KT4 Ultra RAID Issue

On enabling and installing 2 Maxtor DiamondPlus9 SATA HDD's to a RAID array (striped, 64KB), I found that the performance was absolutely horrific. Also, while HDD's are being accessed, the sound would distort badly.
Upon investigation, I found that the RAID array was being put on IRQ 19 (APIC), shared with my TV tuner card, and the sound card and sound capture is also on the APIC. What the hell? Shouldn't the RAID controllers get one of the basic IRQs?
I've tried setting my computer up as "Standard PC" but if I do that, I cannot use any of the USB ports because XP locks up during the driver install for them.
I think that this can only be solved by a BIOS fix. Any other ideas?

Quote
Originally posted by osnavi
If PC locks up, you can't use nothing of it, isn't it ? So, you could disable USB ports in Bios Setup, so WXp will not need to install them. 8)
My PC is also useless without keyboard, mouse and gamepad. And substantially less useful without BT.

Similar Messages

KT4-Ultra - RAID

Hi,
Two questions about the controller Promise 20376 of the KT4 Ultra:
- is there a way to set a trip size below 16ko? (I4ve 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256ko).
- is there a way to update the bios of the RAID controller ... if yes .. how ?
Thanks for any help

nah converters can be obtained here in Holland, in fact I have such converter.
It is working properly at least when my RAID is being detected by the kt4 mobo. Then fastrak376 does show up and on next boot it doesn't. Nope it not nothing to do with the converter since hooking one hard drive up to IDE3 results in the same problems.
Messing with the BIOS settings works properly from time to time, since I was able to install WinXP properly. Will continue this weekend putting some more grease on my 2000+ cpu so I can run at full speed (133fsb) and then last but not least finding out what the problem might be concerning the RAID issue, to me it is a buggy BIOS for some reason since this SERIAL ATA RAID option is faded out in the BIOS from time to time .. ?( .. Just like when you put an AGP 8x card in the mobo then the AGP 2x / 4x speed vanishes too, but that is understandable .. blah anyone to help? ..

KT4 Ultra "RAID?" controller

The S-ATA and ATA133 Promise controller on KT4 Ultra
1)Is it a RAID or an ATA (and S-ATA) controller?
2)Does it have RAID 0 performance level with ATA133 HDDs, same as that of the KT3 Ultra 2 RAID Controller, or it is just a RAID for S-ATA HDDs?

Good, that's what I wanted to hear actually. While I never admired the RAID controllers I got comfused when I say the FILE SYSTEM BENCHMARK in Sandra 2003 saying that RAID level 0 is a lot faster than NON-RAID, givving a bandwitch of about 45Mbyte/sec to 8MB cache 80GB HDD in NTFS WINXP, compared to quite less without the use of RAID. In my NTFS WINXP with NO RAID it counted 30MByte/sec on the 80GB 8MB cache WD HDD. The disk transfer rate that I did count in pure format was counted at 45Mbyte/sec

KT4 Ultra Raid Setup

Ok I want to set up a raid set for performance and am lacking an understanding of the setup.
Here is my configuration:
MSI KT4 Ultra w/Raid
GF4 4200 Ti
AMD Athlon 2100+
2x 256 333MHz Generic RAM
Intel Pro 100 Management Adapter (LAN)
2x 10 Gig Maxtor ATA100 5400 RPM HD's
1x 60 Gig Maxtor ATA100 7200 RPM HD
1 CDRW
1 52x CDROM
This is what I have tried
Put 1 10 gig drive on Primary IDE as master w/ 60 gig as slave
Both CD's on Secondary IDE
1x 10 Gig on RAID Controller (onboard)
When I go into the fast track utility and autoconfigure for performance its shows as only having one drive in the array. In the setup guide it shows that option as 2 drives in the array.
Is there something wrong with my setup?
Why does only one drive show up in the array?
I havent installed an OS yet but it will be 98.
The main drive on Primary IDE has been partitioned with Fdisk as a single active partition and nothing has been done with the second. It's my understanding it will be built when the raid is functioning, is this right?
Thx in advance for your time. Great forum by the way. Cheers to the techies witht he answers. Incidentally i'm not a newbie with comps just with RAID so technical is fine.

