?

 

[FireMogle]

I would also guess it to be the drivers, check your mobo's site for drivers and make sure thats what you have installed. I once had the wrong drivers installed and it was slower than molasses in january.

 

[stan03]

ok, this will sound so stupid, but how do i check? windows update gave me drivers for ITE (which is the manufatuer of my raid controller) that are newer than the ones on that site. and on the site, idk which drivers for ata raid.... i only see one for ITE, all the rest for sata, which i dont use.


linky
http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/Driver/Driver_GA-8KNXP.htm

btw, blue thingy is up to 10.5 times and hdtach still only gets 56.7 average read

 

[stan03]

ok i gave up and downloaded everything under RAID on that site, and installed.... still no workie

 

[stan03]

actually after rebooting the "new" drivers slowed me down even more... hd tach says average of 54 and now in atto instead of topping out around 79*** i get around 66*** so ummm what now?

 

[Sonny]

Calm down & look at your BIOS rev. then your RAID BIOS rev., after that look in your device manager for anything that relates to RAID/SCSI & find out the driver rev. so we know at least what's installed. I asked earlier how you installed the 1st RAID driver, that wasnt a throw away question. Another thing is how the drives are setup, are they in diff. channels or on the same one.....