Help! SATA Disk for installing XP

[wgeiler]

Under the make disk tab for the ASUS CD ROM it says:


Make Intel ICH7 32 bit Raid Driver Disk

Make Intel ICH7 64 bit Raid Driver Disk

Make ITE8211 32/64bit IDE Driver Disk

Make Silicon Image 32bit RAID Driver Disk

Make Silicon Image 32bit SATA Driver Disk

Make Silicon Image 64bit RAID Driver Disk

Make Silicon Image 64bit SATA Driver Disk

Which do you use to make a SATA floppy to be able to install Windows XP? I am guessing it is the Make Silicon Image 32bit SATA Driver Disk but to the left it says for P5LD2-Deluxe and P5WD2-Premium motherboards only. The motherboard we just bought is the P5WD2, It is not Premium. What option do you chose to create a SATA floppy disk to install Windows XP?

Or maybe for the standard P5WD2 motherboard I just copy the files from this directory over to floppy?

FriversSiI313232bitDOSSATA

 

[musictoo]

If you're not using raid, XP should load without having to use the F6 option...

 

[mcnaugha]

Isn't it true though, that for best performance - even for just one SATA disk - you should set the Intel IDE to AHCI or RAID in order to get NCQ? Even in AHCI mode Windows XP will need the driver. Only in "Standard IDE" mode will Windows XP see your drive for installation but you lose NCQ which is a really important performance enhancer.

It may also be best to get the newest version of the Floppy maker from Intel.com. Also the newest chipset drivers too. The CDs tend to be out-of-date.

 

[4745454b]

They have started making SATA FLOPPY'S??? Wow, what will they think of next? I wouldn't worry about enabling NCQ, I haven't seen any benchies where it pays off. Infact, it can slow the system down sometimes. Nice idea, but it isn't there yet.

 

[mcnaugha]

I will perhaps take some benchmarks with my new raptors before I RAID them to see if NCQ makes a difference performance-wise in my environment.

If you don't believe in its performance benefits... perhaps you will believe that it reduces drive "wear and tear".

http://www.seagate.com/products/interface/sata/native.html

 

[4745454b]

I do believe it has the potential to reduce wear and tear, but it was also supposed to make things faster. (ie, if the one claim was wrong, the second might be also.) Don't bother posting links to who made it, I like independant sources for facts. (ie, I don't like reading what the marketing weenies try to tell me.)

 

[w1ngzer0]

please delete

 

[grant8844]

Hi ncnaugha

I just finished building a P5W DH deluxe system.
Yes, I had to set the IDE config to IDE to let windows see the drives.
This worked fine for windows install

However after I installed windows I tried setting this to AHCI and it would not boot. Windows could not see the drives in AHCI

Talked to ASUS tech support and two different techs said that I did NOT need to turn on AHCI to enable NCQ. However the ASUS manual says that you DO need to turn this on to use NCQ??

What is the real story here?

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

NCQ is a sub-feature of AHCI

This is directly from Intel documentation, and they invented AHCI

The Asus techs are clueless, and/or just fobbing you off.


See Also:

http://www.intel.com/ - Seach "AHCI"

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=1433763#1433763

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

They have started making SATA FLOPPY'S??? Wow, what will they think of next? I wouldn't worry about enabling NCQ, I haven't seen any benchies where it pays off. Infact, it can slow the system down sometimes. Nice idea, but it isn't there yet.

Where is slows the system down you might lose maybe 5% tops in throughput, where it speeds the system up you can gain 50%+ in throughput.

It all depends on the benchmark, and most benchmarks don't have an I/O queue on the HDD, which is in stark contrast to real-life conditions.

www.storagereview.com

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

Under the make disk tab for the ASUS CD ROM it says:


Make Intel ICH7 32 bit Raid Driver Disk

Make Intel ICH7 64 bit Raid Driver Disk

Make ITE8211 32/64bit IDE Driver Disk

Make Silicon Image 32bit RAID Driver Disk

Make Silicon Image 32bit SATA Driver Disk

Make Silicon Image 64bit RAID Driver Disk

Make Silicon Image 64bit SATA Driver Disk

Which do you use to make a SATA floppy to be able to install Windows XP? I am guessing it is the Make Silicon Image 32bit SATA Driver Disk but to the left it says for P5LD2-Deluxe and P5WD2-Premium motherboards only. The motherboard we just bought is the P5WD2, It is not Premium. What option do you chose to create a SATA floppy disk to install Windows XP?

Or maybe for the standard P5WD2 motherboard I just copy the files from this directory over to floppy?

FriversSiI313232bitDOSSATA

Which OS are you running ?

Which disk controller is your HDD attached to ?

Tip: Use Device Manager, Connection View.

