Problem with Maxtor harddrives and Promise Fasttrack 100

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dala
  • Start date Start date
D

Dala

I have 2 Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 120GB in a RAID-0 configuration
connected to a Promise Fasttrack 100 on channel 2 => 240GB diskspace.
I also have 2 9GB IBM's on channel 1 in a mirror set, RAID-1. The
computer is composed as follows: Athlon XP 1700+, EPOX 8KHA+, 256 MB
DDR, Tekram UW-SCSI, Soundblaster 64, 3COM NIC and W2kProf.

At first I thought I had too long IDE cables, they where 80 cm, but
I've tried short cables for several days now and the problem remains.

My problem is that the stripeset disconnects and the only way to
reconnect is to reboot the computer. I have tried to use checkdisk
which occasionally finds some errors but the big problem persists.
Lately the computer has started to reboot automatically but before
that I got some delayed write error messages mostly when I copied or
moved files to or from the stripeset, both locally and over the
intranet.

I would appreciate any help in this matter.

Thanks in advance,

/David
 
Dala said:
I have 2 Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 120GB in a RAID-0
configuration connected to a Promise Fasttrack 100 on
channel 2 => 240GB diskspace.
Click to expand...


Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 8 and Plus 9 hard drives are
both Ultra ATA/133 drives. The Promise FastTrak100
TX2 Pro RAID card is for Ultra ATA/100. Try the
Promise FastTrak TX2000 Pro (which is for Ultra ATA133).
BTW, what's the bus speed of the IBMs?


I also have 2 9GB IBM's on channel 1 in a mirror set, RAID-1.
The computer is composed as follows: Athlon XP 1700+,
EPOX 8KHA+, 256 MB DDR, Tekram UW-SCSI,
Soundblaster 64, 3COM NIC and W2kProf.

At first I thought I had too long IDE cables, they where 80 cm, but
I've tried short cables for several days now and the problem remains.

My problem is that the stripeset disconnects and the only way to
reconnect is to reboot the computer. I have tried to use checkdisk
which occasionally finds some errors but the big problem persists.
Lately the computer has started to reboot automatically but before
that I got some delayed write error messages mostly when I copied
or moved files to or from the stripeset, both locally and over the
intranet.
Click to expand...


*TimDaniels*
 
Timothy Daniels said:
Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 8 and Plus 9 hard drives are
both Ultra ATA/133 drives. The Promise FastTrak100
TX2 Pro RAID card is for Ultra ATA/100. Try the
Promise FastTrak TX2000 Pro (which is for Ultra ATA133).
Click to expand...

Shouldnt be necessary.
 
Timothy Daniels said:
Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 8 and Plus 9 hard drives are
both Ultra ATA/133 drives. The Promise FastTrak100
TX2 Pro RAID card is for Ultra ATA/100. Try the
Promise FastTrak TX2000 Pro (which is for Ultra ATA133).
Click to expand...

That doesn't tackle the bigger problem of the two.
 
Dala said:
I have 2 Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 120GB in a RAID-0 configuration
connected to a Promise Fasttrack 100 on channel 2 => 240GB diskspace.
Click to expand...

That is not the smartest way to connect RAID0 unless the alternative is even worse.
I also have 2 9GB IBM's on channel 1 in a mirror set, RAID-1. The com-
puter is composed as follows: Athlon XP 1700+, EPOX 8KHA+, 256 MB
DDR, Tekram UW-SCSI, Soundblaster 64, 3COM NIC and W2kProf.

At first I thought I had too long IDE cables, they where 80 cm, but
I've tried short cables for several days now and the problem remains.

My problem is that the stripeset disconnects and the only way to
reconnect is to reboot the computer. I have tried to use checkdisk
which occasionally finds some errors but the big problem persists.
Click to expand...
Lately the computer has started to reboot automatically
Click to expand...

Change channels (just channels only, for now) and see if that
changes anything. Also check the power connectors to the drives.
but before that I got some delayed write error mes-
sages mostly when I copied or moved files to or from
the stripeset, both locally and over the intranet.
Click to expand...

If the channel change above does not help, cross-
spread the stripe and the mirror over the 2 channels.
That allows parallel execution of commands to the drives.
 
Predicament? Is there a predicament? Are ATA/100
RAID controllers optimized for ATA/133 drives? If
they are, please enlighten us.
Click to expand...

ATA/133 drives can't fill an ATA/100 channel so what "optimization" do
you believe to be required?
 
Rod Speed said:
"Timothy Daniels" asked:

Even you should be able to bullshit your way out of
your predicament better than that pathetic effort, Timmy.
Click to expand...


Predicament? Is there a predicament? Are ATA/100
RAID controllers optimized for ATA/133 drives? If
they are, please enlighten us.


*TimDaniels*
 
"Rod Speed" continues to murmur sweet nothings:
Timothy Daniels asked:

ATA133 is backwards compat with ATA100, stupid.
Click to expand...


That's very enlightening. And is an ATA/133 controller
optimal for ATA/100 drives? Would you prefer to use
an ATA/100 controller with your ATA/133 drives?


*TimDaniels*
 
Timothy Daniels said:
Rod Speed wrote
Click to expand...
That's very enlightening.
Click to expand...

Even you should be able to bullshit your way out of
your predicament better than that pathetic effort, Timmy.
And is an ATA/133 controller optimal for ATA/100 drives?
Click to expand...

