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snakedjip

External


Since: Mar 29, 2005
Posts: 8



(Msg. 1) Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 11:50 am
Post subject: SATA drives on P5AD2-E premium...
Archived from groups: alt>comp>periphs>mainboard>asus (more info?)
Hi,

I'm having problems with my P5AD2-e premium board. I have 5x200GB
Seagate drives, one being the boot drive, the four others are all data.

I have Windows XP Media Center Edition installed.

My problem was this : the computer would periodically freeze for a
couple of seconds. No mouse movement, and if ever there was sound
being emitted at the time of the freeze, the emitted sound would
stutter (repeat itself) for the duration of the freeze. This would
happen either in My Music or My Videos in Media Center.

One thing I noticed is that if I only install the OS drive to one of
the red master SATA connectors (and disable the Silicon Image
controller in BIOS), the PC works great (it is really fast, and no
freeze-ups). If I then install 3 of the 4 other drives to the 3 other
connectors, the PC takes forever to boot, and it sometimes freezes up
again.

So, I'm wondering now if I'm at all supposed to connect four SATA
drives to the same controller ?!??!

And why does Windows slow down the boot process and / or freeze up when
installing data drives ?!?!?

Let's say I can figure out a way to only use four drives total (one OS,
three data), can I connect them all to the IT8212 (?) controller ? Why
are there MASTER and SLAVE connectors for SATA drives ? I thought
Master and Slave were for IDE only ?

What should the BIOS settings be ?

Does it seem like I have a faulty board ?

Thanks.

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DaveW

External


Since: Oct 24, 2005
Posts: 349



(Msg. 2) Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 4:18 pm
Post subject: Re: SATA drives on P5AD2-E premium... [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
Just out curiosity regarding your problem, with (5) Seagate harddrives and
all your other computer components, are you certain you have a powerful
enough High Quality Power supply unit that can drive everything when the
computer is up to temperature?

--
DaveW

----------------
<snakedjip DeleteThis @yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1135021805.271013.290530@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
>
> I'm having problems with my P5AD2-e premium board. I have 5x200GB
> Seagate drives, one being the boot drive, the four others are all data.
>
> I have Windows XP Media Center Edition installed.
>
> My problem was this : the computer would periodically freeze for a
> couple of seconds. No mouse movement, and if ever there was sound
> being emitted at the time of the freeze, the emitted sound would
> stutter (repeat itself) for the duration of the freeze. This would
> happen either in My Music or My Videos in Media Center.
>
> One thing I noticed is that if I only install the OS drive to one of
> the red master SATA connectors (and disable the Silicon Image
> controller in BIOS), the PC works great (it is really fast, and no
> freeze-ups). If I then install 3 of the 4 other drives to the 3 other
> connectors, the PC takes forever to boot, and it sometimes freezes up
> again.
>
> So, I'm wondering now if I'm at all supposed to connect four SATA
> drives to the same controller ?!??!
>
> And why does Windows slow down the boot process and / or freeze up when
> installing data drives ?!?!?
>
> Let's say I can figure out a way to only use four drives total (one OS,
> three data), can I connect them all to the IT8212 (?) controller ? Why
> are there MASTER and SLAVE connectors for SATA drives ? I thought
> Master and Slave were for IDE only ?
>
> What should the BIOS settings be ?
>
> Does it seem like I have a faulty board ?
>
> Thanks.
>

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snakedjip

External


Since: Mar 29, 2005
Posts: 8



(Msg. 3) Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 6:53 pm
Post subject: Re: SATA drives on P5AD2-E premium... [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
Yes, the power supply was chosen accordingly.

I'm testing the four data drives independently as I'm writing this, and
they are behaving differently. While one caused a very slow bootup,
the second one had no impact on bootup time.

Why would adding a hard drive cause a slow bootup ?


