Yet another SATA problem?

Hi All,

I have a GA-K8NXP-SLI mobo with F7h BIOS, and 4 HDD (2 * 160gb PATA
maxtor diamondmax +9, and 2 * 300gb SATA maxtor diamondmax+10). I am
(trying to) run WinXP MCE2005. CPU = AMD 3500+ winchester. Mem = 2gb
Corsair PRO.

The system has crashed and corrupted the HDD’s 3 times in a row over
the last 6 months.

Initially the system was built with the 2 * 300gb SATA disks in a
mirror as c: drive (RAID 1), and the 2 * 160gb PATA disks as the d:
drive in a separate mirror (RAID 1). Each time the install went fine,
and all good for a couple of months. Suddenly the PC would hang
mid-use, upon hard reset it would not boot and the HDD’s were
corrupted. (although it was always the 1st disk in the array that was
completely trashed, I could recover data from 2nd disk thank god!). I
have tried replacing my HDD’s in between rebuilds, but the same thing
happens.

I have given up on the NForce4 RAID system, obviously it is too damn
buggy to keep using. Furthermore driver updates for the mobo and
Nvidia RAID are slower than Victoria Beckham at a pie-eating contest.

So I have decided to rebuild the system minus the RAID and use WinXP
backup. I installed the system with 4 separate HDD and all RAID
disabled in BIOS. Installed WinXP (using F6 and Nvidia IDE storage
driver) onto one of the 300gb SATA disks and all went OK until I
reboot.

Now I find that the system will not boot from the HDD unless there is
a bootable CD in the drive, and I ignore the prompt to press a key to
boot from the CDROM.

I have tried changing the Hard Disk Boot Priority in the BIOS in case
I have wrong 300gb disk specified as 1st, but it makes no difference.
I have tried Gigabyte support several times, but mostly get a reply
from someone who barely reads the question I take good time to write,
and consequently get a noddy answer to a different problem.

Finally, the questions to you all:
1. has anyone had the same problem with the RAID corruption? if so how
did you fix it?
2. why won’t my PC boot from the SATA disk without a bootable CD in
the drive?

A virtual beer for any person who can help!!

--
Posted using the http://www.hardwareforumz.com interface, at author's request
Articles individually checked for conformance to usenet standards
Topic URL: http://www.hardwareforumz.com/Gigaby...pict59266.html
Visit Topic URL to contact author (reg. req'd). Report abuse: http://www.hardwareforumz.com/eform.php?p=300126

Sounds like there may be a corrupt master boot record on a hard drive and/or
no partition on the target SATA boot drive configured as primary-active,
possibly as a result of boot info remnants from a previous WinXP
installation on another drive/partition/RAID array.

Since you've already re-installed the OS once, if you have backups of your
important data, it would probably be best to go the clean installation
route, deleting all partitions on all drives, then creating and formatting
partitions during the clean installation routine. Before doing so, make
sure you have the latest and greatest of all drivers/software. There was an
updated version F9 BIOS for this board released today, and updated chipset
drivers released last week. For your convenience, we sell a system based on
this motherboard, and all updates can be found on one page at our site:
http://tastycomputers.com/support/download/dl_4sli.htm .

Hope you get up and running soon!
--
Russell Sullivan
http://tastycomputers.com

"theDude" wrote in message
news:7_300126_5b2628727356144618bdf55877b838a5@har dwareforumz.com...
Hi All,

I have a GA-K8NXP-SLI mobo with F7h BIOS, and 4 HDD (2 * 160gb PATA
maxtor diamondmax +9, and 2 * 300gb SATA maxtor diamondmax+10). I am
(trying to) run WinXP MCE2005. CPU = AMD 3500+ winchester. Mem = 2gb
Corsair PRO.

The system has crashed and corrupted the HDD's 3 times in a row over
the last 6 months.

Initially the system was built with the 2 * 300gb SATA disks in a
mirror as c: drive (RAID 1), and the 2 * 160gb PATA disks as the d:
drive in a separate mirror (RAID 1). Each time the install went fine,
and all good for a couple of months. Suddenly the PC would hang
mid-use, upon hard reset it would not boot and the HDD's were
corrupted. (although it was always the 1st disk in the array that was
completely trashed, I could recover data from 2nd disk thank god!). I
have tried replacing my HDD's in between rebuilds, but the same thing
happens.

