HPT RAID in XPC boots HELLA slow.

[Trianon]

I installed RocketRAID 1520 into SB61G2 XPC system running Win XP Pro. Har drives are 2 10K WD Raptors in RAID 0. Once in Windows, system is very fast, 3DMark2k3 increased by a 1000 in comparison with old 7200 rpm 40GB IBM hard drive. But booting into Windows takes very long time, it sits at loading screen for something like 3 minutes, while I heard WinXP boots on RAID with Raptors are lightning fast. What gives? Is that a sign of IRQ conflict? Device manager shows that all devices are working properly, I use onboard audio, NIC and USB2.0 controller. Any suggestions? Thank you!

 

[StraightPipe]

I've never tried booting off RAID, but Promise recomends not putting your OS onthere, but do put your page file on it.

which would comply with the experience you are having. I use mine for storage and playing movies, and it is really fast.

 

[Trianon]

The wierd thing is that before I had a system with built-in RAID, actually 2 different mobos, Abit KA7-RAID and Iwill, KA266-R and on both I used 2 30Gb IBM drives in RAID 0 and boot time s were fast, something like 25-35 seconds. In that setup RAID controller had it's own IRQ though. I am going to try separating IRQs today, just wanted to see if ppl here had similar experience.

 

[redhatlinux]

Is XP treating your Raid controller card as SCSI by any chance ??

 

[Trianon]

Originally posted by: redhatlinux
Is XP treating your Raid controller card as SCSI by any chance ??

yes it does according to device manager, why?

 

[StraightPipe]

mine gets treated the same way.

 

[Cesar]

same here

 

[StraightPipe]

redhatlinux, is that a problem?

 

[Trianon]

I looked in BIOS and only PCI slot in the box is sharing IRQ with USB2.0 controller. They can't be separated. I plan on disabling the controller and seeing if that fixes the problem

 

[redhatlinux]

It's not really a 'problem' that XP treats your RAID card as SCSI but IIRC SCSI device detection can take quite a while due to different SCSI devices, and during bootup XP will 'wait' to make sure that all what it thinks are SCSI are detected. Don't know if there is much that can be done to speed up the process. Not the greatest explanation but I'm pretty sure that this is the cause.

 

[mrgoblin]

The new shuttle has 2 hd slots?

 

[Trianon]

Originally posted by: mrgoblin
The new shuttle has 2 hd slots?

Yes, sort of, I don't have floppy installed. RedHatlinux, I think your explanation is correct, I remember having similar things happen back when I had SCSI CD-R drive...