KT4 Ultra
Thx for the response guys.
I understand that I may only use one drive with the IDE3. My board does have 2 serial ata connectors on it as well.
If I only use the IDE3 with one hard drive will the mirror work correctly if I use the same drive (same model specs etc) on the primary ide and use my 60 gig as a secondary drive on the primary as well (i know the 60 will not work with the mirror) All i want is the performance increase for now until the serial drives drop in price and become more readily available.
So my config would be as follows:
1 12 gig drive on pri ide as master
1 60 gig on pri ide as slave
1 12 on ide3 for mirror.
If i use this will i get increased performance as far as load times etc?

KT4 Ultra XPCooler Issue

I have just installed a KT4 Ultra board with windows XP and the drivers supplied on the CD. The hardware monitoring software works but the XPcooler does not seem to issue the halt instruction to the CPU and so no cooling takes place. Nomal operation the CPU XP2200 runs about 44c.
I have checked the FAQ's and can find no information to help.
The CPU is not showing 100% when XPcooler is running so that must prove it is not having the desired effect.
Any Ideas?

Thanks Bas
Thats done the trick, the system is now down to 28c

Excuse me , info about KT4 Ultra temp issue BIOS 1.4

Hi, all, excuse me if I disturb u, but I've not understood compleltely if the low temps recorded by MSI KT4 ULtra sensors with BIOS 1.4 is a problem or is a real reduction of the temperatures offered by the new BIOS.
Thank you very much for your time
Bye
Marcello

No, its not enabled by default - and the temp issue is for real - not only reporting with less than 5-8*C, but also reversing the winbond sensors(CPU-SYS). I must tell you that the Cooler XP utility still works no mather if CPU HALT is enabled or not, taking another 5-8*C from your temperatures. Running an AMD Athlon XP Palomino 2100+ almost at 20*C with regular air cooling seems damn' science-fiction and the system with 5 degrees or more than the CPU.
So stick with what u've got, if it's ok and stable. And trust us, we've checked the BIOS, we've checked the temperatures with alternative measurments. We are not that ******

KT4 Ultra Strange Issue!!!!!

Recently upgraded to Kt4 ultra and a Xp 2100 also PC2700 1xstick 512mb memory. Loaded MS XP PRO , all went well.
later I was trying to defrag a HD and it rebooted on its own?? Then I tryed to load read a cdr media and I keep getting an error (CRC error) says media may be corrupt or files damaged. I know it works, on another pc i tried.
checked the cpu & HS good contact
MB temp is very good
cpu temp is 42 also good
what else could it be???
My System Specs
MSI KT4 Ultra
Athlon XP2100
512 MB DDR micron PC 2700
MSI GF 4 TI4600
Dlink Nic
SCSI ADaptec Ultra 2940 UW
SCSI Plextor 12/4/32
SCSI Plextor 40XUW
SCSI Teac 32X
WD 40GB 7200
WD 40GB 7200
WD 20GB 7200
Enermax 400w PSU
+3.3v +5v +12v -5v -12v 1-5v5b
32a 32a 7w 1a 1a 2.22
+3.3v & +5v -185w =Total 350w
Enlight Case/ Mod
Windows XP Pro

Hi Lawman,
Welcome to the forum.
I see you have another original thread here discussing your issue(s). Let's concentrate on a single thread instead of having two or many as in my opinion that single thread may help you out and solve your problem.
I hope you don't mind of this.
Everyone please follow this thread here for solving Lawman's issue.
Thank you.