I have given up on the NForce4 RAID system, obviously it is too damn
buggy to keep using. Furthermore driver updates for the mobo and
Nvidia RAID are slower than Victoria Beckham at a pie-eating contest.

So I have decided to rebuild the system minus the RAID and use WinXP
backup. I installed the system with 4 separate HDD and all RAID
disabled in BIOS. Installed WinXP (using F6 and Nvidia IDE storage
driver) onto one of the 300gb SATA disks and all went OK until I
reboot.

Now I find that the system will not boot from the HDD unless there is
a bootable CD in the drive, and I ignore the prompt to press a key to
boot from the CDROM.

I have tried changing the Hard Disk Boot Priority in the BIOS in case
I have wrong 300gb disk specified as 1st, but it makes no difference.
I have tried Gigabyte support several times, but mostly get a reply
from someone who barely reads the question I take good time to write,
and consequently get a noddy answer to a different problem.

Finally, the questions to you all:
1. has anyone had the same problem with the RAID corruption? if so how
did you fix it?
2. why won't my PC boot from the SATA disk without a bootable CD in
the drive?

A virtual beer for any person who can help!!

--
Posted using the http://www.hardwareforumz.com interface, at author's
request
Articles individually checked for conformance to usenet standards
Topic URL:
http://www.hardwareforumz.com/Gigaby...pict59266.html
Visit Topic URL to contact author (reg. req'd). Report abuse:
http://www.hardwareforumz.com/eform.php?p=300126

"theDude" wrote:
Hi All,

I have a GA-K8NXP-SLI mobo with F7h BIOS, and 4 HDD (2 *
160gb PATA maxtor diamondmax +9, and 2 * 300gb SATA maxtor
diamondmax+10). I am (trying to) run WinXP MCE2005. CPU = AMD
3500+ winchester. Mem = 2gb Corsair PRO.

The system has crashed and corrupted the HDD's 3 times in a
row over the last 6 months.

Initially the system was built with the 2 * 300gb SATA disks
in a mirror as c: drive (RAID 1), and the 2 * 160gb PATA disks
as the d: drive in a separate mirror (RAID 1). Each time the
install went fine, and all good for a couple of months.
Suddenly the PC would hang mid-use, upon hard reset it would
not boot and the HDD's were corrupted. (although it was always
the 1st disk in the array that was completely trashed, I could
recover data from 2nd disk thank god!). I have tried replacing
my HDD's in between rebuilds, but the same thing happens.

I have given up on the NForce4 RAID system, obviously it is
too damn buggy to keep using. Furthermore driver updates for
the mobo and Nvidia RAID are slower than Victoria Beckham at a
pie-eating contest.

So I have decided to rebuild the system minus the RAID and use
WinXP backup. I installed the system with 4 separate HDD and
all RAID disabled in BIOS. Installed WinXP (using F6 and
Nvidia IDE storage driver) onto one of the 300gb SATA disks
and all went OK until I reboot.

Now I find that the system will not boot from the HDD unless
there is a bootable CD in the drive, and I ignore the prompt
to press a key to boot from the CDROM.

I have tried changing the Hard Disk Boot Priority in the BIOS
in case I have wrong 300gb disk specified as 1st, but it makes
no difference. I have tried Gigabyte support several times,
but mostly get a reply from someone who barely reads the
question I take good time to write, and consequently get a
noddy answer to a different problem.

Finally, the questions to you all:
1. has anyone had the same problem with the RAID corruption?
if so how did you fix it?
2. why won't my PC boot from the SATA disk without a bootable
CD in the drive?

A virtual beer for any person who can help!!

In case anyone else has this problem:

The problem at the end of the day was that I was unfortunate enough to
buy a Gigabyte motherboard. I spent months with Gigabyte support who
refused to help beyond "Please reinstall your OS", mostly they
didn’t even read what i wrote before replying with the above pearl of
wisdom. BEWARE Gigabyte motherboards!!!

SETUP BRIEF
Gigabyte K8-NXP-SLI mobo
Gigabyte 6600GT video
2 * 160gb maxtor PATA HDD
2 * 300gb maxtor SATA HDD
2gb kingston DRAM
AMD 64 3500+ Winchester CPU
WinxP MCE 2005 vanilla (updated)

I wanted the 160 gb disks mirrored, and the 300gb disks mirrored.
That’s it. Nothing fancy. This is allegedly possible according the
feature list on the mobo. It configures OK but read on for the
problems...

