On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:44:18 -0400, in
alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte you wrote:
an Musicant wrote:
:
:[big snip]
:
: Thanks. I had the idea to disconnect the HD from the PC and see if
: ACPI was working when SATA was enabled. If it did, then I could
: assume that the HD was at fault, and not the SATA driver or chip. My
: experiment this morning confirmed this, i.e. ACPI still didn't work
: when the HD was disconnected, so I figured I could rule out problems
: with the Samsung HD. Further experimenting revealed that (while
: leaving SATA Enabled) changing the "Serial ATA Function" in the BIOS
: from BASE to RAID restored ACPI functionality, and that my SATA HD
: appears to function OK with that setting.
:
: I have no idea why this would be so. It's either a workaround or maybe
: it's supposed to work that way, I don't know. I have no intention of
: setting up a RAID array of any kind at this time. I figured that this
: being the case, and having only one SATA HD installed, that BASE was
: the proper setting for that function in the BIOS. Maybe I was
: mistaken, or maybe it's a glitch in the driver. Maybe I should
: contact Gigabyte and ask for an explanation. I'm wondering if there's
: a downside to running the single SATA HD as RAID.
:
: Unfortunately, the installation CD for this MB is unreadable. It's
: fairly warped and my DVD burner can't read it. I tried to unwarp it by
: pressing between flat surfaces, clamped in the oven at 150F for over
: an hour, but the experiment failed! Meantime, I'd downloaded a slew
: of drivers for the MB from Gigabyte's website and installed them after
: loading XP Pro. I may have missed a driver, not sure. The odd thing is
: that a manual was included with the MB (packaged as new, and obviously
: new although the MB is from 2004 or so), that's entitled:
:
: SATA RAID Function
: (Only for Chipset SiI3112 Used)
: -------------------------------------
: User's Manual
:
: However, I downloaded the driver for this (at the page for this MB),
: and tried to install it and the installation failed. I looked up the
: spec for the MB at Gigabyte's website and it says the included chip is
: SiI3512! That's the one shown as correctly installed in Device
: Manager. Since changing the Serial ATA Function from BASE to RAID, a
: yellow question mark has disappeared from Device Manager for a disk
: controller, so I guess that change was advisable.
:
: Dan
:
:Setting a hard drive to RAID has no negative consequences. What it does
:do is support SATA drive functions, such as AHCI. On my Asus MB, the
:selection is IDE, AHCI and RAID. Running one drive in RAID mode simply
rovides the AHCI driver for the SATA drive. It makes no difference if
:it's set to RAID, or AHCI. The advantage is having Native Command
:Queuing, or faster accesses with certain types of files.
:
:You can, of course, run it as a IDE drive, using MS standard drivers.
:
Well, I installed the SATALink driver for the siI3512, latest version,
the one Andy linked me to and although Standby and Hibernation are
enabled, I have been finding that unless the machine's only been asleep
a short while (haven't kept stats) the machine does not successfully
restore to Windows. Video never comes up. In hibernate, the machine
posts OK and then it reports that Windows is starting a restore from
hibernation and after 10 seconds or so the screen goes blank (soft
glow), the numlock-on light appears on my keyboard (I never use numlock)
and the machine becomes completely unresponsive necessitating a reset.
I get similar behavior using S3 Standby (don't recall if the numlock
light goes on, however).
I just did an experiment, being removal of the driver mentioned above, a
switch to RAID for the SATA device in the BIOS and installation of the
RAID SATA driver currently at Gigabyte's site for my GA-K8N Pro MB. I
brought the machine into hibernation and came back in 3 hours and it did
restore, so I'm hopeful. Could just be a coincidence that it worked this
time, and I will be monitoring the situation. Maybe with a 12 hour
lapse, it will fail again.
Dan