Weird SATA problem...

[odie812]

Hey everyone....

So, I have my two Seagate 120GB Barraccuda drives configured as a RAID O on my A7N8X deluxe with Windows XP Home SP1.

I've noticed recently that when I try to download large files, say 100MB or more, they download fine, but when the computer is writing them to the hard disk, they get corrupted.

This happened with Day Of Defeat v1.0 when I got the "corrupt executable" error. Most recently, it happened when I downloaded 3DMark2003 and I got a "catastrophic error," preventing installation in both cases.

I went into "My Computer" and I tried to check the hard drive for errors but it tells me after phase 1 that it is unable to continue the error check.

Any ideas? I don't want to mess with the chunk size until I see if it might be something else.

Thanks,

Odie

[Blakhart]

Is the os on the raid? If so, you have seen what almost always happens when you raid0 the os. Having the os on a fast single drive, and the apps/games on the raid is the way to go. is this hardware or software raid, by the way? What card do you use?

[mike breck]

First, are you able to do a Virus scan?

I've read of a data corruption problem with SATA RAID and the A7N8X. There is a supposed fix for it.

http://www.pclincs.co.uk/Forums/showthread/t-2094.html

Might also be a good idea to check out the Asus Website and see what they say in their support/downloads section.

HTH

[odie812]

Yes, my OS is on the RaidO. It's a hardware Raid, I'm using the Silicon Image hardware that comes on the A7N8X Deluxe Mobo.

So, what I should do is get a fast IDE drive, like 40 GB, and put the OS on that? then config the RaidO seperately...

[Blakhart]

What mike said, but I think/suspect that the raid in the n8x is software, done by the cpu, the onboard "card" just acts as a catalyst. I would never raid0 the os. Your thought on a fast single drive for os is great. I try to use the drive that has the fastest access times. If you can find a 8 to 10gig 7200rpm ide drive, put the os and a swapfile on it. It's access shouldn't be too bad. And since it is only 8 to 10gig in size, hopefully you can save some money. If you can get a cheap ide that's faster and bigger, use it. Just hate to see the space wasted on an os drive. For the boot drive, think access time. If you have a drive that has 14ms access, and one that has 7ms access, use the 7. A 4.5 would be real nice. Then raid the sata's if you want, for apps. You can have seldom processed data stored on the os drive (usually called a boot drive), but you mainly want the drive to do os calls and swapping, so don't put anything on the drive that will compete for i/o with the os. Other than a swapfile, that is. I like a swap on every drive, as when one drive is busy, another might not be, and swapping is always going on, you can't stop it, so the free drive can attend the swap. Having swaps on all the drives increases swap bandwidth, not too noticeable by you, but the machine notices...
Some thoughts for you...