May 26, 200719 yr No, I still can't get the onboard JMicron PATA controller to work. I've emailed Tomm about it a few times before the v4 final release, but he still hasn't gotten back to me yet. I've ended up using some cheap PATA-SATA converters instead to make use of my PATA drives. This seems to work better for me.
May 26, 200719 yr Bummer. I was about ready to just return the motherboard and go back to my old one, but I decided to check the performance first. I removed the 2 IDE drives from the array, and my performance doubled during the parity check, so I think I'll keep this motherboard. One of the IDE drives is brand new, so I can just exchange it for a SATA drive instead. The other one I'll probably put in my main workstation for some extra storage, and if Tom ever fixes the problem I can move it back to my array.
May 26, 200719 yr Good deal, Mikester What kind of speed are you seeing with yours? I get 52-57MB/sec during parity sync with 6 drives, one of them being a 500GB PATA drive on a PATA-SATA adapter.
May 26, 200719 yr As for Port Multiplier, I got a very nice external case (5 bay) that would be useful for drives expansion and it only needs a single power cable and a single eSata cable. PM runs on Sata-II (300MB/sec bandwidth), divided for 5 drives, each of them gets 60MB/sec... which seems more than adequate for the current crop of drives to me. Can you tell us more about the Port Multiplier setup you are using? Is it working? Controller Card? External Case? Brands, Location to purchase?
May 26, 200719 yr Can you tell us more about the Port Multiplier setup you are using? Is it working? Controller Card? External Case? Brands, Location to purchase? My setup currently only works in Windows. The Port Multipliers chipsets that are available in the market (SIL 3726, paired with SIL313x or SIL312x controllers) are to blame here, they don't have sufficient support outside of MS Windows. I've tried them on solaris and linux (unraid) and they failed pretty much the same way during intialization of the unit. Tomm has found a patch to make port multiplier work in Linux, but it's only for an older kernel than the one being used in unraid v4.0 final. So, as soon as they've ported the patch into the proper kernel version, Tomm can try to incorporate that to unraid. As soon as that happen, I will try it out on my rig and report here. Working: Not yet Case: Stardom Sohotank ST6600 ( http://www.stardom.com.tw/sohotank%20st6600.htm ) Card: IOI Sil-3132 PCI-e eSATA Purchased from: Storage Studio Singapore ( www.genius-asia.com.sg )
May 26, 200719 yr Good deal, Mikester What kind of speed are you seeing with yours? I get 52-57MB/sec during parity sync with 6 drives, one of them being a 500GB PATA drive on a PATA-SATA adapter. During the parity sync it topped out at 59MB/s. This is with 6 drives also - a Seagate 7200.10 500GB for the parity drive, and 5 Western Digital 320GB drives. One thing I did was spread the drives over 4 different controllers (2 built in and 2 add-in cards) to keep from saturating any single bus - hopefully that will help keep the performance up as I add drives. My old motherboard (Asus P5PE-VM) topped out at 22 MB/s. After seeing these results, I'm convinced the bottleneck was the PCI bus, since 4 of my SATA drives were plugged into a Sil3114-based SATA 150 PCI card.
May 31, 200719 yr The "Estimated speed" is measuring the rate at which the parity drive is being accessed, and thus can not go faster than the speed of the parity drive. 59MB/sec is very nearly the max speed of any 7200RPM hard drive.
July 25, 200718 yr On the basis of all the good things I've heard about unRaid with HTPC's, I took the plunge. Hardware: ASUS P5B-E 3.2 Intel Pentium D 935 1 G DDR2 533 (800 MHz) Old EVGA e-GeForce MX 4000 PCI Graphics Card CMStacker STC-TO 1 case 3 750 GB Seagate SATA ST3750640AS HDD's 2 eXtreme 500W PSU's 4 GB Lexar Firefly Flash Drive Though I am not new to computer building, I cannot even get this one to POST. Fans spin, including PSU's, power LED's on, light on MB also on. Sounds as if HDD's are spinning up. Still no POST. Obviously, I cannot, therefore, get to BIOS to change boot order so that Flash Drive is first to boot. So, I cannot even get to the unRaid boot. I am a lurker; I rarely post or ask for help. But I need help this time. if any of you who have this MB up and running could help me out, I certainly would appreciate it.
July 25, 200718 yr Go through all the connections, make sure they are in tight. Check that memory and cards are seated properly. Make sure the CPU is installed right. How do you know if you are POSTing or not? That board has no speaker, so the only clear evidence would be the video output so perhaps everything is working but the (admittedly old) videocard or monitor. Bill
July 25, 200718 yr Thank you for your suggestions. Connections and seating of PCI card were the first things I checked. Memory and CPU came installed on MB. I did not check them, but, you are right, I should. I put monitor on another box and it checked out fine. Video card? I'll see if I can round up another just to see if that is the problem. On the ASUS forum, some talked about problems with booting with unformatted HDD. Something about the boot timing out when it could not find a formated HDD. Sounded crazy to me. That has never been a reason for a box not booting for me before. However, I have several HDD's laying around that are formatted; I will throw one in to see if that does anything. Though both PSU's seem to be working, is there any kind of trick with the CMStacker cases that might have kept boot from happening? I will try to boot the system with only one PSU just to test things.
July 25, 200718 yr New video card. All is well with getting the box past POST. I was able to get into BIOS and set Lexar Firefly flash drive as first and only boot device. It is interesting that POST identifies it as flash drive while BIOS calls it a HDD. Still, no luck with booting into unRaid OS (slackware altered) for UnRaid server. I get a message that says "no operating system found." I will try to do the things indicated in the Basic Set-up information. I will also try another, smaller, Firefly. I read on one of the previous posts somewhere on these forums that there may be an issue with larger flash drives? The one i have used up to now is 4 GB.
July 25, 200718 yr New video card. All is well with getting the box past POST. I was able to get into BIOS and set Lexar Firefly flash drive as first and only boot device. It is interesting that POST identifies it as flash drive while BIOS calls it a HDD. Still, no luck with booting into unRaid OS (slackware altered) for UnRaid server. I get a message that says "no operating system found." I will try to do the things indicated in the Basic Set-up information. I will also try another, smaller, Firefly. I read on one of the previous posts somewhere on these forums that there may be an issue with larger flash drives? The one i have used up to now is 4 GB. Common problem with that mobo. Try setting the usb to be FDD (not HDD, floppy, or auto) - after that, reset the priority order so the USB is first. Bill
July 26, 200718 yr Bill, even though I knew how to do some of the stuff you suggested, I was clueless about the Force FDD business. Even though I had read your earlier post and those of melechmet and flambot, I have to admit that, even with your push in the right direction, I still felt pretty dumb in actual execution. I found that particular set of BIOS to be confusing. Thank you for you help. Without it, I would still be mucking around. Because of your patience, I am up and running. Thank God the system I work with every day is not that confusing.
July 27, 200718 yr Bill, even though I knew how to do some of the stuff you suggested, I was clueless about the Force FDD business. Even though I had read your earlier post and those of melechmet and flambot, I have to admit that, even with your push in the right direction, I still felt pretty dumb in actual execution. I found that particular set of BIOS to be confusing. Thank you for you help. Without it, I would still be mucking around. Because of your patience, I am up and running. Thank God the system I work with every day is not that confusing. We were all Newbies at one point - I spent a good 90 minutes "mucking around" before I figured out the magic combination. However, I think Tom's guidance for setup makes a reference to the FDD issue. Glad to hear you are now past the setup stage. I have had zero issues since that point. Bill
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