nFORCE 4 and Hard Drive - Compatibility Issues ???

[Fisher999]

I've read somewhere, and can't remember where it was, that ONE SPECIFIC MANUFACTURER'S HARD DRIVES are having COMPATIBILIBY issues with the nForce4 series of chip like the one on my Asus A8N-SLI which will arrive this week.

As I will probably place an order for a SATA drive (a Samsung Spinpoint, a Western Digital Cavier SE or a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7) TONIGHT I don't want to GOOF and order one that isn't going to "get along" with my nFORCE4-based mobo.

Has ANYONE heard of this compatibility issue and WHICH drive manufacturer's hard drives are having compatibility issues with the nFORCE4 series of motherboard chips ???

Greg

 

[Fisher999]

bump

 

[imported_rod]

I've never heard of this problem, and I've got the same MoBo as your getting.

Well, I know for certain that my Western Digital 200GB (7200 rpm, 8MB) SATA drive works fine. Only hardware problem I had with the A8N-SLI deluxe was the mouse. It would only accept a USB mouse, not a PS/2 mouse.

RoD

 

[Fisher999]

bump!

 

[kobymu]

the general impression that i got (dont own a nforce4 myself, just lots of reading) is that the compatibility issues is with the driver. and that winXP stock driver are usealy better.
but i never read/heard about a motherboard issues with hdd/optical, ie not a motherboard<->hdd/optical specific compatibility issue.

 

[MobiusPizza]

I heard that nForce 4 had problems with TCQ for the 74GB WD Raptors. Is that true?

 

[Fisher999]

Originally posted by: AnnihilatorX
I heard that nForce 4 had problems with TCQ for the 74GB WD Raptors. Is that true?

I haven't heard Annihilator; I don't see a Raptor in my future but just to try to get an answer for you I'll bump this by responding to your question !

I'm concerned about Seagate Baracuda SATA-150 series 7200.7 and/or Samsung Spinpoint SATA-150 "P Series" drives in particular (for boot drive). I'll be purchasing one or the other of those drives today.

I'm also concerned about how the nforce4 chip is going to "like" my legacy Western Digital WD1000JB 100GB PATA-100 8MB cache HD I'll be using for storage.

Oh, and it would be nice if the nforce4 chip "plays nicely" with my Lite-On LTR-40125S CD-RW drive and my Pioneer DVD-106S ATAPI DVD-ROM drive.

I have heard other people complain about what the fella above said about the nforce boards sometimes not "liking" PS2 mice so I'm purchasing the cheapest USB mouse I can find to have one on hand just in case I have that problem too.

These are the kinds of things one usually doesn't have to worry about with an Intel/Intel setup but alas I went with AMD/nVidia nForce4 so hardware incompatibilities may be a problem.

 

[Fisher999]

BUMP

 

[Promethply]

Originally posted by: AnnihilatorX
I heard that nForce 4 had problems with TCQ for the 74GB WD Raptors. Is that true?

My NF4 mobo (ASUS A8N-SLI) works well with the Raptor74 whether TCQ's enabled or disabled.

 

[Arcanedeath]

It was some Maxtor drives that had boot detection issues awhile back. but if I recall correctly a bios / firmware update resolved the issues w/ the Maxline3 and DM10s and it's only an SATA issue.

 

[Promethply]

The general conclusion I get from ATF is that NF4 tends to have issues with Maxtor DM10s and MaXLine3,

which may be resolved by flashing to the latest BIOS and latest nVidia standalone drivers.

 

[Painman]

See sig, these Seagate 7200.7 drives hit the ground running w/NF4. Zippy and quiet. I love 'em :heart:

Edit: Issues with PS/2 mice? I've only heard of issues with USB mice, and on the MSI Neo4 in particular. That board apparently pukes at boot time if USB devices are attached. I'm on PS/2 KB and mouse w/no problems throughout playing around with 3 NF4 boards now - MSI Neo4, Gigabyte K8NXP, DFI Ultra-D.

 

[Fisher999]

Originally posted by: kobymu
the general impression that i got (dont own a nforce4 myself, just lots of reading) is that the compatibility issues is with the driver. and that winXP stock driver are usealy better....

Originally posted by: Arcanedeath
It was some Maxtor drives that had boot detection issues awhile back. but if I recall correctly a bios / firmware update resolved the issues w/ the Maxline3 and DM10s and it's only an SATA issue.

Originally posted by: Promethply
The general conclusion I get from ATF is that NF4 tends to have issues with Maxtor DM10s and MaXLine3,

which may be resolved by flashing to the latest BIOS and latest nVidia standalone drivers.

THANK YOU Arcanedeath AND Promethply :gift: :gift: :gift: :gift: :gift:

I KNEW I had read about ONE hard drive manufacturer in particular whos drives were not getting along with the NF4's but I just couldn't remember. When the two of you said MAXTOR (spefically Maxline III and DiamondMax 10's) I thought "Bingo". I probably forgot about MAXTOR as they were not on my short list.

So I shouldn't have any problems with the SATA versions of either the Samsung Spinpoints, the Seagate 7200.7s or Western Digital WDxxxxJD or WDxxxxPD so long as my mobo has its latet BIOS update (Asus is pretty good about keeping up with resolving issues with updated BIOS) AND the lastest nF4 chipset drivers ???

