Asus P5K Deluxe users - SATA config chime in here

Was just posting about this on my forums and it occured to me should ask you folks as well regarding SATA issues you may have.

I don't have any issues as I'm using single SATA disks in SATA 2 and 5 ports.

But, according to 2-28 page of manual, SATA 3/4 are black slave DATA connectors, SATA 1/2/5/6 are red master Boot connectors... so which ever your OS boot disk is has to be on SATA 1 or 2 or 5 or 6 AFAIK... ???

P5K Deluxe owners, care to share if you have SATA issues and which SATA ports you're using ?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by eva2000

Was just posting about this on my forums and it occured to me should ask you folks as well regarding SATA issues you may have.

I don't have any issues as I'm using single SATA disks in SATA 2 and 5 ports.

But, according to 2-28 page of manual, SATA 3/4 are black slave DATA connectors, SATA 1/2/5/6 are red master Boot connectors... so which ever your OS boot disk is has to be on SATA 1 or 2 or 5 or 6 AFAIK... ???

P5K Deluxe owners, care to share if you have SATA issues and which SATA ports you're using ?

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I don't think folks had as much problems with SATA ind regular mode - it's the RAID that's the problem. Example, I used ports 1,2 to setup 2 150GB Raptors. System would not even boot once RAID option was selected for Intel raid in BIOS. It would just hang on Drive detection. :(

Board works perfectly otherwise.

i have many raid issues and data lost one week ago. :(

iastor.sys BSOD and Array lose....

2 x Raptors @ SATA 1 and 2

and so after a very bad friday with many iastor-Errors and again Raid 0 Data Lose i switch from SATA 1 and 2 to SATA 1 and 5.

Now my Raid works without any issues. i hope the Asus or Intel will fix the Problems.

interesting webilli so SATA 1 + 5 works...

hope more users can chime in with their experiences so we can figure this out :)

Running sata 1,2 and 5. Adding a disk to sata 6 causes problems with not read ports. Using 3 and/or 4 is very error prone. I have only 3 working sata ports I can count on at the moment. These are individual drives only, no RAID.

Using sata 1-5 in raid 0

6th sata for ODD, works fine here. :)

I started off using SATA 5+6 RAID 0 no probs. Then I switched to 2+5 RAID0 for better cable management. The switch worked fine, just turned off computer replaced sata cables from 5+6 to 2+5 and booted up straight away.

Have been working with RAID0 for two weeks now without any issues.

EDIT: Also have a plextor dvdr on sata1. Works fine too.

You're right on the 'bootable' and 'non-bootable' ports George ;)
If you plug your windows/linux/os boot drive at ports 3/4 you won't be able to boot your OS.

Only played with the P5K3 for some hours, but had no problems using any RAID mode with x Drives ;)

will report back if I hit an 'issue'

I have 3 seagate 7200.10 SATA II AHCI enabled single drives on the RED ports(NO RAID) + 1 SATA DVD Rom on a black port

No issues what so ever...

My brother's is a mess though. 2 X 250GB SATA Maxtor Drives on the RED ports and 2 LITE-ON SATA DVD-RW's on the BLACK Ports. NO RAID either.

Drives just disappear on their own. Boot order changes on its own, so he gets boot errors all the time until he fixes the bios settings again.

I had a single raptor in black/4 and it booted up fine after sniffing around and saying it found no HDD. I used it like that for like 5 sessions and then switched it to Red/1 after I rtfm lolz. No problems at all but no need for raid either.

i have the P5K DELUXE using raid 0 with the 2 black ports. and one red port for my sata optical. and i have not experienced any instability wut so ever? :clap:

No issues using Sata Ports 1-4 with my WD hard drives, all configured AHCI.

setup in sig. raptors are 1 and 5. 320gb is in sata2. raid 1 drives are in 3 and 4. sata burner is in 6.

a couple times on boot my raid 0 has said it's failed but a ctrl-alt-del fixes it right up.

haven't had any data corruption that i can tell. i have had random lockups when i'm not using the computer. i don't know whether it's my oc (9+ hours orthos stable), my windows vista, or an hdd issue. only once has it ever locked up while using it and it was while watching an hd movie. i can play css for hours with no issues though.

edit - my 320gb isn't listed in sig but it's just a wd3200ks that i use to back up my games cause i don't have anything else to do with it.

