About the VIA Sata controller on a K8V (non deluxe)

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Mtimerding

I had two Maxtor 300gb drives hooked up to the
VIA Sata Controller on my K8V motherboard ....
not in any kind of raid config, just as two additional
drives (Drive J and Drive K).... I was keeping my
dvd backups on those two drives. All during the time
I had this set up I was getting a bunch of 'Disk Errors'
and ''ViaRaid Errors' in my 'Event Viewer' for Drive K.
And with the errors, came frequent data corruption for
certain files on Drive K. (could not open, file size was
usually SMALLER than what I know I put on there)
I was running it this way, cause if I ever had a failure in
on of the Sata disks I wouldnt lose ALL 500 gigs of
storage I had like I would if they were in a raid.

Because of the constant errors on Drive K, I wanted
to be able to test it and see if it was perhaps a bad
drive so I went to the Maxtor site to look for a diagnostic
program, and found that the program (PowerMax) would
not work and could not even see a Sata drive using an 'imbedded
controller' .... and even mentioned specifically the Via
KT800 chipset. Net result, no way to test the individual
drive(s).

I went ahead, deleted the two drives, and this time
installed them, and formatted as a JBOD raid config, still
using the VIA controller. (cause I see no way to use the
promise controller in a JBOD config).

I copied all the data back onto the raid (the same two Maxtor
drives) and so far, I havent gotten one error in event viewer
and havent had a single file be corrupted, being unreadable.

My question is, what am I to make of all this? Is it possible
that the same drives, same controller, can function okay
in one kind of set up (raid) and not in another? (non raid)

Thanks
 
I had two Maxtor 300gb drives hooked up to the
VIA Sata Controller on my K8V motherboard ....
not in any kind of raid config, just as two additional
drives (Drive J and Drive K).... I was keeping my
dvd backups on those two drives. All during the time
I had this set up I was getting a bunch of 'Disk Errors'
and ''ViaRaid Errors' in my 'Event Viewer' for Drive K.
And with the errors, came frequent data corruption for
certain files on Drive K. (could not open, file size was
usually SMALLER than what I know I put on there)
I was running it this way, cause if I ever had a failure in
on of the Sata disks I wouldnt lose ALL 500 gigs of
storage I had like I would if they were in a raid.

Because of the constant errors on Drive K, I wanted
to be able to test it and see if it was perhaps a bad
drive so I went to the Maxtor site to look for a diagnostic
program, and found that the program (PowerMax) would
not work and could not even see a Sata drive using an 'imbedded
controller' .... and even mentioned specifically the Via
KT800 chipset. Net result, no way to test the individual
drive(s).

I went ahead, deleted the two drives, and this time
installed them, and formatted as a JBOD raid config, still
using the VIA controller. (cause I see no way to use the
promise controller in a JBOD config).

I copied all the data back onto the raid (the same two Maxtor
drives) and so far, I havent gotten one error in event viewer
and havent had a single file be corrupted, being unreadable.

My question is, what am I to make of all this? Is it possible
that the same drives, same controller, can function okay
in one kind of set up (raid) and not in another? (non raid)

Thanks
Click to expand...

Eons ago, there were problems with disk caches at shutdown.
A lucky user would save some work, just before shutting down
the computer. For some reason, there was no practical way to
flush the cache on the disk controller before powering down,
and a portion of the user's file would be lost when the power
went off. I think one workaround, was a patch added some delay
time to shutdown, in an attempt to let the disk controller's
write-out policy to drain any outstanding writes still left
in the cache. In some cases, the safest alternative, was to disable
caching. (Caching can exist at the driver level, such as
when using the chipset maker's disk driver, or caching
exists on the cache chip on the disk controller board. The
disk controller board is the most likely to cause the problem.)

The difference might be whether an ATA/ATAPI type
driver (for want of a precise technical term) or a SCSI
miniport driver is being used. The difference between these
drivers, just might be the way that the cache is treated. You
may find one type of driver disables the cache, and that is
why it works better.

You could set up the bad config again, save a file with known
file name just before shutdown, and see if that file is
corrupted when you next reboot. That would imply a problem
with cache flushing at shutdown.

Paul
 
Eons ago, there were problems with disk caches
Click to expand...


Thanks for the reply, and possible explanation. But
I am curious, in either set up I used the VIA Raid controller,
so it wouldnt be an issue of "....the way the cache is treated
based on the driver used" .... would it?
 
