HELP! major speed problems with RAID 0 setup. (2 Seagate w/ Fasttrak66)

[colinm]

<UPDATE> I have canged the title of this thread to reflect it's development. Please scan through and try to help me with my problem at the bottom of the thread (currently anyway). Thanks </UPDATE>

You can turn your onboard UDMA controller into a RAID controller for the cost of a 150ohm resistor!! It is very simple, you simply replace the embedded BIOS for the UDMA controller with the correct RAID BIOS and stick a resistor in your cable! I have already done the BIOS part for you! I edited the latest BIOS, so it now uses your Promise IDE controller as a RAID controller. All you need to do is flash with this BIOS and stick a resistor in the slave connector of the cable plugged into IDE1.

I have completed hacking the latest BIOS for MSI BXMaster (a.k.a. 6163 v3.0)! I used the techniques as described at www.tweakhardware.com, plus I updated the logo. The MSI BIOS version is v5.50, and the Promise BIOS version is ft66130.bin
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!! I take NO responsibility for any damage that may occur. I have tested this BIOS on my own system (am using it now, though I am waiting for my second HD to arrive), and am currently using it.

It includes an updated Readme.txt, and a backup BIOS in case you need to revert back to the original non-RAID setup. It also has nifty batch files for install and restore (though you may need to edit the path depending on where you store it when flashing). That's all. If I get many requests for this, I will put in on the web, otherwise I will probably e-mail it to anyone who wants it. Please do not edit and redistribute this BIOS in any way. I give full credit to CrazyApe over at www.tweakhardware.com for pioneering this BIOS hack. To read the guide by CrazyApe, click HERE

This hack requires that a slight modification be done to your IDE1 port. It is possible to simply do it through the cable, but it might not be as sturdy as soldering the resistor to the underside of the IDE1 port. I currently have a resistor &quot;plugged&quot; into the slave port of my HD cable. The easiest way in my opinion is to shorten the ends of a 150ohm 1/4 - 1/2watt resistor and stick the wires into pins 36 and 24 (or any of the other ground wires) of the slave connector of a UDMA/66 cable. You may want to tape or somehow fasten it more securely so it doesn't fall out or get loose. This is ALL you need to do to have a fully featured RAID controller on your motherboard!! When my second 30Gb 7200RPM drive arrives, I'll let eveyone know how it works. If you have any special requests for compatibility or benchmark tests, I'll try to help you out as much as I am able to. Good Luck!!

Colin

If you are a BXMaster owner, email or ICQ me to get my hacked BIOS v5.50 (latest as of March '01)
colinm@3dmail.com
92952029

NOTE to non-BXMaster owners: This BIOS is for the BXMaster ONLY! Other motherboards that have an additional onboard hard drive controller are likely to be hackable. Click HERE to learn how to do this with other boards.

 

[Titans Fan]

Colinm,

Have you tried your Raid set-up with the 2nd drive installed yet?

Tim

 

[colinm]

Sorry for not replying sooner. Yes, I finally have it up and running. It works great!! I haven't had a chance to thoroughly test it, but there are a few things I can tell you.

To install Windows 2000, you MUST first install it on a second drive (non-RAID), then copy it over to your RAID drive using Ghost or Partition Magic, or some other similar program.

Windows 2000 is a b*tch to install the drivers on. It hosed my first install of Windows 2000 (which I had for quite a while). I had a dual-boot setup, so I just used win98 until my second drive came in. If you plan on installing RAID on your setup with Windows 2000, backup your stuff and try to get it without a reformat, but be ready to have to reformat.

My setup consists of:
MSI BXMaster
PIII 650 @ 866
192Mb Crucial PC133
2X Seagate 30Gb 7200RPM Ultra/66 HDs (The Barracuda ATA II, or something like that)

To do the trick, I just put a resistor in the slave connector of IDE1 (that is the first one, there is no IDE0), then hacked the BIOS. Instructions can be found at tweakhardware.com, and you can get my hacked BIOS from ME! just ICQ or e-mail me.

I partitioned my 60Gb into:
8205Mb (max size for 4Kb clusters)
8205Mb
16???Mb (whatever max size for 8Kb clusters is)
25???Mb (whatever was left)

I think I used 32Kb blocks (or whatever they are called) in the RAID BIOS.

I'll update in a little while with some benchies once I get Sandra 2000 installed.

The one problem that I have had so far is instability. Yes, instability. When I try to install a large program it will lock up. Freeze completely. No mouse movement, no Ctrl-Alt-Del. This instability is due to HEAT. I don't think it is a driver problem or anything like that, because I can install programs if I blow on the HDs as it is copying files (I have the front cover off of my Enlight 7237OM3) Both HDs are installed with 5 1/4&quot; brackets. I ordered a GlobalWin IStorm II, and hopefully that alone will do it, because blowing hard for 2 minutes can be a major HEADACHE (seriously, if you blow hard like that you will get a headache). I HAD to get Counter-Strike installed!!! Anyway, I found a foot-heater (aka ceramic heater) that can be used as a fan (no heat), and that seems to work. It is less powerful than a 60mm fan. Any questions?

btw, I get this message as win2k is starting up. it says xmnt2000 can not be found. it just pauses there a second, then continues. Anyone know what that is? I searched a networked computer that doesn't have that problem, but couldn't find any such file.