Using 5+6 for Raid 0 with RaptorX's. Using 2 for ODD. Interestingly I had a Plextor 712SA hooked up to 2 and that is wher I installed my OS from, but ever since then, the drive has been flaky at best. I tried sata1 with the same problems, so I tossed it and bought a new drive. Haven't had any problems with the3 new drive. I plan to add a second ODD in the next week or so. I'll try to report back if I remember.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Helevitia

Using 5+6 for Raid 0 with RaptorX's. Using 2 for ODD. Interestingly I had a Plextor 712SA hooked up to 2 and that is wher I installed my OS from, but ever since then, the drive has been flaky at best. I tried sata1 with the same problems, so I tossed it and bought a new drive. Haven't had any problems with the3 new drive. I plan to add a second ODD in the next week or so. I'll try to report back if I remember.

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I have my plextor Sata PX-755SA plugged into sata6 and I'm not having any issues (I've even burned a few Discs already). try upgrading your plextor firmware the latest is Version 1.09.

Are all SATA drives capable of using AHCI?

I wanted to test whether my WD2500KS on Port 1 had better performance using IDE or AHCI. I had installed Windows XP with the drive configured as IDE. When I changed the configuration to AHCI I got as far as the boot screen with this message:

Auto-Detecting AHCI Port 1..

I had to disconnect all drives to get back in the BIOS and change the configuration back to IDE.

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Originally Posted by msgclb

Are all SATA drives capable of using AHCI?

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Yes.

By the way some minutes ago I had a HDD disappearance during POST, but with a restart the HDD got detected again.
It's kinda like a 'norm' situation with the latest Asus boards, this has happened with my P5B-D / Commando / P5W DH as well.

raptor raid 0 at port 1 and 2, port 3456 for seagate 7200.10. works fine.

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Originally Posted by BenchZowner

Yes.

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If that's the case then any ideas why I can't boot with the drive configured as AHCI? I didn't even get to the Windows boot screen so I doubt that's the reason.

Added info:
I just connected another WD2500KS drive to Port 1 and it was recognized with AHCI configured. It's formated but no OS.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by msgclb

If that's the case then any ideas why I can't boot with the drive configured as AHCI? I didn't even get to the Windows boot screen so I doubt that's the reason.

Added info:
I just connected another WD2500KS drive to Port 1 and it was recognized with AHCI configured. It's formated but no OS.

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You need to have AHCI enabled when installing windows ( and you will have to use F6 to load the AHCI drivers as well ).

You can 'use an alchemy' to 'move' to AHCI without re-installing drivers, but I wouldn't recommend doing it.

I had a hunch that was my problem.

Well from my experience i can say this board has a couple of issues with sata/raid configurations.

My first problem was 4 satas with 2 of them in raid0 with a sata dvdrw. The raid ones are raptor 36gb and the other 2 were one wd 320gb and one maxtor 300gb. Maxtor disk keep disappearing all the time...don't recognize.

After that i switch to 3 disk, i maintained the 2 raptors in raid0 ports 1&2 and plug a segate 750gb to port 5...this with an asus dvdrw in port 4 (black).

No problems with raid and vista, but i wanted to have a xp partition in segate, so i made a 50gb partition for that on segate.
Everytime i tried to install xp i got bsod before i select my installation partition...

So i tried unplug the sata driver and plug an ide drive...no more problems...

Now i have XP and Vista, both working and no more errors or bsods.

Don't know why but this board is a little buggy with sata ports once raid its enable, maybe its a bios problem.

For me, more than 3 things connected to sata ports and i will have some problem...

Here is mine 3 raptors in matrix raid(0+0) and 1 750gb for storage. No problems as long as I use the red Sata ports

When loading the AHCI drivers do you need a floppy or can you do this via a usb flash drive?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BenchZowner

You need to have AHCI enabled when installing windows ( and you will have to use F6 to load the AHCI drivers as well ).

You can 'use an alchemy' to 'move' to AHCI without re-installing drivers, but I wouldn't recommend doing it.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eagleclaw

When loading the AHCI drivers do you need a floppy or can you do this via a usb flash drive?

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Windows 2000/XP/2003/MCE = floppy, or integrate the drivers to your Windows installation disc ( manually or with nLite )

Windows Vista = yes, finally! Microsoft found the way to...a browse button & using every storage device available to pre-load the drivers :D

i've never installed that intel matrix raid software. is there a need?

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Originally Posted by safan80

I have my plextor Sata PX-755SA plugged into sata6 and I'm not having any issues (I've even burned a few Discs already). try upgrading your plextor firmware the latest is Version 1.09.

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Thanks, already upgraded the firmware. Interestingly enough, after reading this thread last night and posting, I started having SATA issues!

