Samsung spinpoint 160GB problems

[Mainframeguy]

I had already tried to flash that 1.4 BIOS and when I try it I get told my mobo is not the right one! It is driving me nuts - and that was using the floppy flashing method!

Do I have to go back to my BIOS backup - flash that - then reflash? This is driving me completely loopy and despite it all I have this awful feeling the slave drive is never going to work - should I maybe try putting another drive in there? I have an ancient 6GB drive kicking aroung in a PII machine I could extract if the test would prove my HD is at fault and not anything else?

 

[dave holbon]

I do not think that the drives are faulty but that there is something wrong with the motherboard. If the BIOS won’t flash I’d change the board as there is something fundamentally adrift here.

 

[Mainframeguy]

uh uh - this evening I just flashed a beta BIOS - it is flashing OK.

I have actually just ordered a 200GB SATA seagate...

Also decided tomorrows project will be to take secondary (slave) IDE seagate out of my old rig and swap it for the one that is not being detected - that should be a good test because it is a known good drive and I expect it to be found....

Otherwise, like you say I shall suspect mobo issues I guess....

But if it works I should fetch up with 440 GB of HD space, which should last as long as the computer serves me

I'll post here after I swap drives and probably again if I succeed with the SATA. Honestly not sure how drive could be faulty, but run out of things I can do - it just refuses to detect (have support email in with MSI so we will see what they say, their forums do have a lot of issues with larger drives, over 120 GB anyway).

 

[Mainframeguy]

Well - just swapped drives (or rather took out spinpoint and replaced with swapped out seagate). This was trickier than it sounds because I started hitting low space problems on my old rig which used the seagate for page, spool, temp files etc!

Anyway as soon as it was done HD was detected in BIOS right off, no need for me to do anything .

So there we have it - if anyone can explain to me any reason not to RMA the spinpoint I would be most interested to hear how it can get screwed up and yet another HD can be perfectly fine....

I'll post again when the SATA ships to me and hopefully I can get that one to run with XP on it, because seems like the BIOS is holding my ATA133 drives down to UDMA5 for master (100) and UDMA2 for slave (kinda like CD-ROM speeds ) If anyone has feelings or insights on those speeds that would be good - at least I have a couple of drives now so hopefully can do some backups for my tricky repartitioning or anything else fancy....

 

[Mainframeguy]

Finally this is done - so I have the drives, but the speeds are off!

My finialised setup goes soemthing like this for Hard drives:-

Primary boot - 200GB Seagate SATA

Primary IDE - 160GB Spinpoint ATA

Secondary IDE - 80GB Seagate ATA

And they are all functioning, recogniseable, defragged, etc.

However when I run HDTach against my IDE drives it seems like I am only hitting top speeds around 16 The SATA is more respectable - around the 100 mark, but still not the 150 it could be in theory.

Would anyone care to comment?

Oh yes - and I have swapped out the IDE cable for a brand new 80 - that seriously should be good (although I have another on order just to try too)... and I did RMA one of the Spinpoints in the end, but still waiting for credit.

 

[Leaderz0rz]

wow you went through hell, i would of thrown the motherboard against the wall by now ;p

not sure why the speeds are low, maybe it is just not displaying correctly? notice any slow down or somthing?

 

[Maveric169]

Well about the only thing I can think of to try would be to shutdown all programs that are running and then try the test and see what they say. Other than that you might try a different program and see if you get the same result.

 

[egghead]

hello,

I am researching your problems and motherboard and it appears that many people all having problems with that motherboard

I had some doubts and questions about the
stability issue that MSI K8N NEO2 motherboard might have because MSI
motherboards are not as well-known and reputable as ASUS motherboards when
it comes to rock-solid stability. Low and behold, when I started reading
every kind of problems people are having with MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum, I'm
back to using ASUS A8V for my new system.

Just reading complaints and problems in MSI newsgroup people are having with
MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum makes you change your mind about buying a MSI K8N NEO2
Platinum motherboard.

http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=.k8n+neo2&hl=en&lr=&selm=2qpgfcF11pevkU1%40uni-berlin.de&rnum=1


you can read what others say about the motherboard here,
http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=.k8n%20neo2&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=wg

another good search,
http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=ms-7030&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=wg


MSI newsgroup,
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&group=alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.msi-microstar

MSI online forum,
http://forum.msi.com.tw/


I am surprised you made it through that hell with a good attitude

good luck with the information in the links

 

[dave holbon]

Confusion reigns regarding transfer rates of ATA/SATA hard drives. In reality the stated transfer mode of these devices is between the drive buffer and the drive mechanism and not the chosen operating system. SCSI drives will always out perform these drives (rule of thumb) as they are controlled by their own CPU which handles the entire bumph. For instance XP will send a command to an ATA/SATA drive and then slow down whilst the CPU handles all the interrupts which in ATA 100/133 using DMA are not that many but switch to PIC mode and watch everything crawl.

The SATA standard (newest) is in fact a re-definition of SCSI drives requiring intelligence to be built into the drive controller and host operating system. This will eventually enable a quicker sub-system (drives) to be ignored by the operating system which will continue to process without the continual interruption that ATA/SATA drives require even using DMA mode 6 or 5.

Do not by a SATA drive now, there is just nothing to be gained from them until the next generation is available (which requires chipset support) except for cable connectors. They are no faster than ATA drives and some are slower.

 

[Mainframeguy]

and yet - although I am aware of a lot of what you state - I am confused as to why I am seeing HDTach results around FIVE TIMES faster on the SATA than the IDE connected ATA drives?

Anyway - all technical spinpoint issues are resolved - the only headache I have now is that when I RMA'd it and asked for CREDIT they sent me ANOTHER SPINPOINT