How to solute install problems

Hello Folks,

 

need somebody's help today. I have been fighting to get my ssd to work in a FS Amilo Xi 1526. The system has a Via Vt6421 Raid controller, but I am using only one drive. I can not get the 945PM chipset to address the drive in AHCI Sata mode. I changed the chipset drivers a lot in windows 7 ultimate x64, but that resulted mostly in a BSOD. In my Pi 1536, I had things rolling with Intel Matrix Storage Management, but that gets kicked out in this system. WIN 7 list now SCSI drive in the control panel.

Can anybody pls tell me how to address this problem and how I can (if possible) have the benefits of a ssd.

Attached the miserable results with Atto.

CorsairF3.pdf

That chipset (and possibly the RAID controller as well) only supports SATA I speeds, so you'll never see the drive run faster than 150 MB/s. Not sure why it won't reach those speeds, but with a system that's 6 years old it could be so many things.

Thanks for your answer, I understand what you say.

Remains the problem, what to do to get it to 150 mb/s, which will be a hell of an improvement. And always better than a HDD I think.

Any suggestions are apreciated.

Don't think you will get the full 150Mb/s as that is probably only for RAID0 drives.

 

The VIA website says

Supports data transfer rates of up to 150Mbps

http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/peripherals/serial-ata_raid/vt6421/

Thanks. I should use raid than, since that is on this laptop. Can you use raid 0 with different drives? e.a ssd and hdd?

You probably can but it may not work well. RAID is for identical drives like 2xForce 3 120GB.

OK. I 'll fight and let you know. Something better than the atto report has to come out of this. Thanks for the effort.

Hello, back again. How is everybody.?

 

Have been fighting still with my problem. Now I forced the VT6421 raid driver into Via AHCI controller -6287.

I forced one of the IDE/Atapi controllers from ATA Channel 0 to Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA controller.

After a few BSOD it worked, when I picked the right one, but the disk device description is still Corsair Force 3 SCSI disk device.

 

I well moved forward in bench result. The Atto bench was now 78mb/s instead of 21mb/s. However, this is only for the write cycle. Read is still 21mb/s and much lower. How the read could be so low compared to write. One would think a read cycle is easier and faster.

Any suggestions to help me with this topic is highly appreciated.

 

Benched my USB drive, which came out with write 27mb/s and read 34mb/s. better read than the corsair.

Second.pdf

do you have the "latest" BIOS? http://support.ts.fujitsu.com/Download/Showfiles.asp?OSOpenedTree=&IsOSSelected=YES&RHRead=&OS%20Independent%20%20%28BIOS,%20Firmware,%20etc.%29-Childs=0&OSText=FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF_OS%20Independent%20%20%28BIOS,%20Firmware,%20etc.%29_True also more importantly Your product is not supported for Windows® 7.

Thanks for your reaction.

Yes I have version 1.27. I know about w7, but it running smootly.

prior to this system I had the Pi 1536, which is also officially not supported.

But if you look at the processor and chip set specs, it should not be a problem.

In some occasions you have to work with other drivers than the original, because FS doesn't release new ones for these systems.

As stated earlier in the thread, the Pi1536 was running fine with the F3 under the Intel Matrix Storage Manager in AHCI mode. No more than a 120mb/s but for the system acceptable and better than a HDD.

So remaines here, how I address the problem with the Raid driver.

your ATTO results are still horrible and inconsistent. i would try a secure erase and start fresh or make a backup image to another drive.

you can possibly run a live CD of XP and retest the drive after cleaning it up and see if the results are better.

at this point i really cant tell if its a controller or drive issue. may just not be aligned properly.

Thanks for your suggestions, I will check them out and let you know.

He folks,

 

Update: Tried some other possibilities but no luck on this system.

Followed the thread http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85344&highlight=acronis and unfortunately the new acronis version 2012 is embedding in the system, including bootloader and can not be deleted. the uninstall does not work (on purpose?) and I used many shredder programs, but could not remove it. A new Win install was my only solution. Maybe the thread should warn not to use the 2012, but the 2010 version, which is selectable on their website.

Using Parted Magic I found out that the drive locks after Erase Disk.

The program tells you this and ask you to set the system in sleep and run the program part again after waking up when you start the Partition Editor. This might be the problem in Windows too when he freezes during install procedures.

After this I installed Win 7 x64 and ran all the updates first to make sure I had the latest available drivers.

After that I got a atto bench of 79mb/s and left it at that, shame, but I will wait till I can install a second ssd drive to make a Raid set. See what happens than.

Thanks for the reply and info. If you make a bootable disk with acronis, you obviously do not have that problem. Good solution. I have a nerve struck when I see that a program even creates a boot loader. I want to make that choice.

Concerning the Parted Magic, you are right. Due to the problems I ran into with putting a Force3 120 Gb to work with my system I see spooks everywhere.

When you experienced like you.you must LOL. I understand your aim, but I do not have another system to play. I am still fighting and have the ssd with a hdd on the raid interface, as 2 sata drives. I came up with a next idea to try.

I ordered a pcmcia to sata card from China. If I make a raid 1 set from 2 hdd's and put the ssd on the pcmcia bootable, with the OS, I can gain some serious speed. The card is sata II with 3.0Gbps and backwards compatible with sata I.

I will not get the sata II speeds, but must sure end up higher than now,

Now wait for the card to reach and play again. I let you know what happens.

He Ram Guy, thanks for keeping track. I just trying to keep up this thread for the ones among us who can not afford a speedy consales. Still got some of those, look at me.

It is a sport to modify an oldy and get it to speed up.

Finally received the Sata express card.. Could not get it to boot from. The bios allows pci, but not pc card. I gave up and sold the laptop. Now I have the FCS Pi 2540 with the 965PM chipset, with Sata and gives me a 250MB/s on Atto.

Also the Intel Matrix Storage manager installed which brought up the speed till 260 MB/s. For me this is enough to be satisfied now. Onliest thing I want to try now is the Intel Turbo Memory card, see what that does.

The results from ATTO are normal if they are around 250-260Mb/s for SATA II.

I understand and from an average user perspective it is very much faster than a normal HDD. Will try the Turbo memory card to see if there is anything to gain. If you read the description in the Intel doc. I wonder if on a SSD it will do anything, since the SSD does provide about the same gains.