Thanks!
Colin

/me starts benchmarks
/me is very busy, so they might not be up right away

 

[Titans Fan]

Colinm,

Thanks for the reply. I have one system with a BXM mobo and dual boot win98 &amp; win2k. I may want to fool with the raid option at some point in the future. If you wouldn't mind, please email me a copy of your hacked bios to nonvision@bellsouth.net
I have read the instructions at TweakHardware several times, but they are not totally clear to me yet.

Tim

 

[colinm]

well, I am back with some benchmarks. from reviews I have read, it seems that most people use Sandra 2000 as their drive benchmark. However, I could not get Sandra 2000 to run on my win2k machine. So, I used Sandra 2001 instead. The numbers obtained from these benchmarks will be different, so I wanted to get both. However, I only got Sandra 2001 to work. Here is a screenshot of Sandra 2001 after completing the benchmark:
CHECK IT OUT!!
My setup is roughly 85.5% faster than their base UDMA66 drive.
Unfortunately, I never benched one of my seagates before I got RAID, so I don't know the ACCTUAL score for a UDMA66 7200RPM drive. If anyone has some benchmarks from Sandra 2001, please post them so we can all get an idea of the performance gains.

Colin

 

[Titans Fan]

Using win98se w/ibm 13G ata 66 drive my Sandra 2001 drive benchmark score is: 12439

My score in win2k is: 12612

Tim

 

[GeneW]

I get 23000+ single drive on HPT370

 

[colinm]

would you mind giving us some more detail GeneW?

what brand
what RPM
what size
Sandra 2000 or 2001

thx

 

[whalen]

46068 Sandra 2000 Drive Bench

Abit KT7A-RAID
2- IBM 75GXP 30GB 7200RPM in RAID 0
Windows 2000

 

[Super6]

My IBM 75GXP 30gig also does 23,000+ running off the Highpoint controller on my Soyo Sy-6BA+100.

Super6

 

[GeneW]

Abit VP6
IBM 75GXP-60G
7200 RPM
Sandra 2001
Win2k

 

[colinm]

WHOA!! Major difference! I just ran the benchmark again and got a score of 34387!! I added a setting in the registry which MIGHT have enabled UDMA66 (not sure if it was already). I don't know if that made the difference, or if my first benchmark was bad. I'll run the test several more times to varify my score, but this is definitely better!!

Colin

 

[colinm]

HELP!! The system had major stability problems with the drivers I was using. I couldn't complete a thourough chkdsk on the drive. there was an error at a particular spot and it would freeze when it got to it. I finally figured out that the drivers for the controller were causing the instability. I am now using the newest version (from MSI website, not from Promise) and they are perfectly stable. BUT, for some reason I can NOT get the performance to go over 16000. this REALLY sucks! I even reverted back to the old drivers to try to reproduce my 34000 score, but NO LUCK.

The last things I did before performance decrease:
1. I updated the drivers to 1.30 b60. These drivers include a file called evian.sys. That file happened to completely screw win2k so I renamed it to evian.bak and haven't had any more problems. The driver versions I have tested so far are (all version 1.3): b33, b42, b44, b60

2. Well, since I got the instability fixed with the new drivers, I immediatley did a chkdsk. It detedted the error WITHOUT freezing! This is when I knew the new driver was much more stable. BUT, since it is win2k, it could not fix the error, but scheduled a chkdsk for next startup. the chkdsk run at startup doesn't have the /r command as far as I know. So, I booted off of the CD and into the recovery console (One of my partitions is NTFS). from there I ran chkdsk on ALL of my partitions (58Gb total). It found and fixed errors on C:

3. I booted into win2k again, and with the error fixed, it could complete defrag for the first time. I defragged ALL of my partitions again and then ran a benchmark! ACK!! A score of ~13200!! That is barely over their reference speed for UDMA66. As we can see from this thread, a single drive should get ~23000. I have rerun the benchmark many times and occasionaly get something as high as 18000 (once actually). To make sure it wasn't the benchmark, I ran HD Tach. it's scores were something like as follows:
Max sustained read: ~28000
Min sustained read: ~3000
Average sustained read: ~22000
Seek time: 13.4ms
Burst rate 66Mb/s - 70Mb/s
CPU utilization: 4.4%

This should be getting around 60000 MAX STR. WHY ARE MY SCORES SO LOW!!
What did I do to make it so freaking slow! I tried to undo anything I could, but I can not produce a Sandra score over 18000. Please HELP!!

Thanks,
Colin