SCSI Newbie

[adamk44]

I recently purchased a Cheetah 15K.3 SCSI HD (ST336753LW) & a Adaptec 29320-R Controller. I have two problems which may or may not be related.

Issue 1: When I Cold boot or restart my machine, after the Windows XP Boot Logo, sometimes it goes into windows, and sometimes it restarts again. There doesn't seem to be any pattern, sometimes it boots, sometimes it doesn't. After an unsuccessful boot attempt, on the next boot I usually choose 'last known good config.' - this tends to get better results than when I choose 'Boot windows normally' (this usually causes it to go in another loop. To say the least this is driving me crazy, but the good news is that when it does load windows, I have a working & stable OS. I guess I shouldn't complain, after all I'm a SCSI newbie and this is what I signed up for.

Issue 2: I have definitley noticed an improvment in responsiveness, but when I benchmarked the drive, I got the following results for my 10GB boot partition with only XP installed on it:

Benchmark Breakdown
Buffered Read : 23 MB/s
Sequential Read : 32 MB/s
Random Read : 12 MB/s
Buffered Write : 32 MB/s
Sequential Write : 32 MB/s
Random Write : 19 MB/s
Average Access Time : 3 ms (estimated)


Now the access time is nice, but I have a feeling that something is not configured properly, because based on my reading I would expect to see numbers in the 50s.

Are these issues potentially related?


If anyone can offer any advice, it is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.:disgust:

 

[zephyrprime]

Something is defintely wrong there. According to storage review, the cheetah 15k.3 should get ~74MB/sec at the beginning of the drive and ~51mb/s at the end. But the real problem is that you only sometimes boot. Do you have the latest drivers for your Adaptec card?

What motherboard do you have by the way?

 

[adamk44]

I have an Asus P4S8X MoBo & I downloaded the latest driver from the adaptec website

 

[mcveigh]

bad mojo there.... I had a similar thing once where I swear I loaded up the correct adaptec drivers but after investigating I found that windows had loaded some compaq scsi drivers.

It's easy to check gointo the device manager and check the properties on the scsi card, make sure they are correct.
I'd also try seagates disk utilities to verify the drive is OK

 

[adamk44]

Ran the seagate utility (seatools) drive checked out fine. In the device manager the adaptec drivers are listed correctly. However, there are 6 unknown devices that popped up after I installed the HD / controller. I disabled them because I have no idea what they are.

Just discovered that all the unknown devides are related to my ATI AIW card, havn't loaded the software yet following my XP install.

 

[sharkeeper]

Use HD Tach and /or ATTO instead of Sandra.

Cheers!

 

[adamk44]

Using HD Tach my average read speed is 34.6 MB/s

 

[sharkeeper]

Sounds like your drive is running in Ultra3 (40MB/S) mode.

Cheers!

 

[mcveigh]

when you are in the scsi configuration bios menu, what settings does it show for your HD? you should see 3 devices. 2 scsi controllers and the HD the HD ID should be 0.

edit: I just looked up your card specs and it only has a single channel, so you'll only see 2 devices listed.

 

[adamk44]

SCSI ID is 0
Controller ID is 7

My most recent sequential read is up to 54MB/s, but the rest of the numbers still range from 18-24 MB/s

 

[BuckNaked]

Originally posted by: shuttleteam
Sounds like your drive is running in Ultra3 (40MB/S) mode.

Cheers!

I am not familiar with the Seagate drives, but on my Atlas, there are jumpers on the bottom of the drive (not the rear) that need to be set correctly. Mine were set at 40MB's rather than 160MB's... (shoot me, I forgot my SCSI terminology)... Or it could be bad cables...

Check here...

 

[adamk44]

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/iguides/scsi/100148125b.pdf

According to the manual, no jumper = auto-select LVD or SE. I have no jumpers on the drive at all.

Where / how would I change the SCSI mode (ie Ultra3, Ultra160, Ultra320)?

 

[adamk44]

SCSI ID 0 is set to 320 in the SCSI BIOS

Who should I contact for support on this issue, Adaptec or Seagate?

 

[Ladybug7709]

do you have a terminator on the last connector of your scsi cable?

 

[adamk44]

Yup, I went over the instructions over 5 times

 

[Snipa]

It sounds like it could be the known problem with Windows XP and SCSI harddrives.


http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4152



There is something in the code that hurts performance.

Supposedly microsoft was working on the issue.

I know I noticed a big performance hit when I went from 2K to XP on my first generation Cheetah X-15.

 

[adamk44]

Originally posted by: Snipa
It sounds like it could be the known problem with Windows XP and SCSI harddrives.


http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4152



There is something in the code that hurts performance.

Supposedly microsoft was working on the issue.

I know I noticed a big performance hit when I went from 2K to XP on my first generation Cheetah X-15.

Thanks, I'm pretty sure that this was fixed by SP1


This is interesting:
http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=10199&hl=21320

This person had the exact same hardware configuration, and the exact same problem. For him it turned out to be the wrong type of terminator. I purchased my drive, controller, cable, and terminator from hypermicro.com and I asked them twice if they had the right cable/terminator. Is there any way to tell by looking at the cable and/or terminator if they are the right ones?

 

[adamk44]

Update:

I've updated the drivers for the SIS Chipset in my ASUS P4S8X MoBo, and my benchmark results changed substantially, but they are still not right. I used Atto, Sandra, and HD Tach - they all gave me similar results:


Benchmark Breakdown
Buffered Read : 2816 MB/s
Sequential Read : 42 MB/s
Random Read : 22 MB/s
Buffered Write : 1848 MB/s
Sequential Write : 18 MB/s
Random Write : 19 MB/s
Average Access Time : 1 ms (estimated)

I have also pulled every PCI card from the system with the exception of the controller card -> No change from above benchmarks.

I also tried moving the controller to a different PCI slot & reinstalling the controller drivers -> No change from above benchmarks.

I have also confirmed that my cable and terminator are of the corrrect type.

Any ideas? I'm dyin' here!

Thanks,

Digruntled SCSI newbie