All I did was push on the cables to see which port my DVD drive was plugged into. As soon as I did that, my computer locked up! I moved the cables back and the computer unlocked! It was weird. So I started using my computer again and within 5 minutes of the locking problem happening, my computer BSOD'd. Suddenly my computer would lock upon boot up. After several reboots and trying to get it to come up, I unplugged my DVD drive and the computer booted! I plugged the DVD drive back in and it locked up again on boot up! That's where I left it last when I went to bed last night.

So now I'm thinking I either have a bad SATA cable and my Plextor still works, or there is something fishy going on with the SATA ports like others have mentioned. I'll know more tonight when I get home. Before this happened I had no problems for 2 weeks with my setup.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cujo

i've never installed that Intel matrix raid software. is there a need?

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I haven't found it particularly useful. It's just information. I think it's safe to skip it.

Seem to have gotten it to work ok..
However I seemed to have maxxed out the controller?
These results are with 6 cards, but with only 5 I get about the same.[IMG]

ya, i find the cables very finicky. my p5w dh was bad with this and so far my p5k is better but still wonky. it's really irritating.

now my comp shop is having a sale on 5000aaks drives so i'm gonna pick up a 3rd for raid5. no idea how to best configure my ports as i have the current raid 1 in the two black ports. the 3rd drive will have to go in a red port. also, i'm probably going to have to wipe my raid 1 and start a new raid 5, right? or can i morph the raid 1 into a raid 5 with this intel matrix raid program. i'm not looking forward to finding space to back all this stuff up...

I mentioned this in another post but I'll repeat it here as well. I had issues when using ports 1-4 in non-RAID. I initially had ports 1-2 150GB Raptor's and ports 3-4 74GB Raptor's, boot into BIOS and ports 1-2 were not visible. When I unplugged the Raptor's on ports 3-4 the Raptor's on ports 1-2 were visible in the BIOS. I was then able to RAID0 ports 1-2 but windows install was painfully slow. Before I was able to test out ports 3-4 while using 1-2 in RAID I corrupted my BIOS while flashing from windows. Also, I could not get the board to accept my 3.5 diskette drive. Now I am waiting on an RMA.

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Originally Posted by orion23

I have 3 seagate 7200.10 SATA II AHCI enabled single drives on the RED ports(NO RAID) + 1 SATA DVD Rom on a black port

No issues what so ever...

My brother's is a mess though. 2 X 250GB SATA Maxtor Drives on the RED ports and 2 LITE-ON SATA DVD-RW's on the BLACK Ports. NO RAID either.

Drives just disappear on their own. Boot order changes on its own, so he gets boot errors all the time until he fixes the bios settings again.

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Sounds like RAM time for this one.

I haven't had any problems with sata )non raid) as long as I hook up my sata burner to a red port it boots from there if needed. I have had disappearing usb ports at boot on occasion.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Helevitia

Thanks, already upgraded the firmware. Interestingly enough, after reading this thread last night and posting, I started having SATA issues!

All I did was push on the cables to see which port my DVD drive was plugged into. As soon as I did that, my computer locked up! I moved the cables back and the computer unlocked! It was weird. So I started using my computer again and within 5 minutes of the locking problem happening, my computer BSOD'd. Suddenly my computer would lock upon boot up. After several reboots and trying to get it to come up, I unplugged my DVD drive and the computer booted! I plugged the DVD drive back in and it locked up again on boot up! That's where I left it last when I went to bed last night.

So now I'm thinking I either have a bad SATA cable and my Plextor still works, or there is something fishy going on with the SATA ports like others have mentioned. I'll know more tonight when I get home. Before this happened I had no problems for 2 weeks with my setup.

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OK, this is nuts. When I went to bed last night, the computer would not boot if the DVD drive was plugged in. I get home tonight, turn on the computer and everything works fine :confused:

I think I'm going to change out the cable just to be on the safe side.

I will be installing XP today but where can I find the AHCI drivers??

I downloaded the RAID/AHCI Software - Intel® Matrix Storage Manager but that can't be it, it is over 5mb.

Thanks for any help

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eagleclaw

I will be installing XP today but where can I find the AHCI drivers??

I downloaded the RAID/AHCI Software - Intel® Matrix Storage Manager but that can't be it, it is over 5mb.

