IDE device scan on P5AD2?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave
  • Start date Start date
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Dave

I just setup a new P5AD2 (premium) system with 2 SATA drives and one
PATA drive. Since adding the PATA drive, the IDE scanning step during
bootup takes forever to complete (ok, maybe 30 secs). It finds the
drive okay, but what the heck is taking so long? I saw an option in the
BIOS (I forget the name now) but it allowed setting of a timeout between
0 and 35 secs in 5 sec increments. I thought this was like a "wait
time" to allow for slower disks to come up to speed before device
enumeration, but I changed it from the default 35 to 0 and it made no
difference in scan time. Can someone tell me how to speed-up this
process? Thanks for any help.

Dave
 
Dave <[email protected]> said:
I just setup a new P5AD2 (premium) system with 2 SATA drives and one
PATA drive. Since adding the PATA drive, the IDE scanning step during
bootup takes forever to complete (ok, maybe 30 secs). It finds the
drive okay, but what the heck is taking so long? I saw an option in the
BIOS (I forget the name now) but it allowed setting of a timeout between
0 and 35 secs in 5 sec increments. I thought this was like a "wait
time" to allow for slower disks to come up to speed before device
enumeration, but I changed it from the default 35 to 0 and it made no
difference in scan time. Can someone tell me how to speed-up this
process? Thanks for any help.

Dave
Click to expand...

About all I can suggest, is to set the unused drive positions to
[Not Installed], in case the time is being wasted looking for
drives that aren't there.

The BIOS can chug away, probing the USB ports as well, in case
you have a USB drive available for booting. So, for kicks, try
disabling USB in the BIOS, and see if performance improves.
Maybe if you have a memory stick reader, that adds to the
time ? I don't have one, so that is just a guess.

A debugging tool like a POST card (decodes port 80 I/O calls
that are embedded in the BIOS) shows two digit codes for what
routine the BIOS is currently in. As an end user, that is the
only mechanism I know of, to remotely even get close to
understanding what a BIOS is doing. Seeing the numbers changing
during the dead period, would tell you that not all the time is
spent looking for drives.

As the documentation of the I/O calls is sadly lacking (i.e.
keeping the numbers up to date), even that isn't much good,
depending on how much undocumented customizing Asus has done
after getting the BIOS from AMI or Award. POST codes have
limited value in that sense, as I've seen USENET posts where
people who own a POST card, gets codes that aren't listed in
the POST code lists.

Paul
 
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