DaveW a écrit :

> Just out curiosity regarding your problem, with (5) Seagate harddrives and
> all your other computer components, are you certain you have a powerful
> enough High Quality Power supply unit that can drive everything when the
> computer is up to temperature?
>
> --
> DaveW
>
> ----------------
> <snakedjip RemoveThis @yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1135021805.271013.290530@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm having problems with my P5AD2-e premium board. I have 5x200GB
> > Seagate drives, one being the boot drive, the four others are all data.
> >
> > I have Windows XP Media Center Edition installed.
> >
> > My problem was this : the computer would periodically freeze for a
> > couple of seconds. No mouse movement, and if ever there was sound
> > being emitted at the time of the freeze, the emitted sound would
> > stutter (repeat itself) for the duration of the freeze. This would
> > happen either in My Music or My Videos in Media Center.
> >
> > One thing I noticed is that if I only install the OS drive to one of
> > the red master SATA connectors (and disable the Silicon Image
> > controller in BIOS), the PC works great (it is really fast, and no
> > freeze-ups). If I then install 3 of the 4 other drives to the 3 other
> > connectors, the PC takes forever to boot, and it sometimes freezes up
> > again.
> >
> > So, I'm wondering now if I'm at all supposed to connect four SATA
> > drives to the same controller ?!??!
> >
> > And why does Windows slow down the boot process and / or freeze up when
> > installing data drives ?!?!?
> >
> > Let's say I can figure out a way to only use four drives total (one OS,
> > three data), can I connect them all to the IT8212 (?) controller ? Why
> > are there MASTER and SLAVE connectors for SATA drives ? I thought
> > Master and Slave were for IDE only ?
> >
> > What should the BIOS settings be ?
> >
> > Does it seem like I have a faulty board ?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
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snakedjip

External


Since: Mar 29, 2005
Posts: 8



(Msg. 4) Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 6:42 am
Post subject: Re: SATA drives on P5AD2-E premium... [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
It was finally a faulty drive, I now have 4 drives connected and the
system is blazing fast... I hope that in the future this thread will
help someone troubleshoot their system : if you have a slow-booting
system, it could be a faulty drive, even if it's not your boot drive.

The only way I could make the 4 drives was to connect one drive to the
first red SATA connector (referred as master SATA 1 in the manual),
another one to the adjacent black one (SATA 3), and the two other
drives to two of the Silicon Image connectors.

If I try to connect the four drives to SATA1-SATA2-SATA3-SATA4, the
BIOS only recognizes two drives...

Is there a way to connect the four drives to these connectors ? Some
BIOS setting ?

Thanks.
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Paul4

External


Since: Jul 27, 2004
Posts: 2307



(Msg. 5) Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:55 am
Post subject: Re: SATA drives on P5AD2-E premium... [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
In article <1135089731.110791.229440 RemoveThis @g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
snakedjip RemoveThis @yahoo.com wrote:

> It was finally a faulty drive, I now have 4 drives connected and the
> system is blazing fast... I hope that in the future this thread will
> help someone troubleshoot their system : if you have a slow-booting
> system, it could be a faulty drive, even if it's not your boot drive.
>
> The only way I could make the 4 drives was to connect one drive to the
> first red SATA connector (referred as master SATA 1 in the manual),
> another one to the adjacent black one (SATA 3), and the two other
> drives to two of the Silicon Image connectors.
>
> If I try to connect the four drives to SATA1-SATA2-SATA3-SATA4, the
> BIOS only recognizes two drives...
>
> Is there a way to connect the four drives to these connectors ? Some
> BIOS setting ?
>
> Thanks.

If you use one drive, and move it from port to port on the
motherboard, do all eight ports work ?

Make sure this is not a motherboard hardware failure of some
sort. All the ports should work. You can also try a "cardboard
test" and move the motherboard outside the computer case, and
test that way. The last two systems I built, I assembled them
on a table top first, before putting them in the computer case.
That makes it easier to access the hardware and find any
defective goods, before putting them in the case.

It could be something is shorting to the bottom of the motherboard.

If the motherboard is defective, get it replaced with your
vendor or use the warranty with Asus.

You could also try clearing the CMOS (with the computer unplugged),
but I don't see how the contents of the CMOS RAM could cause
these symptoms. Have you looked in the BIOS menu for the disk
interfaces, to see if all ports are enabled in there ?

Paul
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snakedjip

External


Since: Mar 29, 2005
Posts: 8



(Msg. 6) Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:22 am
Post subject: Re: SATA drives on P5AD2-E premium... [Login to view extended thread Info.]
Archived from groups: per prev. post (more info?)
You know, with all the problems I had with the faulty drive, I never
saw a screen that would let me enable or disable one port at a time in
the BIOS menu... Where exactly is that screen ?

I did see the IT8212F Controller item, which I set to [Disabled], and
the Silicon Image Controller item, which I set to [SATA]. Should they
be set that way ?

You have a good point when you're saying I should try to boot from all
8 ports... if I'm supposed to be able to boot from all 8 ports, that
is Smile

Thanks.
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