Thanks for any help

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Look at page 5-5 of the manual. With XP you'll need a floppy. I've made my Intel ICH9 32-bit RAID/AHCI driver disk and will be reinstalling XP soon so I hope you will report back with your success.:)

Thanks, I hope to report back later tonight with my success ;)

just thought i'd post up that i'm now running raid 10. raid 5 performance was dismal compared to what i was expecting. with raid 10 i transferred 57gb from my raid 0 raptors to my raid 10 drives in less than 8 minutes. vista transfer speed was well over 100mb/sec.

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/6...xscreenpr9.png

Moved my 4x80gb matrix raid0 across from my commando build. running fine in sata 1-4. initial benches show slower performance than ich8r though it's been said Mainly here:)that intel had "fixed" the figures, maybe they've got real or the drivers are bad. will post some benches tommorow if i can.

cujo raid 5 onboard for any motherboards will suck.. you need dedicated raid 5 controller cards for good raid 5 performance.. for raid onboard stick with raid 0 or 0+1 etc

As i said earlier i just moved my commando ich8r matrix raids across:-
Not a good idea
Fast Raid Comparison Commando & same raid on p5k
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~chsm...taid_moved.JPG
Slow Raid Comparison Commando & same raid on p5k[/B]
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~chsm...waid_moved.JPG
Above using Matrix raid 6.2

Rebuilt array using Matrix Raid v7.2
Fast Raid
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~chsm...taid_moved.JPG
SlowRaid
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~chsm...waid_moved.JPG

So basically it looks at the moment to be rock all difference ich8r to ich9r, just remember it's best to rebuild array mot migrate it:D

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Originally Posted by Supershanks

just remember it's best to rebuild array mot migrate it:D

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it's best to get a raid controller add in card then you don't have to deal with onboard raid at all.

Dropped PCI-e freq to 100 from 101 and all drives are now detected and working fine.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Speederlander

Dropped PCI-e freq to 100 from 101 and all drives are now detected and working fine.

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you mean upped right ;) What was the problem you were having before? were only some of the drive detecting or what?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by safan80

you mean upped right ;) What was the problem you were having before? were only some of the drive detecting or what?

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Yes, only 3 of the drives would register.

Quote:

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it's best to get a raid controller add in card then you don't have to deal with onboard raid at all.

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not thatmuch of a raid fan:shrug: , but since moving to c2d i do like the matrix raid compared to nvidia.

hey guys , are all these SATA ports locked, I mean since u overclock the board, the sata should be overclocked 2. Correct me if I am wrong. And what are the findings so far, I got a WD150 raptor ( gonna use XP for it), and a WD36,7 GB raptor ( gonna use it for vista), so a dual boot, and a 500GB disk as backup, which port shall I plug them?, any help appreciated.

i wish i had read this thread before i slapped this in my case. I left m 500 w antec at my friends, and couldnt bench it on my trusty box. The sata ports work when they want too it seems, i was able to install windows on my 320.

it reads my 150 raptor, but when i go to format..get errors!! in windows..wtf.

iam a bit pissed, my 250 wd, that had my install of suse, got corrupted on black port 5 or whatever..

iam not even planing on running RAID. i mean for christ sakes the board should have no problem running single drive set up!

think i will return it, and try the abit pro, if it is crap.. will just keep mt p5n plus till something good comes out, or a revison on the p5k dx

Ok it's time for me to chime in.

I only have ONE HDD and that's the Seagate 320GB 7200.10.
RAID is like a foreign language to me and AHCI was something that I was thought not be messing with if I want my windows to properly detecting it without any problems.

For the past motherboards I've tested, I have only set my HD as IDE and I didn't notice any performance loss (Vista OS)
Now, I've switched back to XP MCE2005 and testing the P5K-Deluxe. I'm feeling that my HDD seems to be more sluggish and more cluttered. I did the defragmentation and setting up the HD as IDE as usual but I don't know why I'm feeling this way?? I see there is a figure of 35 by default under the HD options configuration page in BIOS and I've no idea what it's for. Should I alter this # and maybe I'll get better performance for my single SATAII HD?

Right now I've my HD plugged in SATA port 5 and my SATA optical DVD drive is plugged in SATA 6.

I got 2 noobish questions for anyone who cares to explain:

1. Any performance difference from the 4 master red SATA ports??
2. Since I'm only using single SATA2 Seagate 7200.10 320GB HD, is setting up my sata HD as IDE the way to go? I know for certain that RAID is out of the question here :p

Hi,

I have a problem with my new SATA DVD-Burner and need some advice how to fix it.
P5K Deluxe mobo + E6420 + WD 500GB Sata II.
My old dvd burner (NEC (IDE)) died few days ago, so I ordered new Lite_On 20x SATA burner.