Specifically there was 2 problems:

PROBLEM 1. Connecting more than 1 SATA HDD to the Nvidia RAID
controller causes random unrecoverable crashes which trashes the
\system32 directory on both disks of a mirrored SATA pair.

This happened 3 separate times requiring a complete rebuild each time,
and I replaced the HDD’s during the process. I don’t know the reason
for the crashes, all i have is a workaround. I have a stable system
(so far) when I connect one HDD to a Silicon Image controller SATA
port; and the other HDD to an NVidia controller SATA port. I happen to
boot off the Nvidia disk, no particular reason for this except that I
had the Nvidia SATA drivers on a floppy when I installed the OS the
last time :-). This was done initially with RAID completely disabled
and the system was stable (then note problem 2).

PROBLEM 2. The Gigabyte BIOS (all versions up to current F9) cannot
boot from a SATA HDD which is CONFIGURED WITH RAID DISABLED.

After fixing problem 1, the system would only boot when a bootable
CDROM was in the drive. If there was no bootable CDROM, the system
would hang during bootup after verifying DMI when it looks for the
boot drive. After the problems I experienced with Nvidia RAID in
problem 1, I disabled RAID in BIOS for all the drives, preferring to
use them as ’native’ SATA hard disks. The bootstrap code in BIOS will
not work in this case. The workaround was to enable RAID on the Nvidia
controller and configure it for ’Spanning’. The same WinXP
installation without change booted up like it should!


Now I have 4 disks in WinXP (C: drive to F: drive) which is not what I
wanted when I purchased the system, but at least it WORKS - touch
wood! In the end, I suspect that any load on the HDD subsystem pushed
the buggy-as-hell Nvidia RAID controller over the edge.

I hope this helps some other poor schmuk who purchases one of these
crappy Gigabyte motherboards - you won’t get any decent help from
Gigabyte support! :evil:

"theDude" wrote in message
news:7_306760_a60436401d24fef80998481415b4e419@har dwareforumz.com...
snipped first posting

I'm no guru regarding PC issues, but will answer to the best of my
knowledge....

In case anyone else has this problem:

The problem at the end of the day was that I was unfortunate enough to
buy a Gigabyte motherboard. I spent months with Gigabyte support who
refused to help beyond "Please reinstall your OS", mostly they
didn't even read what i wrote before replying with the above pearl of
wisdom. BEWARE Gigabyte motherboards!!!

SETUP BRIEF
Gigabyte K8-NXP-SLI mobo
Gigabyte 6600GT video
2 * 160gb maxtor PATA HDD
2 * 300gb maxtor SATA HDD
2gb kingston DRAM
AMD 64 3500+ Winchester CPU
WinxP MCE 2005 vanilla (updated)

I wanted the 160 gb disks mirrored, and the 300gb disks mirrored.
That's it. Nothing fancy. This is allegedly possible according the
feature list on the mobo. It configures OK but read on for the
problems...

You may think that this is not a "fancy" setup, but compared to the standard
vanilla PC setups that most people use, having two RAID 1 mirrored arrays
running on two different RAID controllers in the same PC is a pretty fancy +
complicated setup by any stretch of the imagination....
As you may or may not be aware, the on-board RAID controllers are not true
hardware RAID controllers, and therefore need specific Windows based drivers
to perform the RAID functions, and as such are vulnerable to corruption
caused by software conflicts/crashes within windows.
On the other hand, a fully hardware based RAID controller is transparent to,
and completely independent of the OS used on the PC, and does not require
any drivers to be loaded into the OS for it's correct operation. I assume
this would result in the arrays on a true hardware based controller being
less vulnerable to software issues within the OS.


Specifically there was 2 problems:

PROBLEM 1. Connecting more than 1 SATA HDD to the Nvidia RAID
controller causes random unrecoverable crashes which trashes the
\system32 directory on both disks of a mirrored SATA pair.

This happened 3 separate times requiring a complete rebuild each time,
and I replaced the HDD's during the process. I don't know the reason
for the crashes, all i have is a workaround. I have a stable system
(so far) when I connect one HDD to a Silicon Image controller SATA
port; and the other HDD to an NVidia controller SATA port. I happen to
boot off the Nvidia disk, no particular reason for this except that I
had the Nvidia SATA drivers on a floppy when I installed the OS the
last time :-). This was done initially with RAID completely disabled
and the system was stable (then note problem 2).

