TheWombat Posted March 28, 2011 Share Posted March 28, 2011 Today I decided to take on HPA and Gigabyte and have a little fun note: unRaid v4.7 PC-01 = Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H v2.2 PC-02 = Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P PC-03 = Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P note: See further below in this post as the Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H looks like it could be a promising candidate for unRaid builds. All the above have Windows 7sp1 64bit Ultimate installed and are not planned to be used for unRaid hence I'm not posting this topic in the General Support forum. I am however planning to use another Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H v2.2 for unRaid so wanted to ensure I would not have any HPA problems. On a point of principle I did not want my Windows PCs to suffer with HPA either On checking the BIOS All three motherboards allow HPA to be disabled. All three motherboards appear to have HPA disabled by default. However the primary HDDs/SSDs in PC-01 and PC-02 did have HPA partitions as a result of other prior (user!) issues. PC-01 (HTPC) Mobo: Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H v2.2 HDD: Drive #1 - SAMSUNG HD080HJ (74 GB) RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) G.Skill F3-10666CL8-2GBHK CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955, 3215 MHz (16 x 201) PC-02 (my PC) Mobo: Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P HDD: Drive #1 - OCZ-AGILITY2 (111 GB) Drive #2 - WDC WD5001AALS-00J7B0 (465 GB) Drive #3 - LiteOn blu-ray drive RAM: 8GB (4x2GB) G.Skill F3-10666CL8-2GBHK CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition 965, 3415 MHz (17 x 201) PC-03 (my wife's PC) Mobo: Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P HDD: Drive #1 - OCZ-AGILITY2 (111 GB) Drive #2 - SAMSUNG SP2004C (186 GB) Drive #3 - MSI DVD-RW drive RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) G.Skill F3-10666CL8-2GBHK CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition 955, 3215 MHz (16 x 201) Booting into unRaid on each machine and looking at the SysLog showed the primary drives had HPAs on PC-01 and PC-02. Using the command "hdparm -N p000000000 /dev/sda" where 000000000 should be replaced with the "native" size as shown in the SysLog removed the HPA on PC-01 however there was an issue regarding PC-02 that confuses me however I did eventually manage to resolve. For some reason on PC-02 my unRaid wouldn't boot on my normal unRaid USB flash drive. I was able to get the PC to boot into unRaid from another USB flash drive. When using the hdparm command the following response was displayed and I was unable to remove the HPA: root@PC-02:~# hdparm -N p234441648 /dev/sda /dev/sda: setting max visible sectors to 234441648 (permanent) HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Input/output error HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Input/output error root@PC-02:~# Looking at the SysLog I can see the following, although unsure if this is related: Mar 27 16:06:38 NAS-03 kernel: ata1: softreset failed (device not ready) Mar 27 16:06:38 NAS-03 kernel: ata1: applying SB600 PMP SRST workaround and retrying Mar 27 16:06:38 NAS-03 kernel: usb 6-1: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2 Mar 27 16:06:38 NAS-03 kernel: ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) Mar 27 16:06:38 NAS-03 kernel: ata1.00: HPA detected: current 234433391, native 234441648 Mar 27 16:06:38 NAS-03 kernel: ata1.00: ATA-8: OCZ-AGILITY2, 1.25, max UDMA/133 Mar 27 16:06:38 NAS-03 kernel: ata1.00: 234433391 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA Mar 27 16:06:38 NAS-03 kernel: ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Mar 27 16:06:38 NAS-03 kernel: scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA OCZ-AGILITY2 1.25 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 Mar 27 16:06:38 NAS-03 kernel: scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA WDC WD5001AALS-0 05.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 Unsure if the items above in the SysLog are relevent, however I thought my hdparm error might be due to PC-02 having either 3 drives connected rather than 1, or the main drive being an SSD rather than an HDD. Rebooting with only the SSD connected resulted in the same errors. Instead I connected the SSD to PC-01 and rebooted into unRaid and the hdparm command worked successfully. With the HPA partitions removed I reconnected the Drives back as normal and rebooted into Windows. On the Windows Disk Management utility the c:/ drives now showed a small amount (a few MBs) of unallocated space although the option to 'Expand Partition' was greyed out. Opening an elevated Command Prompt and using the windows 'diskpart' utility allowed me to expand the c:/ drive to consume the remaining unallocated space that had been the HPA. No more HPA and I have confirmed it has not returned after multiple reboots and Windows 7 is working fine! On a positive note the GA-880GMA-UD2H v2.2 is looking like it could be a promising unRaid motherboard with the following specifications: micro-ATX Onboard graphics AMD Radeon 4250 with D-Sub, DVI-D and HDMI Realtek 8111D/E chip (10/100/1000 Mbit) 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16) 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4) 1 x PCI Express x1 slot (All PCI Express slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.) 1 x PCI slot 5 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors supporting up to 5 SATA 6Gb/s devices 1 x eSATA 3Gb/s connector on the back panel supporting up to 1 SATA 3Gb/s device 10 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports (4 on the back panel, 6 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers) 2 x USB 3.0 ports on the back panel I will post further on this motherboard once my unRaid server is operational Edit: Server built and currently running through pre-clears. The Gigabyte motherboard is performing well so far. Edit: 2 x SASLP fitted and working (need to downgrade SASLP firmware to .15). :-) Alex Link to comment
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