The first try I got unlack it didn'e even recognized. I updated the BIOS to version 0311 from asus.com and now it appeared in the list of SATA devices.

But the problem is, it's not bootable. The last screen before windows staring says that 'No drives found' (with my last dvd-drive it said that NEC_... drive found)

HDD connected to SATA1 (red) port, I tried to connect DVD-Burner to SATA2 (red) and SATA3 (black) but got unluck.

P.S. The BIOS settings are set to AHCI mode.
Does anybody can help me with some advice on that?

Thanks in advance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by autist

P.S. The BIOS settings are set to AHCI mode.
Does anybody can help me with some advice on that?

Thanks in advance.

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Try changing it to IDE mode and see if it works? I have a Samsung SATA DVD Burner and it has never given any problem from the start.

Ok, But why is that?

The AHCI mode is enabled to run HDD with AHCI, so if I turn it off to IDE, is the HDD will work using AHCI?

Anyway, thanks, I'll try to change in to IDE... and see what happen

Finally fixed!!!
I forgot to check BIOS version after using ASUS BIOS Update, seems like it didn;t update that.

So I used ASUS EZ Flash 2 to update BIOS and now everything is fine.
HDD and DVD Burner running under AHCI mode and DVD is bootable.

Thansk anyway.

BTW if using SATA4 port for DVD I don;t know why but system says that ... devuce incompatible :shrug: , but if SATA3 (also black one) everything is ok

So AHCI is better than IDE performance wise right??

If I've already setup my single Seagate 7200.10 HDD as IDE in BIOS and I've already installed my XP MCE2005, can I still change IDE to AHCI and get the windows to properly recognize my HDD and DVD(They're both SATA)?

I guess you can.

Before doing that just check you BIOS to be sure that you dont have already the AHCI driver. Just change IDE mode to AHCI.

reboot, if after reboot windows will not boot, so
you can set settings back to IDE or you can to repair windows with installing AHCI drivers.

before doing this, you need to prepare AHCI drivers which usually coming with motherboard support CD (except Vista), and copy them on floppy drive (thats what I did) - so anyway you need to set settings back in BIOS to do this :D

Then boot from Windows bootable CD and press F6 on the very first screen when its asking you "Press F6 is .... SCSI or RAID ..."
The move on until it ask you that it cannot find proper driver in there and please insert floppy with driver, and so on.

So, after driver is hooked up move on with the steps and on the first screen when installation asking you to repair, do not press 'R', press Enter to continue, after that installation trying to detect installed system on your comp, and when its found it will ask again, then press R to Repair.

This procedure will not delete all references to already installed software.


After installation complete you can use in BIOS any settings. (IDE or AHCI) and it should work.

May be somebody knows how to do it without windows repair, but I don't...

0403 is out on ftp site


ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/mb/so.../P5K%20Deluxe/

as i kno there is not change log yet. sry if this was posted else where

Quote:

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Originally Posted by XtremeTiramisu

So AHCI is better than IDE performance wise right??

If I've already setup my single Seagate 7200.10 HDD as IDE in BIOS and I've already installed my XP MCE2005, can I still change IDE to AHCI and get the windows to properly recognize my HDD and DVD(They're both SATA)?

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AHCI enables three capabilities as I understand it: SATA 150 or 300 MB/s burst mode, NCQ, and Hot Swap. NCQ is a mixed bag. It should improve performance by intelligently ordering random access requests, but there is overhead involved. SCSI has same issue.

I had a two-drive Windows-spanned array on Dell 390 (975X) used to store very large files (1GB-100GB). I was having problems with the Intel Matrix Driver (IASTOR) pausing about every minute on files over 1GB. I switched the BIOS to IDE mode for the SATA ports. No problem starting Windows here since these were data drives. XP changed over to the Ultra-ATA driver, also Intel, on its own. The drives were in PIO mode initially, and some fiddling was required to get them into UDMA-5. After that, no more problems! The sustained data transfer rate improved about 5-10% as well. So IDE was actually better for this application. The drives never appeared as hot swappable on the Safely Remove applet when they were running SATA. Same story on two other similar machines.

