KT7-RAID and serious disk trouble...

NiPNi

Member
Sep 26, 2000
75
0
0
I bought a T-Bird 800 and a KT7-RAID a few days ago. I have disabled the RAID controller in BIOS for now, but that doesn't seem to have any effect on my problem, which is:

Whenever I use my hard drives (copying, writing, reading, anything), the CPU usage goes through the roof. It's like using a parallell Zip-Drive; the mouse doesn't work, and everything is slowed down big-time. If I try to install a game, it takes forever, because there's not even CPU-time left for the CD-ROM (or so it seems).

I have tried installing the latest 4-in-1 drivers from VIA, and I have tried enabling/disabling DMA on all drives. Nothing seems to help. I have also tried both Windows 98SE and Windows ME, with identical results. This is getting frustrating; I spent a lot of money on this system, and it takes like 10 minutes to copy 100MB from one drive to another!

As the only new stuff in my system is CPU and motherboard, I assume the motherboard is causing the problems.

My system looks something like this:
AMD T-Bird 800(@8.0*100MHz)
ABit KT7-RAID (RAID disabled)
128MB PC-100 SDRAM
128MB PC-133 SDRAM (could mixing these RAM types be the problem...?)
18GB IBM ATA-66 HDD (Master on IDE1)
8.4GB Fujitsu ATA-66 HDD (Slave on IDE1)
9.1GB Seagate ATA-33 HDD (Master on IDE2)
Creative 2x/20x DVD-ROM (Slave on IDE2)
Adaptec AHA-2940AU SCSI Adapter PCI
Plextor 40Max CD-ROM SCSI
Teac CD-R55S 4x/12x CD-R SCSI
3DFx Voodoo3 3000 PCI
3COM 10/100 PCI
Creative DXR-2 MPEG decoder PCI
Creative SB AWE64 Gold ISA

Does anyone have a clue as to what might be wrong with my system? I sure hope so.....
 

NiPNi

Member
Sep 26, 2000
75
0
0
Okay, lots of response on that one... I have narrowed down the problem a bit now, but I still don't get it.

When trying to write to a hard drive that has UDMA enabled in BIOS, everything slows down so much I can hardly use my mouse (it barely moves, and don't even think about clicking!). In PIO 4 mode, everything works fine, and i'm still able to enable UDMA in Windows. Whether or not the drives are actually utilizing UDMA-66, I don't know, but when I boot, they are reported running in PIO 4 mode. My first idea was bad ATA66 cable, so i replaced it, but nothing changed. So, the "solution" is to disable UDMA in BIOS, but I don't like doing that. I have UDMA-66 drives, and that's what I want them running as!

Anyone...?
 

Lunchboxah

Member
Sep 19, 2000
104
0
0
Ok, your KT7 RAID supports ATA100. Your IBM drive supports up to ATA66. Sounds like thats why disabling UDMA in the bios acted like a solution for you. I have yet to get my KT7 shipped yet, so I don't know all the ins and outs of the board yet.

However, I do know that there is a program out there (mentioned in these forums) that downgrades ATA100 drives to ATA66 for support with ATA66 motherboards. Maybe there is a way to do just the opposite. As good as this Soft Menu III is supposed to be, isn't there an option for which DMA speeds you want?
 

NiPNi

Member
Sep 26, 2000
75
0
0
Last thing first: No there isn't a way to set the DMA speed. You can choose Disable or Auto. In the latter case it goes for what the disk supports. And I don't think that's the answer anyway, because when I enable DMA in BIOS, my disks are reported as UDMA-66 and UDMA-33 during the boot.

About my mobo: I thought the ATA100 support was limited to channels IDE3 & IDE4...? I use IDE1 & IDE2 now, and I thought those were ATA33/66 only. I might be wrong here...

Anyway: I ordered two IBM GXP75 30GB ATA100 drives yesterday, so hopefully I will have a 60GB RAID-0 system up & running in a few days :) If that works, my ATA33/66 drives won't be around much longer... Oh, that brings up a new question: I'm supposed to use ATA66 cables to connect the ATA100 drives, right?
 

AMDfreak

Senior member
Aug 12, 2000
909
0
71
ATA 100 is limited to IDE 3&4, the KT133 northbridge only supports ATA-66. I had posted a problem with my RAID array last week but it's fixed now. My Adaptec 2940AU was sharing an IRQ with the HPT 370 and I kept getting disk lock-ups. I rearranged the cards, got the HPT 370 on it's own IRQ (this is important) and everything works great. My cards are like this:

AGP=Rage Fury Pro
PCI 1=empty
PCI 2=SB Live!
PCI 3=Adaptec 2940AU
PCI 4=Netgear 10/100 NIC
PCI 5= empty (this slot shares IRQ with HPT 370)
PCI 6/ISA= ISA US Robotics Sportster Voice 56k

I have a 11.5 Maxtor on IDE 1 and a 10.0 Maxtor on IDE 2, but no probs there.