S.M.A.R.T. and Vista x64

JustaGeek

Platinum Member
Jan 27, 2007
2,827
0
71
The title explains it all, but I would appreciate your opinion.

I could not get the SMART info for my Hard Drives in Vista x64, nor could I monitor the Hard Drive temperatures.

I uninstalled the NVidia Media Shield, and with the standard Microsoft IDE drivers, I've got the SMART info and the temperatures back.

Vista also seems to be working better with the standard IDE drivers: the opening screen has a bit of a fade effect, whereas with the NVidia drivers it would just "pop" open, and the whole "desktop environment" feels "softer".

The Windows Update tried to install the NVidia SATA drivers, but I marked that "Important" update as "hidden", so it won't self install.

Is it safe to operate without the NVidia SATA drivers...? Are the built-in Vista drivers sufficient...?

Thanks in advance for any opinions/suggestions.
 

hclarkjr

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,375
0
0
i experienced the same thing with my FX-60 before i upgraded to core 2 duo. i did some research and found out it has to do with the driver not be recognized. you will be fine with the default microsoft driver
 

QuixoticOne

Golden Member
Nov 4, 2005
1,855
0
0
Sorry I don't have information about your specific
problem.

However the "generic" drivers are *supposed* to be
generic, work well, with few assumptions about the hardware
except for it working according to a universally compatible
(supposedly) specification. That's a PRETTY GOOD choice
usually.

Whereas in my experience NVIDIA often has HORRIBLY
BROKEN drivers and utilities with well known fatal bugs
that they just NEVER (or only after YEARS) bother to
fix. Sure in THEORY NVIDIA should be able to write better
more feature rich drivers for their own chipsets than
Microsoft, but in practice, well, maybe not. I'd give
microsoft more credit for being able to write STABLE
drivers that are more compatible with THE REST OF VISTA
than NVIDIA even if NVIDIA knows all their own
hardware's secret tweaks.

The examples are:

the NVIDIA ethernet driver that
horribly corrupted packets FREQUENTLY for YEARS
unfixed (maybe it still does) with tcp processing offload
enabled.

...the NVIDIA firewall that was/is worse than useless.

...the NVIDIA NTUNE utility that will *instantly* blue-screen
the only motherboards in existence with their OWN
Nforce 4 SLIx16x2 chipsets and they haven't fixed it for
years.

etc. If the generic drivers seem to work and give reasonable
read/write performance transfer numbers, use them.

Get yourself a MD5 checking utility or something like that
and set up a test -- put about 16 GBy of various large
(several gigabyte) down to small (few byte) files in
a directory. Use XCOPY in a batch file or something to
copy them from one place to another, delete the original
directory, repeat process. Let that run overnight. If
you haven't crashed by the morning and all your file
MD5 checksums are still what they originally were, you
have a winner. Otherwise adjust cables / settings / DMA
modes / drivers and repeat. The shocking thing is how
often on PCs you *DO* get undetected (by the OS / driver)
silent data corruption when doing heavy file copy I/O like
that. I've had several common situations in transferring
around 100 GBy of data where one or two files out of
several tens of thousands just are corrupted for no apparent
reason during a copy.

NVIDIA also is seemingly bent on dumbing everything
down to moronic levels. I think they think the average
consumer is allergic to temperature readouts -- they
USED TO have temperature monitoring status for all
their 7x/8x video cards right in the driver. Now they
explicitly REMOVED that and if you try to access it it
pops up a dialog saying that it's an "advanced feature"
and that you have to install NTUNE if you want to know
your GPU temperature in their new driver versions; yeah,
you know, the same NTUNE that instantly crashes 100%
of the time. Thanks NVIDIA.

Send them a nastygram to GET SMART and
fix their DUMB drivers.
 

JustaGeek

Platinum Member
Jan 27, 2007
2,827
0
71
Thanks guys.

Well, if that's the case, I have to conclude that NVidia is totally ignorant about their clients' needs.

To offer a "bare minimum" driver is NOT enough.

If that doesn't get rectified, I will NOT consider the chipset that offers only limited features in the latest OS.

I might be looking for the upgrade to a Quad-core soon, but if I can't count on the total support in terms of drivers, the future chipset will certainly NOT be NVidia.
 

JustaGeek

Platinum Member
Jan 27, 2007
2,827
0
71
I really like NVidia, but things like that are inexcusable.

Why would you offer an "incomplete" driver...?

I can't even use Seagate utilities, because the Hard Drives are not recognized!

So the generic driver offers all the features, but the chipset-specific driver cannot?

And why would they include that "incomplete" driver as a Windows "Important" update?
 

JustaGeek

Platinum Member
Jan 27, 2007
2,827
0
71
I decided to go back to the "crippled" NVidia driver. The transfer rates, based on PCMark05 were lower with the generic IDE drivers.

But if anyone from NVidia reads this - please give us the full featured driver.

It is not fair to us, your faithful customers and supporters, not to be able to access the temperatures and the SMART data.

Even the Seagate SeaTools cannot use its diagnostic features.
 

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
30,672
0
0
But if anyone from NVidia reads this - please give us the full featured driver.

Actually the problem is probably the opposite, they put too much into the driver. Reading the SMART status of a drive involves sending a specific set of SCSI commands directly to the drive and their driver probably has a white-list of acceptable commands for security reasons. But this is all just speculation on my part since I have little clue about how the Windows storage drivers work and I don't have the source for the nVidia drivers.
 

JustaGeek

Platinum Member
Jan 27, 2007
2,827
0
71
You know, the most disappointing is the fact that I can't even run the Seagate diagnostics!

What if my HD's are acting up, and I want to check their status, or run the Seagate tests...?

Sure, I can do it in DOS with the SeaTools CD, but it is so redundant, having the... best OS in the world, isn't it...? ;)

"Oh, you can't do it in the 64-bit state-of the-art Vista Ultimate...? Just go to the 30-year old Disk Operating System, and test it properly" :laugh:
 

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
30,672
0
0
You know, the most disappointing is the fact that I can't even run the Seagate diagnostics!

That's because all they do is read the SMART information.

"Oh, you can't do it in the 64-bit state-of the-art Vista Ultimate...? Just go to the 30-year old Disk Operating System, and test it properly"

Or boot to a Linux LiveCD and do it in a 64-bit state-of the-art, non-crippled OS. =)
 

JustaGeek

Platinum Member
Jan 27, 2007
2,827
0
71
Originally posted by: Nothinman
You know, the most disappointing is the fact that I can't even run the Seagate diagnostics!

That's because all they do is read the SMART information.

"Oh, you can't do it in the 64-bit state-of the-art Vista Ultimate...? Just go to the 30-year old Disk Operating System, and test it properly"

Or boot to a Linux LiveCD and do it in a 64-bit state-of the-art, non-crippled OS. =)


Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the newest and best OS though... ;)
 

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
30,672
0
0
Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the newest and best OS though...

If you can't do what you need in your OS then I guess you need to reexamine your definition of best. =)