May I ask what version of NF4 chipset drivers are you using Promethply ???

 

[Fisher999]

Originally posted by: rod
...Only hardware problem I had with the A8N-SLI deluxe was the mouse. It would only accept a USB mouse, not a PS/2 mouse.

RoD

Originally posted by: Painman
See sig, these Seagate 7200.7 drives hit the ground running w/NF4. Zippy and quiet. I love 'em :heart:

Edit: Issues with PS/2 mice? I've only heard of issues with USB mice, and on the MSI Neo4 in particular. That board apparently pukes at boot time if USB devices are attached. I'm on PS/2 KB and mouse w/no problems throughout playing around with 3 NF4 boards now - MSI Neo4, Gigabyte K8NXP, DFI Ultra-D.

THANKS painman !!!

I am leaning now towards the Seagate Baracuda vs. the Samsung Spinpoint as I read an article over at storagereview.com that showed the performace benefit of the 7200.7 Seagates versus the Spinpoints although the Samies were quieter and cooler running.

Awesome RAID setup dude. :thumbsup:

I will only be going single drive

So you've experienced just the opposite of what ROD said eh?

It's USB and NOT PS/2 mice that can have "issues" with certain NF4 boards ???

 

[Promethply]

Originally posted by: Fisher999
May I ask what version of NF4 chipset drivers are you using Promethply ???

I use the nVidia standalone 6.53

 

[habs01]

From what I remember reading on Anandtech and StorageReview the Samsung are quieter and the Seagates are faster. I guess you probably knew this already. Good luck with your purchase.

 

[Fisher999]

Originally posted by: habs01
From what I remember reading on Anandtech and StorageReview the Samsung are quieter and the Seagates are faster. I guess you probably knew this already. Good luck with your purchase.

Habs01 - you've got it - that's EXACTLY the Seagate vs. Samsung dilemma. :thumbsup:

I was leaning towards the Samsung because of quietness and lower heat but the extra performance (and good repuatation) of the Seagate 7200.7 is hard to pass.

Thanks for the "good luck" wish !

 

[6000SUX]

Originally posted by: Fisher999

Originally posted by: Painman
See sig, these Seagate 7200.7 drives hit the ground running w/NF4. Zippy and quiet. I love 'em :heart:

Awesome RAID setup dude. :thumbsup:

It is not an awesome RAID setup. There's very little performance gain, and that's ONLY on sustained throughput; seek times go UP, which means that this is a bad choice for the system partition. I'm also not sure that the A8N-SLI motherboard supports NCQ/TCQ when using either of the onboard RAID controllers; I can't find any documentation on this, which makes me think the answer is "no". (I have two identical 7200.7 160GB drives plus a DiamondMax 10 in my rig).

I eventually wound up taking my 7200.7 drives out of RAID0 entirely after testing both controllers and various stripe sizes, and receiving at least one data corruption to boot (on the standard controller with a stripe size of 16K).

I wholeheartedly endorse the 7200.7 as a great all-around value drive.

 

[Fisher999]

Originally posted by: 6000SUX

Originally posted by: Fisher999

Originally posted by: Painman
See sig, these Seagate 7200.7 drives hit the ground running w/NF4. Zippy and quiet. I love 'em :heart:

Awesome RAID setup dude. :thumbsup:

It is not an awesome RAID setup. There's very little performance gain, and that's ONLY on sustained throughput; seek times go UP...

...I wholeheartedly endorse the 7200.7 as a great all-around value drive.

Yes, I am aware of SOME of the limitations of RAID setups and after trying one in 2000 I've never messed with RAID since. But some people LOVE RAID and I was giving him the thumbs up because he likes his RAID.

Thanks for the endorsement on the Seagate 7200.7 :thumbsup:

 

[John]

Originally posted by: AnnihilatorX
I heard that nForce 4 had problems with TCQ for the 74GB WD Raptors. Is that true?

My WD740GD Rev. A0 Raptor runs like poop with command queuing enabled. I get a lot of disk thrashing and it feels "slow". Both the built-in NVIDIA benchmark and HDTach 3.x produce dismal results. Once I disable command queuing the benchmarks are right on par.

I pulled this up in a google search:

Not all 74GB raptor hard drive implement TCQ. Any model number that ends with WD740GD-xxxxA0 may not support TCQ correctly. These hard drives were our initial release product that should not have reached the Retail or channel market (as these were beta testing units). Inevitably, some of these drives reached channel inventory and ended up in end users hands.

 

[ChicagoPCGuy]

Originally posted by: Fisher999

Originally posted by: habs01
From what I remember reading on Anandtech and StorageReview the Samsung are quieter and the Seagates are faster. I guess you probably knew this already. Good luck with your purchase.

Habs01 - you've got it - that's EXACTLY the Seagate vs. Samsung dilemma. :thumbsup:

I was leaning towards the Samsung because of quietness and lower heat but the extra performance (and good repuatation) of the Seagate 7200.7 is hard to pass.

Thanks for the "good luck" wish !

And if you buy the Hitachi T7K250, you get both.