Could be a hardware problem with the nVidia chipset/controller itself, the
BIOS for the RAID controller, the Windows drivers for the nVidia RAID
controller.. Could even be a conflict with a driver for a different device
in the PC. It seems that when the system crashes, (for whatever reason it
occurs), it results in corrupt information being copied to the array
disks...


PROBLEM 2. The Gigabyte BIOS (all versions up to current F9) cannot
boot from a SATA HDD which is CONFIGURED WITH RAID DISABLED.

After fixing problem 1, the system would only boot when a bootable
CDROM was in the drive. If there was no bootable CDROM, the system
would hang during bootup after verifying DMI when it looks for the
boot drive. After the problems I experienced with Nvidia RAID in
problem 1, I disabled RAID in BIOS for all the drives, preferring to
use them as 'native' SATA hard disks. The bootstrap code in BIOS will
not work in this case. The workaround was to enable RAID on the Nvidia
controller and configure it for 'Spanning'. The same WinXP
installation without change booted up like it should!

AFAIK, this is a common issue for drives installed using any add-on RAID
controllers. (ie. a controller that is additional to the basic MB chipset).
If the BIOS for the RAID controller is disabled, the drive is not detected
during boot-up, and is therefore not visible to the BIOS and therefore not
able to be booted from...... The drive needs to be visible to the standard
BIOS for it to be bootable, and for it to be visible, the RAID BIOS needs to
be enabled. One fix I have seen, (similar to what you did), is to enable the
RAID BIOS, and configure the drives as single disk arrays. I have used this
method on an older system of mine using a Promise ATA133 RAID controller.

IIRC, most MB manufacturers recommend that any RAID arrays should not be
used as a system's boot drive. They recommend a standard single drive on an
integrated chipset SATA/PATA connection be used as the system drive.



Now I have 4 disks in WinXP (C: drive to F: drive) which is not what I
wanted when I purchased the system, but at least it WORKS - touch
wood! In the end, I suspect that any load on the HDD subsystem pushed
the buggy-as-hell Nvidia RAID controller over the edge.

As I mentioned before, this could be a problem caused by many different
things, but most likely an nVidia hardware/BIOS/driver issue/conflict.


I hope this helps some other poor schmuk who purchases one of these
crappy Gigabyte motherboards - you won't get any decent help from
Gigabyte support! :evil:

It's not really fair to put the total blame onto Gigabyte for this problem,
they're probably doing the best they can, with the apparently buggy
hardware/BIOS/drivers provided to them by nVidia. A fair proportion of the
blame would have to be attributed to nVidia as well... A motherboard built
by another manufacturer using the same hardware configuration would very
likely exhibit the same issues / behaviour, as they would only have
available to them the same hardware/BIOS/drivers provided to them by nVidia
(most likely rushed into production due to marketing pressures before full
stability testing is carried out)......

The Gigabyte support people probably have very little information/experience
available to them regarding a PC setup in this unusual configuration, and
can't realistically be expected spend any significant time to diagnose an
issue that only occurs on your PC once every few months...

Given the myriad of hardware that is available for use in/with a PC, and the
resultant thousands of different possible hardware combinations that can be
created using them, it's little wonder that they (Gigabyte support) cannot
help when a intermittent problem occurs in one specific combination, such as
your originally intended Dual mirrored RAID setup.

Cheers,

John S.

FWIW, you should be able to configure your HD's within Windows to do a
software RAID 1 (mirror).

I know this isn't what you originally wanted to do, but it's an option.


"theDude" wrote in message
news:7_306760_a60436401d24fef80998481415b4e419@har dwareforumz.com...
"theDude" wrote:
Hi All,

I have a GA-K8NXP-SLI mobo with F7h BIOS, and 4 HDD (2 *
160gb PATA maxtor diamondmax +9, and 2 * 300gb SATA maxtor
diamondmax+10). I am (trying to) run WinXP MCE2005. CPU = AMD
3500+ winchester. Mem = 2gb Corsair PRO.

The system has crashed and corrupted the HDD's 3 times in a
row over the last 6 months.

