P5B Deluxe RAID Problems

[Ianwoollam]

Hi! First time post for me here and I could use anyones help

I built a computer about a week ago for myself, the spec is -

Intel E6600
Asus P5B Deluxe (Rev 1.03g with 1004 BIOS)
MSI Nvidia 7900GTO 512MB
G.Skill DDR2-800Mhz 2GB (2x1GB)
580W Hiper Modular PSU (Bought a while back when the Hiper PSU's were solid! Think it was around the start of 2006)
2x Lite-On 16x IDE DVDRW
2x Western Digital 74GB Raptor's (In RAID 0)
2x Seagate Baccaruda 7200.10 320GB
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Fatality
Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT

I initially had the computer running perfectly, but then on Saturday I tried to boot up the computer and it froze when trying to detect one of the Western Digital's in my RAID 0 setup when the SATA is set to RAID mode or AHCP mode, However it detects it fine in IDE Mode. I then tried the Raptor which dosn't work in another port, and the problem persisted with the same hard drive. I tested the Hard Drive in another computer (Both in IDE and RAID mode) and both detect the hard drive fine with no problems, I then ran the Western Digital DataLifeguard Utility to test the Hard Drive, and indeed the drive was fine, but I thought that maybe its a Hard Drive dying a slow death on me, so waited till today so I could ring Western Digital.

However, I've come to my PC today and now the Computer refuses to boot past the RAID Utility screen, it just freezes with the "Intel(R) Matrix Technology Storage Manager Option ROM" message over the top, but will not go any further than that unless I unplug all the hard drives (Which seems to disable the RAID Utility) and change the BIOS over to IDE Mode, which again it will detect the hard drives without a problem. Now I'm not so sure its a Hard Drive problem.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on? Any help you guys could provide to me would be greatly appreciated!

Ian

[d3fiant]

have u tried booting it on another controller such as the JMicron as opposed to the ICH8R, for example on my Abit AB9 Pro I can set up RAID on either the 6 ICH8R ports, or the two JMicron ports. I also have a single port tied to a Silicon controller but that is obviously non-RAID. Also I assume you did the F6 driver install to get the OS installed on a RAID logical drive

[Ianwoollam]

have u tried booting it on another controller such as the JMicron as opposed to the ICH8R, for example on my Abit AB9 Pro I can set up RAID on either the 6 ICH8R ports, or the two JMicron ports. I also have a single port tied to a Silicon controller but that is obviously non-RAID. Also I assume you did the F6 driver install to get the OS installed on a RAID logical drive

Thanks for the reply!

Yep tried the JMicron controller, It does detect the Hard Drive perfectly well in all modes (RAID, IDE and ACHP) problem is using that controller isn't really an option as if I set that to RAID, it disables my IDE DVD Drives. Also it needs a SATA External cable as the 2nd JMicron port is on the rear panel, which I don't have, and I'm not too keen of having a SATA cable having to come out of the case and plug into the back

[d3fiant]

Thanks for the reply!

Yep tried the JMicron controller, It does detect the Hard Drive perfectly well in all modes (RAID, IDE and ACHP) problem is using that controller isn't really an option as if I set that to RAID, it disables my IDE DVD Drives. Also it needs a SATA External cable as the 2nd JMicron port is on the rear panel, which I don't have, and I'm not too keen of having a SATA cable having to come out of the case and plug into the back

yeah, I had the same issue with the JMicron in that they drop to PIO mode which sucks, in the end I bought a new SATA DVDRW for £20 which performs brilliantly. Back to ur problem I found that the ICH8R is very picky when in AHCI mode (havent tried RAID) I had a SATA1 80GB drive that if left on the ICH8R ports it would never get past the innitial scan, worked fine on the JMicron. My 3 SATA2 drives all start fine on the ICH8R but on occasion I have to reboot as one drive is sometimes missing. In all the whole ICH8R design seems to be buggy

[d3fiant]

also considering the single drive speed of ur raptors u should consider running them in AHCI as opposed to RAID0, I know it hurts to think of running them in a theoretically slower method but the difference is negligable. I used to run 2 36GB raptors in RAID0, when one of them died I dropped to single drive config and the difference wasnt really noticable

[Ianwoollam]

also considering the single drive speed of ur raptors u should consider running them in AHCI as opposed to RAID0, I know it hurts to think of running them in a theoretically slower method but the difference is negligable. I used to run 2 36GB raptors in RAID0, when one of them died I dropped to single drive config and the difference wasnt really noticable

I was considering that, basically using 1 Raptor for Vista 64 and 1 Raptor for XP and Dual Booting between the two, for some reason the ICH8R has kicked back in now with the Seagates and the 1 Raptor! No idea whats going on there...

atm I'm going to try and get a complete clone of the Raptor which dosn't work, format it, then hope that cures it (If it was a corrupted RAID or something) Long shot I know... Don't hold much hope of it making any difference.

[d3fiant]

yeah, I considered Vista 64 but due to driver deficiences I opted for 32bit Vista Home Premium which is running very well (just disable UAC before u install ur apps etc) So far I havent really had a need to boot back to XP even tho its dual boot. Since I lost one of my RAID0 drives I havent gone back, single drive speed on modern drives is very good. I play alot of BF2 and drive performance is a biggy when veryfying game data, he who is first in gets first pick of vehicles