ATA133 is backwards compat with ATA100, stupid.
Would you prefer to use an ATA/100
controller with your ATA/133 drives?
Click to expand...

Even you should be able to bullshit your way out of
your predicament better than that pathetic effort, Timmy.
 
"Rod Speed" continues to murmur sweet nothings:


That's very enlightening. And is an ATA/133 controller
optimal for ATA/100 drives? Would you prefer to use
an ATA/100 controller with your ATA/133 drives?


*TimDaniels*
Click to expand...



You are way out of your depth, IS DOSN'T MATTER..
 
"Rod Speed" continues to murmur sweet nothings:


That's very enlightening. And is an ATA/133 controller
optimal for ATA/100 drives? Would you prefer to use
an ATA/100 controller with your ATA/133 drives?


*TimDaniels*
Click to expand...

Tim, I'm afraid the Trouble One is right. That's no excuse for the
arrogance and rudeness of his replies -- he seems to think that
because he has a middling knowledge of storage technology (!) he's
entitled to act like a god -- but behind Rod's embarrassing attempt to
compensate for his penis size lies the fact that ATA-133 drives don't
use the full bandwidth of even the ATA-100 interface, meaning that, in
practice, there's no difference in performance.


Josh
 
"Joshua P. Hill" explained:
.....ATA-133 drives don't use the full bandwidth
of even the ATA-100 interface, meaning that, in
practice, there's no difference in performance.
Click to expand...


Yes, I gathered that from the reply from one of
Rod's Spelling-Impaired Minions. I called Promise
to glean the difference between the ATA/100 and
ATA/133 RAID controller cards, and besides the
ability to handle Big Addresses and 64-bit busses,
the rep could only say that the latter uses a more recent
and better BIOS. When pressed, though, he said
that the latest BIOS could be downloaded from
the Promise site. And there is some interesting
reading there regarding BIOS and driver versions:
http://www.promise.com/support/download/download_eng.asp

Och "David" (med webnamnet "Dala") - jag hoppas att
det ska gå bra för dig och RAID systemet. Hej då.


*TimDaniels*
 
You are way out of your depth, IS DOESN'T MATTER..
Click to expand...

Only slightly and for totally differrent reasons than you think.
In that respect you are the one that is way out of your depth, not him.
 
My problem is that the stripeset disconnects and the only way to
reconnect is to reboot the computer. I have tried to use checkdisk
which occasionally finds some errors but the big problem persists.
Lately the computer has started to reboot automatically but before
that I got some delayed write error messages mostly when I copied
or moved files to or from the stripeset, both locally and over the
intranet
Click to expand...

Turn off the 'reboot on error' option and you may see the error message.
Have you checked the 'event viewer'? Do you have good quality memory? Cheap
/faulty memory can cause these problems.

Mike.
 
Of course he isn't when it comes to the crunch of it.


But 2 of them in RAID do. And neither do (most) single SCSI Ultra320
drives use-up the bandwidth of Ultra2 let alone Ultra160 but 4 drives
in RAID, or otherwise used simultaniously, certainly do need 320MB/s.

Contrary to 'popular' belief, ATA133 and Ultra320 have real ex-
istence value because of RAID and/or multiuser/multitasking use.


Pity that isn't the correct explanation for "shouldnt be necessary".
The RAID0 drives will do a maximum of ~90MB/s on one ATA100
channel where with ATA133 they may be able to do ~110MB/s.
The same can be realized by spreading them over the 2 channels,
assuming the RAID1 isn't used simultaniously with the RAID0.
Click to expand...

But he said he has two drives. That being the case, it would be rather
foolish to run them both on the same channel.

Josh
 
"Joshua P. Hill" explained:


Yes, I gathered that from the reply from one of
Rod's Spelling-Impaired Minions. I called Promise
to glean the difference between the ATA/100 and
ATA/133 RAID controller cards, and besides the
ability to handle Big Addresses and 64-bit busses,
the rep could only say that the latter uses a more recent
and better BIOS. When pressed, though, he said
that the latest BIOS could be downloaded from
the Promise site. And there is some interesting
reading there regarding BIOS and driver versions:
http://www.promise.com/support/download/download_eng.asp

Och "David" (med webnamnet "Dala") - jag hoppas att
det ska gå bra för dig och RAID systemet. Hej då.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the ATA-100 Promise controllers suffer from a data
corruption problem with large files. Since to the best of my knowledge
Promise never acknowledged the problem, I'm not sure whether the 133's
inherited it, or whether it was fixed in the later BIOS versions.

Josh
 
Joshua P. Hill said:
But he said he has two drives.
Nope.

That being the case,
Click to expand...

Obviously not.
it would be rather foolish to run them both on the same channel.
Click to expand...

Like I said, not the smartest way unless the alternative is worse.
 
was reading this thread and was amused by the lack of many
suggestions.

since no one else mentioned it, you can download a utility file from
Maxtor that you can use to set the hard drives to whatever ATA speed
you want e.g. ata100 for the 133 drives. This shouldn't be necessary,
but it never hurts to try.

I'd stay away from controller cards that come from drive manufacturers
with proprietary bioses. Just an extra layer of problems with little
support. and god knows how their bios treats their competitor's
drives ;)

Promise makes it clear that you're on your own with someone else's
bios.
 
Back
Top