RAID XP w/ Promise o/b A7V133 - results/contrasts here please!

[Papercup]

Hi Guys,

I have recently been using the Promise Controller onboard my Asus A7V133 in its full use as a RAID controller. I have got my hands on 2 of the Dodgy Deskstars, the IBM DTLA-307030 75GXPs, the 30Gb 7200rpm ATA100 ones that won all those awards for being the fastest ever and then started making clunky clunky scrape scrape noises all over the world.

I ran the HP firmware update on them and it said it had been a success, then I ran the IBM Drive Fitness Test and low-level formatted and ran full tests on both. They have not made a sound since, and perform very well. But I digress.

I attached them to the board, both as master, both to their own channel. I ran XP from its CD and after a lot of poncing around with floppies chose one partition of 58.7Gb and had to make it NTFS (found out why a moment ago on another forum but that is another story still).

I had to use the floppy that was provided with the motherboard CD (you copy the directory from the CD onto a floppy and put that in when you hit F6) so I only had the choice when prompted of either NT or 2000 driver. Obviously I chose the 2000. It installed normally (but quickly) and runs like a dream, extremely quickly and I can heartily recommend it.

I remember when I ran one of these Deskstars (a 30, like these) in WinMe and 98 and I got Sandra scores around 23000. I also used to get about 17000 in 2000. I now get 32000 in XP. I would expect to get the same in 2000 with this stripe so I have effectively almost doubled my disk speeds in 2000/XP.

A few things for those who have done the same: has anyone done this in 98 or ME? I would love to know Sandra speeds. Not that I would dream of going back to 9X, but just as a matter of interest.

The other thing; every single time i reboot i get the little popup window that you get when you install new hardware. It says that 'Promise Filter Driver' has been stopped from loading as it would have made the system unstable. I am not worried about this as it isn't unstable, and it is in fact extremely fast, much quicker than a single drive (I used to run a single 15Gb Deskstar, same model). Anyone know which part of the Promise stuff is this 'filter driver'? Can i knobble its attempts at loading? Or get a new version?

And last of all (I think): is there an XP version of the Promise driver for this mainboard? I can't find one on the Asus site, and Promise won't provide one as it is an oem onboard solution, nothing to do with them. I am guessing that would fix the 'filter driver' thing as well....

Please feel free to reply with any ideas you have, or your own results with promise onboard RAID in any version of Windoze, I would like this post to become a meeting of Promise RAID users; there doesn't seem to be a lot around for us.......

cheers

Papercup

 

[YooEntSinMeROYT]

At least your install works with your RAID setup!
I have a Gigabyte 7A-DXR DDR MOBO with Promise RAID Fastrak Lite Controller on board & 2x60GB IBM Deskstars. No matter which drivers I copy over to a floppy drive they still cause a fatal error while Installing XP.
It's driving me mad

 

[Papercup]

http://www.amdmb.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=69239

try this thread: it has a fair bit in it, and links to others

if you have the same promise fast trak lite as all of us Asus Mainboard users (and it sounds very much like you do) then there are people with the same problems, and there are definitley solutions out there.

in the thread linked above there are several people who fix it. There are also links to braziliantech.com forums, they are very good as well.

stick with it, it ain't that much trouble and RAID is very quick, worth doing

you sure you put right drivers in right order on floppy? I did this wrong a fair bit first; you must not copy the contents of the win2000 folder onto the floppy, you must copy the folder itself and the odd files in the root of the next dir up, like 'oemsetup' and 'ultra'. so the floppy has those few files in root, and the other dirs for each other type of OS.

post back here with a e-mail address and I will mail you the drivers that worked for me, for XP i had to use the win2000 ones i got with the mainboard. teh XP ones don't work, though you can put them in after XP is installed, though i heard of file corruption so i haven't; it works fine with the 2000 ones

Papercup

p.s.

http://www.braziliantech.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.cgi?board=brtech;action=display;num=1003173272

is a good read as well

 

[YooEntSinMeROYT]

Cheers 4 that Papercup. Will have a read of the thread & experiment about further with the file copying to floppy after I've grabbed some seriously needed sleep!
I'll reply to this thread with any news on my success or lack of
Once again thanks

 

[YooEntSinMeROYT]

Big Tnx Papercup 4 pointing me in the right direction.
I downloaded XP Promise drivers from Gigabyte's website.
Only they had not put the txtsetup.oem & fastrak files in the root directory.
So I had 2 experiment a bit with file configs on the floppy but got there in the end. XP setup now loads in the XP drivers & recognises my RAID setup, letting me carry on installing XP........WOOOO HOOOOOOO!

 

[Papercup]

glad to help

raid is cool.......if you get the chance let me know your scores in Sandra.

I did have two of the ropy IBM DTLA307030 75GXPs (ata100, 7200rpm) that when first installed scored 32000, but when i last tested them they got 2500. Then one of them died anyway (like most of them do) so I now have a clean install with the XP Promise Drivers on 2 of the new beautiful 20Gb 7200rpm ata133 Maxtors.

But they scored 25000 straight away, so bollocks....!

Oh well, even if it isn't as fast as i could be its still great to play about with....that is half the fun!

Papercup