Initially the system was built with the 2 * 300gb SATA disks
in a mirror as c: drive (RAID 1), and the 2 * 160gb PATA disks
as the d: drive in a separate mirror (RAID 1). Each time the
install went fine, and all good for a couple of months.
Suddenly the PC would hang mid-use, upon hard reset it would
not boot and the HDD's were corrupted. (although it was always
the 1st disk in the array that was completely trashed, I could
recover data from 2nd disk thank god!). I have tried replacing
my HDD's in between rebuilds, but the same thing happens.

I have given up on the NForce4 RAID system, obviously it is
too damn buggy to keep using. Furthermore driver updates for
the mobo and Nvidia RAID are slower than Victoria Beckham at a
pie-eating contest.

So I have decided to rebuild the system minus the RAID and use
WinXP backup. I installed the system with 4 separate HDD and
all RAID disabled in BIOS. Installed WinXP (using F6 and
Nvidia IDE storage driver) onto one of the 300gb SATA disks
and all went OK until I reboot.

Now I find that the system will not boot from the HDD unless
there is a bootable CD in the drive, and I ignore the prompt
to press a key to boot from the CDROM.

I have tried changing the Hard Disk Boot Priority in the BIOS
in case I have wrong 300gb disk specified as 1st, but it makes
no difference. I have tried Gigabyte support several times,
but mostly get a reply from someone who barely reads the
question I take good time to write, and consequently get a
noddy answer to a different problem.

Finally, the questions to you all:
1. has anyone had the same problem with the RAID corruption?
if so how did you fix it?
2. why won't my PC boot from the SATA disk without a bootable
CD in the drive?

A virtual beer for any person who can help!!

In case anyone else has this problem:

The problem at the end of the day was that I was unfortunate enough to
buy a Gigabyte motherboard. I spent months with Gigabyte support who
refused to help beyond "Please reinstall your OS", mostly they
didn't even read what i wrote before replying with the above pearl of
wisdom. BEWARE Gigabyte motherboards!!!

SETUP BRIEF
Gigabyte K8-NXP-SLI mobo
Gigabyte 6600GT video
2 * 160gb maxtor PATA HDD
2 * 300gb maxtor SATA HDD
2gb kingston DRAM
AMD 64 3500+ Winchester CPU
WinxP MCE 2005 vanilla (updated)

I wanted the 160 gb disks mirrored, and the 300gb disks mirrored.
That's it. Nothing fancy. This is allegedly possible according the
feature list on the mobo. It configures OK but read on for the
problems...

Specifically there was 2 problems:

PROBLEM 1. Connecting more than 1 SATA HDD to the Nvidia RAID
controller causes random unrecoverable crashes which trashes the
\system32 directory on both disks of a mirrored SATA pair.

This happened 3 separate times requiring a complete rebuild each time,
and I replaced the HDD's during the process. I don't know the reason
for the crashes, all i have is a workaround. I have a stable system
(so far) when I connect one HDD to a Silicon Image controller SATA
port; and the other HDD to an NVidia controller SATA port. I happen to
boot off the Nvidia disk, no particular reason for this except that I
had the Nvidia SATA drivers on a floppy when I installed the OS the
last time :-). This was done initially with RAID completely disabled
and the system was stable (then note problem 2).

PROBLEM 2. The Gigabyte BIOS (all versions up to current F9) cannot
boot from a SATA HDD which is CONFIGURED WITH RAID DISABLED.

After fixing problem 1, the system would only boot when a bootable
CDROM was in the drive. If there was no bootable CDROM, the system
would hang during bootup after verifying DMI when it looks for the
boot drive. After the problems I experienced with Nvidia RAID in
problem 1, I disabled RAID in BIOS for all the drives, preferring to
use them as 'native' SATA hard disks. The bootstrap code in BIOS will
not work in this case. The workaround was to enable RAID on the Nvidia
controller and configure it for 'Spanning'. The same WinXP
installation without change booted up like it should!


Now I have 4 disks in WinXP (C: drive to F: drive) which is not what I
wanted when I purchased the system, but at least it WORKS - touch
wood! In the end, I suspect that any load on the HDD subsystem pushed
the buggy-as-hell Nvidia RAID controller over the edge.

I hope this helps some other poor schmuk who purchases one of these
crappy Gigabyte motherboards - you won't get any decent help from
Gigabyte support! :evil: