Asus P5B-E BIOS config


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Well this is my new build:

 

Asus P5B-E MB

1GB Corsair value Ram

512MB Sandisk Cruzer Micro F.D.

Seasonic Super 460 Silencer (my old old PS)

4x Chieftec 3-in-2 SATA mobile racks (from old system)

Old rack mount case (Eagle Tech ET-RM4080-BK)

Positive locking SATAII cables all around.

3x 2 SATA port Syba PCI-e controller cards

 

I'm planning to run 6 SATA connections of the MB, and and additional 6 SATA ports off the PCI-e cards, leaving 2 on board SATA/eSATA "raid" ports for future expansion (to 14 drives). I will not be using any PATA connections.

 

I've just built it and am having a hard time booting the flash, I've managed to boot with a lot of errors in forced FDD mode. This board seems to be popular, can someone please post the necessary BIOS configs? Do I run everything in AHCI or in "IDE" mode? flash in HD mode or Forced Floppy mode? USB setting generally.

 

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The key for me was to set the USB to be forced FDD (auto, forced HDD, and forced floppy didn't work for me) and, of course, the first boot device.  Just remember that when you change the USB definition, the order goes back to default.  I also let the USB run as USB1.1 ("Legacy mode") though that may or may not be important.  I turned off the parallel port, serial port, and something else per the instructions.  All other BIOS settings were default.

 

I am running my box headless so I can't easily check for more specifics.  If you continue to have difficulty and no one else chimes in with the magic answers, send me a PM and I'll reinstall the graphics card and monitor.

 

 

Bill

 

Edit: I changed the USB back to 2.0 and the system still works (and boots much faster), so that was not part of how to make it work with this board.  Forced FDD seems to be it.  I also went in and turned on the QCPU (??) mode so the board would auto-throttle the CPU fan based on temps.  I don't have the right case fans or PS fans to enable the feature for those fans.  My CPU fan was previously running 4200RPM, it is now running 1600 or so.  HUGE difference in noise.

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Well this is my new build:

 

Asus P5B-E MB

1GB Corsair value Ram

512MB Sandisk Cruzer Micro F.D.

Seasonic Super 460 Silencer (my old old PS)

4x Chieftec 3-in-2 SATA mobile racks (from old system)

Old rack mount case (Eagle Tech ET-RM4080-BK)

Positive locking SATAII cables all around.

3x 2 SATA port Syba PCI-e controller cards

 

I'm planning to run 6 SATA connections of the MB, and and additional 6 SATA ports off the PCI-e cards, leaving 2 on board SATA/eSATA "raid" ports for future expansion (to 14 drives). I will not be using any PATA connections.

 

I've just built it and am having a hard time booting the flash, I've managed to boot with a lot of errors in forced FDD mode. This board seems to be popular, can someone please post the necessary BIOS configs? Do I run everything in AHCI or in "IDE" mode? flash in HD mode or Forced Floppy mode? USB setting generally.

 

 

I left my P5B-E in IDE mode and I don't remember setting anything to forced floppy.  Like Bill, I run mine headless as well and can't easily check.

 

Just to check, have you removed the hidden partition on your flash drive.  The only way is to use the tool downloaded from the Sandisk site.  Several of us got caught on this one.

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Thank you both for chiming it!

 

I seem to be working now, w/ 10 disks so far in AHCI mode (two more coming on Wednesday), and the flash in forced FDD mode, which is to say the least a strange option. So far the sync is more than 3x faster than my old PCI based build (11Kb/s vs. 36Kb/s), major improvement to say the least. Some people have gotten even better results 58 or 59Kb/s, I wonder if they just had fewer disks or perhaps I still made some misconfigs in the BIOS, then again there are so many factors... cables, mobile racks, etc.

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Thank you both for chiming it!

 

I seem to be working now, w/ 10 disks so far in AHCI mode (two more coming on Wednesday), and the flash in forced FDD mode, which is to say the least a strange option. So far the sync is more than 3x faster than my old PCI based build (11Kb/s vs. 36Kb/s), major improvement to say the least. Some people have gotten even better results 58 or 59Kb/s, I wonder if they just had fewer disks or perhaps I still made some misconfigs in the BIOS, then again there are so many factors... cables, mobile racks, etc.

 

I suspect some folks may be misreporting their results.  For example, IIRC, my parity *starts* at 59, but then it drops down to the mid-30s.  I suspect the lower number is the average.

 

 

Bill

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There is something  funky wrong with the BIOS (ver. 1202 3/28/07) or my MB. It either forgets the config (with flash being the 1st drive, first boot drive) altogether now and again or it resets to default (which you cant set) if booted without the flash drive... (I've been doing fan silencing testing, so I've been booting w/o unraid/flash a few times. I guess I'll test it some more.

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There is something  funky wrong with the BIOS (ver. 1202 3/28/07) or my MB. It either forgets the config (with flash being the 1st drive, first boot drive) altogether now and again or it resets to default (which you cant set) if booted without the flash drive... (I've been doing fan silencing testing, so I've been booting w/o unraid/flash a few times. I guess I'll test it some more.

 

I'm pretty sure that when you pull the flash out and boot, it sees there is no flash and resets #1 to something else.

 

 

Bill

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Well, I removed the second boot device from the menu it should have defaulted into USB boot, perhaps that odd "FFD forced mode" is the issue. But yes this is what obviously happened. There is also the annoying raid trying to mount disks on bootup, and no way to turn that off. Still it's a nice board, I will be paying attention at the BIOS updates, as they come from Asus.

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