help understanding some BIOS features/options

[Okasa]

ok so i have never been able to find good documentation on this, so hopefully you all can either help me to understand some of it or send me in the right direction.

basically i am trying to troubleshoot the "Delayed write failed" error which is at the moment cursing my new 320gb WD's on my new build.

I have tried everything and now im wondering if there is a bios option that will possibly get me around this problem. They are all set to auto(which should be good lol, but who knows), and im really not sure about what about 80% of them mean. I tried to change some settings to "no delay" from auto and it wouldnt boot, giving me the long-short-short beeps on startup.

my motherboard is the asus m2n-sli dlx. can anyone tell me what options may be changed to help this problem, or which ones in general are good to understand. or even better, a website that lists the options and descriptions of what they mean?

i know i sound like a noob but there are so many more options on this bios than my a7n8x dlx its fairly daunting.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Delayed write failure means that the Windows disk cache was not written to the drive. Usually you get this error when you disconnect an external drive where the cache was turned on, by just unplugging it instead of using the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon.

The cache is enabled by default with all internal drives. It's in the disk properties in device manager. For many internal drives you can't actually disable it, it seems to depend on the controller and drive, not really sure.

Disabling it will result in performance hits, since Windows has to wait for the drive to fully receive all data transfers.

Receiving these messages on an internal drive would seem to indicate a problem with the drive, the drive's connector, the cable, the mainboard connector, or the chipset controller. It does indicate that data is being lost so it's not something you necessarily want to work around by simply disabling the caching, because if the drive is losing connection to the chipset it's just as likely to lose data without the cache.

 

[Okasa]

yea that was what i have been finding. so this is what i have done so far-

replaced both 320gb drives through RMA
replaced mobo
replaced gfx card
replaced cables
reformatted system(happens right after format if i test it then)
put one ram stick in at a time and in different slots
ran memtest x86 over30times in a row
changed largesystemcache from the registry to 0 if it wasnt already set.
updated(bios, chipset, gfx drivers)

its not like i didnt do the basic troubleshooting steps, im just running out of ideas. for a day i thought i actually solved the problem by replacing the cables when i tried that. however the problem re-occured soon thereafter and now i have tried many different cables and find it hard to believe that every one of them is bad.

also, very odd, why do my raid 0 74gb raptors not have the error? i think that they may have had the error a few times but on a consistant basis now at least i can copy files on any size on them without having the error occur.

it also seems to happen why i copy a file from one harddrive to itself (im copying large files over for testing purposes)

 

[Lord Evermore]

Aha! You didn't replace the power supply! It might be a bad connector, so the drive loses power on one of the rails. I have one power supply with a single connector that if I bump it, the drive loses power entirely.

 

[Okasa]

cool thanks i havent tried that yet!

well actually not that i think of it i doubt its the case - tho i will still try it and see if that is the cause. however my harddrive setup is
2x 74 raptors raid 0
2x 320gb 7200

and how they are powered is off of two seperate sata power cables from the PSU. but the thing that makes me curious as to if its a possibility is that each daisy chain is hooked up to one 74gb and one 320gb, so if that were the case wouldnt they both fail? just an idea, will still try it out.

 

[bwnv]

Actually the problem is in windows. It seems to treat SATA drives as removeable. Not completely sure but I think you can go to my computer> properties> hardware> click on the drive and than go to properties again and click on the policies tab. Ther should be an option to disable write caching there.

Good luck.

B

 

[Okasa]

yea i found that as well and tried to disable write caching, but its greyed out and wont allow me so i cant. though i did try usning cacheman to manage this as well, but i believe the error still occured when i used that program. but yes i have heard from many places that you should disable write caching on the drives to fix this, but havent been able to do it yet....

i hate microsoft, should run osx or linux on this box and kill windows once and for all

 

[bwnv]

You could search for tweakui, although I've never used it, it may have the option in there?

 

[Lord Evermore]

It's not treating it as a removeable drive if the option is greyed out. You don't WANT to disable write caching for a non-removeable drive anyway, and that wouldn't actually fix whatever problem is causing the writes to fail.

 

[Bozo Galora]

As a "suresafe" you are going to have to load XP with a late version of SP2 slipstreamed into it (with nlite)
Not updated to SP2 after install

There is NOTHING wrong with your hardware - LOL
Most common with ATI vidcards and drivers - install seems to set registry large cache to "1" from "0" (OFF). In other words write delay (BIOS or drivers) in VIDEO affects what SEEMS to be HDD cache prob via registry changes

Heres a bios tweak guide:
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/BIOS_Guide/BIOS_Guide_Index.htm
Note that BIOS settings influence how XP setup forms the registry entries, once set "non functional", must be manually set back - each and every time.

the 3 most basic "fixes" for this is
go into the registry editor and change ALL of the LargeSystemCache values to 0. (VITAL)
in mem management change from system to programs
"[Go to system Properties on the advanced tab, performance settings, advanced. Make sure you have memory usage set to programs and not system cache. That will fix the delayed write failure errors SOMETIMES]"
if you enable hibernate - install this weeks XP SP2 hibertnate fix from MS (dailytech)

The ultimate write failed thread - if you can read more than one sentence before falling asleep. like so many here that want a ten word answer
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/22061/