 

[grant8844]

Hi TabrisDarkPeace

Thanks for the links to the Intel articles on SATA AHCI and NCQ.

Among the statements in these articles is "ICH8 and ICH7 based chipsets do not use AHCI"

My ASUS P5W DH mobo uses the Intel ICH7R chipset and has the Intel 82807GB/GR/GH controller hubs. So this mobo should support AHCI. So why does it not work??

Maybe I need to load the Intel Matrix Storage Manager softwar (whatever that is?)

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

Yeah I have the Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6, and it supports AHCI, but because I never enabled it in the BIOS, and installed the OS without using an F6 '3rd Party Disk Controller Driver' (being the AHCI/SATA/RAID driver for the Intel ICH8R) in my case, NCQ is not enabled.

I can use Native IDE mode, vs Legacy IDE mode, but so can everyone else running Windows 2000 or XP, or later.

Thankfully I've partitioned using:
(1) 32 GB - OS 1
(2) 32 GB - OS 2
(3) 234 GB - DATA

Thus I can try installing Windows XP Pro (or Windows XP Pro x64 Edition) in the 2nd partition, using the F6 driver disk.

It requires a floppy drive, and should be covered in the mainboard manual.

You can install the driver, and then try enabling AHCI / SATA in the BIOS but it is unlikely to work, or the OS may not boot (giving a BSoD, or just restarting if Auto-Restart on BSoD is turned on).

Simply turning AHCI in the BIOS off again will let you boot still though, just without NCQ.


NCQ is like selecting a video card:
Do you want a +5% faster maximum frame rate, or do you want a +50% faster minimum frame rate - Both with the same average frame rate ?

Any sane person would select the system configuration with the higher 'minimum' frame rate.

eg: Min: 30 - Avg: 60 - Max: 200 vs Min: 45 - Avg: 60 - Max: 120


AHCI - NCQ (or SATA: NCQ as most will call it) is exactly the same, just for minimum HDD throughput, and yes games will have a queue length around 4 - 16 sometimes, and these are the times when you'll die more often (or at least be more vulerenable).

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

Wouldn't doing what you're hinting at change the GUID of the drive ?

Wouldn't be worth the trouble.

I've just run a backup on my system, could just install Windows XP Pro x64 Edition (I want to run x64 and x86.[IA-32] at once anyway) in the 2nd 32 GB partition and set it up for advanced SATA features, AHCI, NCQ, etc in addition to being able to map all my physical memory - under x86 I can only map 3.25 GB on this board, as PCI/PCIe devices take their share for I/O acceleration.

Just more incentive to install x64 again I guess.

 

[grant8844]

Hi Supreme Law

Thanks for you summary.
I think I will wait until Vista is available and do a clean install at that time.

That should fix this???

 

[grant8844]

Hi Paul

Thanks again!
I am hopeful that Vista will solve this problem and will wait for its arrival

Grant

 

[grant8844]

Hi Paul

One more question. I have removed the jumpers on the SATA drives (Seagate) so that they will run at 3.0 gig instead of 1.5. Do I get the higher speed even if I did not install the drivers we have been discussing?

Thanks

Grant

 

[techgeek]

I have the same mobo and I have NCQ enabled. You need to have the controller switched in the BIOS prior to installing Windows. You also need the floppy to install the drivers needed to use AHCI during the install (F6 drivers). You can't get AHCI to work post windows install. I tried. Yes it seems dumb, but that's the way it is.

As for performance or wear and tear, I can't really say whether or not NCQ has made anything better. I'm just one that likes to use all the features I paid for. The theory makes sense, but I'm not sure that it's really beneficial in a desktop environment. It's more of a server feature, where multiple disk IO requests are coming in from multiple clients.

You have to ask yourself if a re-install is really worth it. I realized early on, so I didn't lose much time. You may have an established/mature drive image (software, hardware, personal files) that will be a pain in the a$$ to rebuild, so it's unlikely that the possible performance benefit will outway the inconvenience of a re=install.

 

[grant8844]

Hi Techgeek

thanks. this info is very helpful.
what specific drivers do I have to load and when?
Where do I get these drivers?

My system is a brand new build and I also plan to do a complete reload when Vista arrives so I don't mind the effort.

Also, I am very interested in any more thoughts you have about whether this additional bit of technology really makes any difference. The drives do work now but do not seem any faster than my very old ata 100 drives.
Do you know (or know how to determine) if I am running at 3.0 gig or 1.5 gig?