I went to download the latest driver (bundled with the Matrix Storage Manager) : 7.5.0.1017 6/4/2007 and found this. Might explain some of the wide variation people get in their results

http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../CS-025783.htm

Intel® Matrix Storage Manager
Possible Issues With Windows Vista* and Intel® RAID

Issue

The following issues may occur on Windows Vista* with a supported Intel® RAID Controller hub:

Inability to install Windows Vista (i.e. system halts during installation)
Performance degradation
Timeout errors reported by iastor or iastor(v) in Microsoft Event Viewer*
Cause

A change was made by Microsoft* in the Windows Vista setup process. The result of this change is that the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager Link Power Management (LPM) registry settings that were intended for mobile installations are added for desktop installations as well. These LPM registry settings are added for both the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager RAID driver on the Windows Vista installation disk, as well as for any drivers added during the installation process.
Various desktop Serial ATA devices such as hard drives and CD/DVD drives have been reported that do not comply with the Serial ATA LPM device specification and display erratic behavior when LPM is enabled.

Because the setup change means that LPM is enabled by default for all Windows Vista platforms, using a device that does not completely follow the specification may result in one of the listed issues.

A list of these devices is not available at this time.

Solution

If you are experiencing installation issues, one of the following workarounds may help resolve the issue:

If available, install updated firmware for the device. (I guess they mean your storage device)
Switch to IDE mode in the system BIOS. Note: See your BIOS manufacturer for instructions on how to do this.
Attach the device(s) to ports 3-5 on the Intel® 82801HR/HH/HO I/O controller hub (ICH8R) or port 3 on the Intel® 82801GR/GH I/O controller hub (ICH7R)

If you are experiencing performance degradation or timeout errors, one of the following workarounds may help resolve the issue:

If available, install updated firmware for the device.
Delete the iastor(v) Parameters registry key by using the following steps:

1. Go to Start » Search.
2. Type in RegEdit and hit the Enter key.
3. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\iaStor(v).
4. Right-click on the Parameters key under iaStor(v) and select the Delete option.

2 P5K deluxes so far.

neither one is able to run my 150 gig raptors without huge slow down issues. making it barely worth using...
taking about 10 times longer to boot windows, then a single raptor.

after about 5-6 trys at installing the OS various times, and various ways, on both boards, I have simply come to the conclusion that I just dont want to bother with it anymore... it simply doesnt work very well....

There's now a 0404 bios
ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/so...eluxe/0404.zip

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kunaak

2 P5K deluxes so far.

neither one is able to run my 150 gig raptors without huge slow down issues. making it barely worth using...
taking about 10 times longer to boot windows, then a single raptor.

after about 5-6 trys at installing the OS various times, and various ways, on both boards, I have simply come to the conclusion that I just dont want to bother with it anymore... it simply doesnt work very well....

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odd. my 150gb raptors work just fine in raid 0 on this board.

This RAID issue is driving me nuts. Bootsy or anyone else that has successfully installed Vista on RAID array could you please list the exact ports you used and which drivers you loaded during the Vista installation.

It's a great board except for this one thing and it's making me crazy.

Thanks for your input.

I wanted to post in this thread that I have run into major SATA issues. My system wouldn't boot up at all for a while and finally after fooling around with it for hours, I've determined the SATA ports are flaky for me.
You can read my final post in this thread: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...postcount=1005

All 6 of my Intel SATA ports are used and working (knock on wood), see sig for configuration. I did buy cables for all the hds after reading about bad cables, but I used the angled ASUS cables for the optical drives. So far, so good.

2x WD Caviar RE 250gb running in RAID 0 on SATA ports 1 & 2. No problems with install or as of yet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BenchZowner

Yes.

By the way some minutes ago I had a HDD disappearance during POST, but with a restart the HDD got detected again.
It's kinda like a 'norm' situation with the latest Asus boards, this has happened with my P5B-D / Commando / P5W DH as well.

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I have that kind of bug happening all the time, and that's make me crazy. I have 3 SATA II drives and a Pioneer SATA DVD burner, all configured as IDE on BIOS and sometimes it got stuck for a while then it disappears during post. I used to have the same errors on my P5W DH too.

But the problem I'm having right now is to install Windows XP x64 with the AHCI option configured on bios. When the CD boots it gave me a BSOD :( Any ideas? :confused:

So these SATA/RAID issues still exist? I'm running 6 drives, so this would be a problem for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BenchZowner

You need to have AHCI enabled when installing windows ( and you will have to use F6 to load the AHCI drivers as well ).

You can 'use an alchemy' to 'move' to AHCI without re-installing drivers, but I wouldn't recommend doing it.

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would it be possible to back-up system, reinstall os with the AHCI controller and reinstall the system that was backed up?

i finally got it to run on ahci mode, how would i know if there are any changes/improvements?