Thanks for the reply, and possible explanation. But
I am curious, in either set up I used the VIA Raid controller,
so it wouldnt be an issue of "....the way the cache is treated
based on the driver used" .... would it?
Click to expand...

The SATA cable doesn't know what mode the rest of the chip
is running in, so about the only other failure mechanism I
know if, is a cache/power_off mechanism. To prove or disprove
a cache based theory, all you need to do is write one file to
disk, just before shutdown. If the file is found to be truncated
on the next boot cycle, then the cache policy was the culprit.
_If_ a Microsoft driver is installed, the cache policies could
be different than if another driver supplier is involved.

Like all hypothesis, you have to test it :-)

Paul
 
The SATA cable doesn't know what mode
Click to expand...

Thanks again for the responses Paul .. as I no longer have
the backups of the 500GB of data, and it took me a heck of
a long time to backup/restore to what I got now .... I guess
I will forgo the test for now and will just keep running this way
(with a JBOD) for now (as long as it keeps working) ....at
some point in the future, I am sure
I will end up trying your test ....if nothing else, at some point
I plan on changing these two 300gb drives for two 500gb (or plus)
drives ... that will be a perfect time to try it, especially considering
that running two 500gb in a raid means I would risk LOSING a terabyte
of data should one drive fail, and definately would NOT want to be
running in a JBOD raid just for storage. In the meantime, MAYBE
MAXTOR will release their Powermax (diagnostic) software that
WILL work on a KT800 chipset and 'imbedded' controllerers.
As it stands now, sorta sucks not being able to test the harddrive.
If not, when I go to purchase the bigger harddrives I will definately
buy from a manufacturer whose disagnostics program will work
on this rig. (I knew there had to be a reason the Maxtor drives
were so inexpensive) :) Or maybe some 'genius' will come
up with a program that allows you to 'save' the data on the other
disk should one disk fail. (geeesh, I've even learned that my
defrag program (diskkeeper) will not defrag a drive that's bigger
than 500+ gb. I guess that's another reason NOT to use a JBOD
raid)

Too bad they don't make an external harddrive big enough to transfer
all this data to (to hold it temporarily while I try the changes)
I went out looking for one for just that reason, and apparently there
are none bigger than 250gb - 300gb.

At least now I know it COULD have been the controller so I am now
somewhat less confused as to what could have happened.

Thanks Again
 
Thanks again for the responses Paul .. as I no longer have
the backups of the 500GB of data, and it took me a heck of
a long time to backup/restore to what I got now .... I guess
I will forgo the test for now and will just keep running this way
(with a JBOD) for now (as long as it keeps working) ....at
some point in the future, I am sure
I will end up trying your test ....if nothing else, at some point
I plan on changing these two 300gb drives for two 500gb (or plus)
drives ... that will be a perfect time to try it, especially considering
that running two 500gb in a raid means I would risk LOSING a terabyte
of data should one drive fail, and definately would NOT want to be
running in a JBOD raid just for storage. In the meantime, MAYBE
MAXTOR will release their Powermax (diagnostic) software that
WILL work on a KT800 chipset and 'imbedded' controllerers.
As it stands now, sorta sucks not being able to test the harddrive.
If not, when I go to purchase the bigger harddrives I will definately
buy from a manufacturer whose disagnostics program will work
on this rig. (I knew there had to be a reason the Maxtor drives
were so inexpensive) :) Or maybe some 'genius' will come
up with a program that allows you to 'save' the data on the other
disk should one disk fail. (geeesh, I've even learned that my
defrag program (diskkeeper) will not defrag a drive that's bigger
than 500+ gb. I guess that's another reason NOT to use a JBOD
raid)

Too bad they don't make an external harddrive big enough to transfer
all this data to (to hold it temporarily while I try the changes)
I went out looking for one for just that reason, and apparently there
are none bigger than 250gb - 300gb.

At least now I know it COULD have been the controller so I am now
somewhat less confused as to what could have happened.

Thanks Again
Click to expand...

Hitachi has a 7K500. I'd give a link but the URL might
not be valid for you, so look in the desktop section
here ( http://www.hitachigst.com ).

It looks to be an IDE drive, with $324 being the low price.

http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=7k500

Slap it in an IDE to USB enclosure, and you're done :-)

You can also search by "disk capacity" here, and I see
that Seagate also has a 500GB drive available.

http://www.pricewatch.com/m-26.htm

Paul
 
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