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Sweeper
06-11-2003, 04:43 AM
Well guys I need some advice... I have bent Prom's ear and spent several hours on the phone with Asus. Actually spent a couple of calls on the phone with 2nd tier support and got tired of continually repeating things.

I had a P4P800 which I just replaced with a P4P800 Deluxe. Asus had thought maybe I had a bad Intel controller because I never could get SATA RAID to work. Listed below is what I have run into... on both boards...:confused:

I have (2) 80G Maxtor Ultra's and (2) Iwill iS2 adapters. I have connected these up to the SATA connectors on the Mobo and changed the information in bios... everything is recongized. I go to install the OS... do the F6 to load the drivers... get to the partition area... sees the full 156G single partition... go to format and it goes from 1 - 100% in about 30 seconds... then just sets there. I have left it just setting for over an hour... nothing. I have tried the quick format and it goes to 20% in a few seconds and then just sets. I can use the SATA and adapters with my third drive and it works great. (tested both iS2's and cables so I know they are good). I have also tried setting up the bios with and without RAID boot rom enabled... same results.

Now the good news is I have connected up to the Via RAID and it works great!!! It appears to be faster than my Promise TX2000, however, I haven't been able to run benches as of yet. More to come on those.

So... is this a good one or what?? Does anyone have any suggestion or has anyone run across anything like this. I am to the point now that I would just like to know.

Cheers,
Sweeper ..... :wave:

Sweeper
06-11-2003, 05:23 AM
Prom pointed to a post Mr. Steveo had regarding this issue with Promise controllers and something called "reserve sectors"... I will be researching this to see if I can get this issue resolved.

Major cudo's to Prom and Mr. Steveo!!!! :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer:

Sweeper
06-12-2003, 04:01 AM
Well... As much as I had high hopes for a resolution... wiping the reserve sectors did not work for me. I have given up on the SATA RAID and gone with the VIA RAID. Now one thing to note is there was about a 25 - 30% increase in performance over my Promise TX2000 card. So... all in all... not too shabby.

Cheers,
Sweeper