Thanks again


Grant

 

[techgeek]

Well SupremeLaw has shown the way. You need the Intel ICH7R 32 bit RAID Driver Disk (if your using 32 bit Windows), this can be made from the ASUS Driver CD that came with your motherboard. I believe there is also a newer version available for download on ASUS' site as well (if my memory serves me correctly). This will make a floppy with the needed drivers. During the windows installation process (in the DOS looking screen before setting up your partitions), you will be prompted to hit F6 to add any additional drivers. Hit F6 and it will automatically search for drivers on the floppy in your floppy drive (hope you have one), select the one for AHCI. Once Windows has installed (assuming everything went OK), you can install the utility Intel Matrix Storage Manager. It will only install if you have either RAID or AHCI installed. Once installed, you can check to see the status of the drive in question. It pretty much only shows you information, no actual function beyond that (unless maybe if you have RAID, I don't so I can't say). It will tell you what SATA transfer mode your in, as well as whether NCQ is working. Of course you'll need the jumper off (enabling SATA 300) before you start all this.

Of course this is a rough overview, but since you know how to install windows, I'm sure you'll fiqure out the parts I've glossed over. It's not really hard once you know that you need these drivers installed prior to installing Windows.

As for Vista, I'm not sure if you'll have to jump through all these hoops, I'm not running Vista. I downloaded the betas, but never got around to installing them. I game, and both betas left a lot to be desired when it came to graphics card drivers. I also work overseas, so I didn't feel like wasting a bunch of time playing with the new OS with the little time I have at home. SATA 300 or 3G or whatever you want to call it maybe supported natively for all I know, and likely NCQ as well. Again I don't know for sure.

As for speed difference when it comes to SATA 150 vs 300, it's unlikely that it will make a huge difference. These are burst rates not sustained rates. That means that the only time you'll see it run at that speed is when the data being read is in the drives buffer, or when writing to the buffer the data doesn't exceed the space on the buffer. In fact ATA 100 is sufficient for sustained transfer rates of today's HDD's since most have a sustained rate of 60MB/s or so unless we are talking about a Raptor. So buffer size still has a measurable affect on HDD performance. This is also the push behind the new hybrid drives we've been hearing about and coincidentally will be supported natively in Vista. Just for comparison sake, SiSoft SANDRA XI has my HDD transfer rate around 62-63MB/s. Sorry I don't have any screenshots or more specific details, but this is ball park anyway.

Anyway I hope that this was helpful.

 

[Zorg]

Very informative thread. Kudos to all.

 

[infyrno917]

If you read the manual you will find that your board does not have the silicon image controller. The only SATA controller onboard is the ICH7 southbridge chip. The ITE is purely for the red IDE ports. Also, if you are using IDE mode for the SATA disks, you shouldn't install the RAID drivers because it is just another running thread to slow down your CPU and system altogether since you will not be benefiting from the advanced read speeds of RAID (IMO).

 

[sluzbenik]

Vista is not easier.

I have installed Vista to a PATA drive running off the Jmicron chip on an Asus P965 Deluxe/Wi-fi. I found that if I did not install the damn Jmicron drivers at the time then Vista did not see the SATA drive I had on the Jmicron port. However, Vista found the SATA drives (installed in XP using AHCI drivers) on the Intel chip without a problem.

Things will depend on the driver support - we all know Jmicron's solution is a major POS, not a surprise Vista cooperated with the Intel SATA's better.

 

[grant8844]

Hi Techgeek

Thanks for this summary of the issues.
Very helpful!!

I may try to do a reinstall of windows xp and give this a try.

I downloaded the "Intel Matrix Matrix Storage Manager Software IATA62" from the Intel website. Is this the sata driver I need? or is it something else.

Interesting to note that you have to change the IDE config to AHCI before you load windows. I tried this on my first windows install (without loading the sata/raid driver) and windows would not recognize my HD. I turned the IDE config to IDE and windows installed ok.

I mistakenly thought that if I wanted sata but did not raid, I did not need to install the "raid" driver.

So, I just want to make sure that I have the correct "AHCI" driver before I try an F6 install

Thanks

Grant

 

[techgeek]

Yeah, just switching the BIOS to AHCI will not make the Windows installer see the HDD, you need to give the installer the drivers via the F6 method described. Then when you get to the partitioning/formatting section, Windows will see the drive since you have given it the drivers to do so. Everything from that point on is standard.

As for the Intel Matrix Storage Manager software, that is the software that I mentioned that you can install after Windows has been installed. If it installs, you will have correctly enable AHCI. Here is a link for the utility from Intel that makes the F6 floppy:

LINK

This will make the floppy for you, just follow the prompts. Strangely the drivers are in the Intel Matrix Storage Manager software, but you need them long before you can install this software. Attempting to install this software with out having AHCI enabled (pre-install) will cause it to abort saying it detected neither RAID or AHCI. This utility I linked to is just down the page from the download for the IMSM software.

Also make sure you have removed the jumper on the drive prior to attempting the installation, I'm not sure what will happen, but it probably won't be favorable.