Im running 4.2 pro and using the original Intel motherboard setup. I recently added a Promise SATA 300 TX4 card and 2 Seagate 500GB Harddrives. Recently accessing files on any drives seems very slow when accessed from 2 of my computers. In XP it takes awhile for the share to come online and to actually view the file or copy the file. I watched a movie last night via XBMC with no issues.

 

My disk configuration looks like this (I am also using one of the old IDE Promise cards):

 

arity device:  pci-0000:02:01.0-scsi-1:0:0:0 (sdd) scsi-SATA_ST3500830AS_6QG0FTY6

disk1 device: pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:0:0 (sda) scsi-SATA_ST3400620AS_5QG0EB4H

disk2 device: pci-0000:00:1f.1-ide-1:0 (hdc) ata-ST3250823A_3ND2CJR8

disk3 device: pci-0000:00:1f.1-ide-1:1 (hdd) ata-Maxtor_6L250R0_L59LLJ5G

disk4 device: pci-0000:02:00.0-ide-0:0 (hde) ata-ST3300631A_5NF1G448

disk5 device: pci-0000:02:00.0-ide-0:1 (hdf) ata-ST3300831A_3NF15JP8

disk6 device: pci-0000:00:1f.1-ide-0:0 (hda) ata-Maxtor_6L300R0_L603TT7G

disk7 device: pci-0000:00:1f.1-ide-0:1 (hdb) ata-Maxtor_6L200P0_L41KMQ2H

disk8 device: pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-1:0:0:0 (sdb) scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD400LJS0H2J10L504301

disk9 device: pci-0000:02:01.0-scsi-2:0:0:0 (sde) scsi-SATA_ST3500830AS_6QG0GM78F

 

Syslog : http://www.scubastruck.com/will/syslog_11.11.07.txt

I took a quick look, and I can say your system looks pretty good, only a couple of small issues.  When you rebooted on Nov 4 at 7pm, the system looks like it wasn't powered down safely, so it replayed a very few transactions on most of the drives, and started a parity check.  That would have slowed your access down, until it finished 7 hours later.  Since then, it has run smooth, with no messages at all.  There are no obvious indications of anything slowing performance, except for the following note.

 

This may be limiting your performance a little.  The 2 new 500GB Seagates are linking at SATA150 speeds, not SATA300, and since one is your new parity drive, you want it to be as fast as possible.  I suspect you may not have removed the SATA150 jumper from those drives.  It is a small jumper, almost hidden.  I hope that will help.

 

Edit:  I would also recommend upgrading to 4.2.1, which fixed an important issue in Samba.

 

I took a quick look, and I can say your system looks pretty good, only a couple of small issues.  When you rebooted on Nov 4 at 7pm, the system looks like it wasn't powered down safely, so it replayed a very few transactions on most of the drives, and started a parity check.  That would have slowed your access down, until it finished 7 hours later.  Since then, it has run smooth, with no messages at all.  There are no obvious indications of anything slowing performance, except for the following note.

 

This may be limiting your performance a little.  The 2 new 500GB Seagates are linking at SATA150 speeds, not SATA300, and since one is your new parity drive, you want it to be as fast as possible.  I suspect you may not have removed the SATA150 jumper from those drives.  It is a small jumper, almost hidden.  I hope that will help.

 

Edit:  I would also recommend upgrading to 4.2.1, which fixed an important issue in Samba.

 

 

Wow that jumper is small. How can I be sure its at SATA300?

 

I also upgraded to 4.2.1.  I will let you know if this helps.

 

Thanks for the advice.

How can I be sure its at SATA300?

In the syslog you linked, the Promise SATA 300 TX4 is controlling ata3 through ata6, and your new drives are connected to ata4 and ata5.  If the drives are still connected the same, search a new syslog for 'ata4: SATA link up' and it will indicate either 1.5 Gbps or 3.0 Gbps.  A little below that should be the other drive on ata5.  What you want to see is 'SATA link up 3.0 Gbps' for both.  The other 2 are unconnected, and say 'SATA link down'.

 

30 seconds with google found a nice PDF image.  The one I saw says take out the jumper for 300, keep it in (in a particular location) for 150.  I'm not sure which exact model of 500GB Seagate drive you have, so you should use that info and search for yourself.

 

 

Bill

That jumper drives me crazy, why would you have a jumper SET from the factory for lower performance?! Every Seagate SATA I've seen has this and I think my WDs did too