The S-ATA (n) experiece

arela · Post by **arela** » Mon Jun 30, 2003 2:18 pm

....nice topic!
When I build myself a new pc in may, I decided to go for a S-ATA disc. It was more curiosity, than need for speed.
I decided to go for a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 120GB.

Problem 1:
When i was going to install WinXP, there was no disc ...hmm.
But i detected someting about a mysterious thing called PROMISE CHIP driver. So I made a 1,44 disc from WIN XP, and now I did get access to my disc, could format etc.
I "partioned" (is it a word?) C= ca 7,5 GB and E= ca 110 GB.
Problem solved.

But a real dissapoinment that I could not find a single word about this in MB manual / or Maxtor web-sites. (or anny other web-sites)

Problem 2: How to press F5 (Std PC-mode) and F6 (SCSI/Raid/S-ata) at the same time.
As you guessed, F6 won and my pc is ACPI and not Standard PC mode. (in that short blink of time, i guess i pressed about 30 times!!)
Problem is not solved, but problem is no real problem (pc is running ok)

Problem 3: pc running ok, but suddenly i can't get access to HD. trying trying getting sick, and is about to use the other HD (a 60GB ide) as my system disc, but i decided to give it another try (the next day, and i was in a better mood).
Problem solved: it was a bad connection.
How it did happen, or what made it happen i don't know. But since then, everything is ok.

All in all it has been a usefull experiece, and the only thing i could complain about, is that i need to press F1 at almost every start-up.
The disc is quiet and is running below 40 degree C.

..

..now i have some music to be made!

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Mon Jun 30, 2003 7:01 pm

I'm looking to pickup some SATA drives to throw in my audio rig as well (and I'm sure others are curious). Can you comment on track counts, pops, clicks, ULLI settings achieved and such?

Sam

arela · Post by **arela** » Tue Jul 01, 2003 2:00 pm

I just did a test (and invented a new musicstyle) I took 27 mono tracks, mostly guitartracs, from different songs into SX.
3 is 32 bit, 3 is 24 bit and the rest is 16 bit...all 44,1 kHz. They were routed to 16 buses (16 ASIO 24 bit source into STM2448)
8 with effect(s)
All in all it was 6 different songs, probably differnt bpm and it sounded buuuh.
All files was ca 20MB
Haven't had any pops or clicks jet (fingers crossed).
I never changed the ulli settings, so it's 25 ms for 44,1 kHz. Used the same settings on my x pc's too.

All track where recorded in Cubase 5 or SX and edited in CoolEdit (and brought back to cubase again)
ps..pc has been running since friday (5 days)

I did run FreshDiagnose Benchmark (freebee) but it could not read from the HD, writing speed was ok (faster than my 60GB Western IDE). I'll guess there is some missmatch between S-ATA chip drive and that program.

I use a Asus P4PE MB.
Most S-ATA HD's need special (15 pins I think) powercable. Maxtor can also use standard HD power cable.

hope this helps.....arela

valis · Post by **valis** » Wed Jul 02, 2003 5:13 am

Unfortunately on the P4PE the sata raid chip is an addon by Asus, and not part of the intel chipset, thus requiring its own driver. The other downside to this is that the chip is essentially connected to the pci bus, only soldered onto the motherboard instead of being a card in a slot.

The newer i865PE & i875P chipsets have raid as a part of the intel chipset. In addition to them having their own addressing lines outside of the pci bus, one would hope that installation is a bit easier.

Just thought I'd give a counterpoint so that people realize that S-ATA is more standard now and aren't totally leery of S-ATA.

arela · Post by **arela** » Wed Jul 02, 2003 8:41 am

Thanks vallis
And also i believe "newer = faster" when it comes to s-ata drivers and interface.

Valium · Post by **Valium** » Wed Jul 02, 2003 12:08 pm

Well I have a new p4p800 with the ich5r southbridge that has the s-ata option built in thus avoiding the pci bus completely. The speed is bout the same as an addon card (just a little less but that might be my system only) and it an easy setup as well. Just enabled the s-ata ports in bios and configured the built in raid controller and of you go. I don't use raid because ich5r is softraid and uses the cpu to complete the raidcommands.

Just thought that might be worth telling here.

Greetz

arela · Post by **arela** » Wed Jul 02, 2003 1:33 pm

Yes Valium, SOFTRAID is the word.
I don't use raid either, but I believe its some relationship with the way HD's is setup in Raid-systems.
On my pc, the FastTrack controller share IRQ with a USB 2 controller.

By the way I just restarted my DAW, and I didn't have to push F1...

..stange pc!!!