KT7 & Western Digital WD205BA ATA66 problem

[dan2k]

I just purchased an Abit KT7 motherboard. The problem I'm having with it is with the Western Digital WD205BA 20gig UDMA66 hard drive. When ever I enable UDMA66 in Win98SE, my computer would pause during file transfer. For example, I copy one folder (~40megs) to another folder, my computer would pause/freeze for about 5-10sec then copy some more then pause a bit then copy some more and so on. However, if I disable UDMA66 then I don't have this problem. I have tested this WD205BA hard drive on an AOpen AX63pro motherboard, which also supports ATA66, and it works fine.

I have installed the latest driver from VIA's 4in1 driver v4.24 and according to Abit's web site (www.abit.com.tw) my motherboard have the latest BIOS. I have the 80pin cable installed with the WD205BA ATA66 hard drive. The setup with the Abit KT7 motherboard, only have an AGP TNT2 video card, 128meg memory, floppy, WD205BA ATA66 Western Digital Hard Drive, and AMD Duron 600mhz processor.

Is there a conflict with Abit KT7's EIDE controller with Western Digital WD205BA ATA66 hard drive?

Please help,

Dan2k

 

[dan2k]

After some troubleshooting, I found out what the problem is. For some reason, the Master IDE controller have problem when I enable UDMA66 on two of my hard drives I tested. However, if I just attach the hard drive to the Secondary IDE controller, the UMDA66 enabled works fine. Does this mean my Abit KT7 is defected?

 

[mnphase2001]

I am expierencing similar problems enabling UDMA in windows with my Abit KT7-RAID, except my computer locks up completely while transfering files. I believe this may be some sort of driver issue.

 

[Motorheader]

I have seen this one:

With IDE, if you have the drive as a master and the slave is a non UDMA66 device - the system defaults back to the slowest common denominator in the chain. I.E. - system defaults back to UDMA33 or whatever that device is capable of if UDMA mode.

Think of it like if you change your car oil and not the filter and add 4 quarts of oil - is the oil clean or dirty? Dirty of course. If you add a slower capable device to an already existing fast chain in IDE - the system defaults to speed capability of the slower device.

That is the stickler with UDMA66 as opposed to SCSI - the SCSI bus can adjust to the change in speed for the devices in the chain and is usually not affected by different devices and overall speed - a tape drive, CD-Rom, and 10,000 rpm drive all on the same chain - each device will be allowed to run at its optimal throughput by the controller.

 

[ksclay]

I have a similar setup and problem as I mentioned in a previous thread except I get the freeze-up / sluggishness with my CDROM. I tried reloading the 4in1 drivers again and disabled DMA transfers. That made the hang-ups stop, but the drives were "slow as tar". I tried using a Philips CDD3610 CD-RW and a LTN-382 40X-cdrom with the same results.

Now I re-enabled DMA and have fast hard drive performance but get problems with the CD drives. Often, things get so bogged down that other processes stop responding and eventually the system freezes. I checked for shared resources in the System Information-Hardware resources-conflicts and sharing program with Windows 98SE. I have an ATI Radeon 32MB DDR with latest drivers, and SB Live. The only thing interesting there is the IRQ10 is shared with SB Live and VIA PCI to USB Universal Host Controller (two of these).

Doesn't seem to matter if I have the Duron at 600MHz or 950MHz. The 40x drive actually seems to have more problems than the slow 2x2x6x CDRW drive.

I have the WD 20GB drive alone on IDE1 with a UDMA cable. (I even tried a few cables). The CDROMs are on IDE controller 2 and are using a standard IDE 40 wire cable.

I'm about to try a 300W power supply in place of the 250W in there now. What do you think? I'd really like to get this solved!!!!

 

[ksclay]

Let me correct myself. I guess I do also have slow system response when I copy large files on the hard drive. Still looking for a solution!

 

[Motorheader]

One other thing - some VIA motherboards allow you to choose which driver set in their BIOS settings. Usually under PnP/PCI settings. Choose the VIA driver if it is not highlighted already - also make sure that the Onboard Peripherals has the correct settings for the type of drive on each master/slave and primary/secondary port. The IRQ for the two onboard ports is 14/15 - not affected by the sharing by the other devices.

LMK

 

[dan2k]

Ok, we all know this is not a simple Master/Slave IDE problem or IRQ conflict with 14 & 15. Since many of you like me have this problem, I assume Abit drop the ball on this one. I was about to call beyond-pc (where I bought it) to replace it, but now I ask them if I can get a different brand instead.

I guess, many of us would like to know if there are any people using Abit KT7 or KT7-raid motherboard are NOT having UDMA problem with their hard drives. I believe if you have a problem motherboard, it doesn't just affect Western Digital drives. I just tested another hard drive (IBM w/ UMDA33) and the pauses still exist.

From all the web reviews I read, no one mentioned this problem. Do Abit hand select "good" board to sent for reviews? Or did the reviewers bought them like we did (via mail-order stores)? I hope these reviewers are not like Cnet or PCmag where they would only mention the good things about product they review because of Ads money or what not. Maybe I'm going too far...probably because I'm a little bitter about this motherboard problem.

 

[Dan]

I'm running a Western Digital 20.5GB drive (Model # WE205BA) on an Abit KT7 mobo and I don't have the problem your describing. My OS is Win2K.

The HDD is set as the primary master with UDMA enabled in the bios and in Device Manager. Current Transfer Mode on Primary IDE Channel: Ultra DMA Mode

My CD-R and CD-RW are on the Secondary Channel. (CD-R is master, CD-RW is slave.) Current Transfer Mode on Secondary IDE Channel: PIO Mode.

 

[ksclay]

dan2k, did you find a solution to this problem yet??

 

[ksclay]

Try changing out the RAM with some known good PC100 or better. I just fixed my problem. It was some junky generic PC133 that I got at a site mentioned here before in a deal thread
Unfortunately, it is past 30 days since I bought it and I'm stuck w/ a $60 keychain! I should have been able to diagnose the problem sooner. I had tried different memory combinations before, but somehow missed that this one was bad.

Now I have to try to get over the bad memories of bad memory...

 

[SuperMatty]

I would just like to add that I too, also have this problem with extremely slow performance in Win2k with my KT7 (nonRAID) and maxtor ultra66 drive. But with my problem, if I go into device manager, I can see that the primary IDE controller is running in PIO mode, even though I have DMA specified. The secondary controller which both of my CD-ROM drives are on, however, is running in ultra dma mode as it should be. Nonetheless, the performance of file copying, etc is terribly slow and terribly CPU dependent...slowing the system to a crawl whenever I do something that uses the hard drive a lot, such as defragmenting. If any of you have found a solution let me know please.