KT4 Ultra RAID user:

I use 2-0 RAID. It's run great, fast!!! 8)
I wonder, Is will work, just one hard disk for mirroring on IDE3? ?(
must have one 80G or more than 80G for mirroring? ?(
Thank Dark

what you want to do raid 0 plus 1 requires 4 drives
the lite raid on the board can only use 3 so it will never be possible in this case
msi do not mode any bios,it would break their liscence
they pay promise for what you have only
but in the past people have done them
due to 3 drive limit its not going to happen with your board,the full raid card would have at least 4 sata
connectors for drives,and cost more than your board
normal ide raid can have 2 disks on each channel so with a modded bios on a kt3 ultra you can have raid
versions with 4 disks stripped and mirrored at the same time
i suggest you put raid in goggle and go do a bit of reading up on it

KT4 Ultra -RAID IDE3 as normal IDE

How do you use your RAID IDE3 as normal IDE for hdd ,cd and cd-rw on KT4 Ultra

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/driver/dvr/spt_dvr_detail.php?UID=356%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20&NAME=MS-6590
try d/l the ones here then

KT4 Ultra Raid and W2K3 Server

Hi, I am planning to install Windows 2003 Server on my machine. But before I go ahead and wipe everything from the hard drive I need to be sure there are proper drivers for my RAID controller in W2K3 Server. I doubt I can use the XP drivers? Currently I am running WinXP with the TX4000 drivers by Promise and that works fine! Anyone any experience with this mobo, raid and win2k3 server?

yea well of course I can recert to XP and do have a GHOST image :D. OK just dl-led and burnt the evaluation version from MS, will let u know if it installed correctly (either Promise's driver disk or MSI for XP).

MSI KT4 Ultra & 160GB Issue

My specs are in my sig. I'm running Windows 2000.
When I built my new machine, I used a 160GB Maxtor drive that I had in my old machine. Now, my old machine suffered from the 130GB drive limit, so was used as such for a few months. It has a single 127 Gb partition.
Now, when I came to build my new machine, the BIOS detected the 160 Gb correctly, as 163 Gb. Unlike the auto-detection for the 80 Gb drive, none of the drive geometry info was automatically filled in.
Upon booting, the system reports these statistics for the 160 Gb drive:
Cylinders: 65535
Heads: 16
Sectors: 255
Now, this equals 136.9 Gb . 8o Thus, when I start Partition Magic 8 in Windows 2000, I cannot resize my partition to fill the entire drive, not even a tiny bit. How can I get my system to correctly see the entire 160 Gb of space? Reformatting is not something I really want to do, as I have over 115 Gb of data currently on the drive.
So, how can I get Windows 2000 to correctly see the entire 160 Gb of space, so that I can resize my partition to use all the available space?

Sorted it. Used the PM8 DOS rescue disks, has a mini-version of PM8 on it, and it allowed me to resize my partition perfectly.
Thanks for your input!

KT4 Ultra (6590) need update of the Promise SATA RAID Controller PDC20376

The last Bios update AMI 1.4 for the KT4 Ultra (6590) have built in the bios version 1.00.0.18 for the PDC20376 (Promise 376).
I can configure 2 maxtor (6E040T0) sata1 in a raid0 array and it works under WinXP SP3,
but the 2 drives are working in UDMA5 according to the FastBuild Utility when the motherboard specifications talks about 150Mb (SATA1).
It's not an OS problem because the FastBuild Utility at Bios startup show the UDMA5 mode for HDD.
It's not a Maxtor 6E040T0 (SATA1) problem because have no jumper to set.
The Promise support center don't provide support for built in raid controller but the responce was that it's related to a known bios issue of the controller, so i have to update.
For the last Bios version for the S150 TX4 controller look at:
http://promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=108&category=all&os=100&go=GO
It's impossible to update the bios with the promise tool because the controller is integrated in the motherboard.
I read for example than on the motherboard K7N2 Delta-ILSR the bios version of the Promise 376 controller is 1.00.0.21:
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=92756.msg665966#msg665966
I think the only solution is a modding bios, where i have to replace only the Promise controller bios but:
1) The tool amibcp.exe can't open the A6590VMS.140 AMI bios (renamed .rom), i don't know why!!!
2) What promise controller bios rom file is good?
Can anyone out there help . . . please ?

This is my results compared to my other UDMA6 HDD on IDE1, HDTach long bench stop with "Read Error" and only quick bench works.
The version of the Controller driver under WinXP-SP3 is 1.0.1.29 and I configured the driver in the PAM Utility with:
"Driver Write Cache" enabled and "Write Back" as cache settings (The 2 Maxtor SATA1 in RAID have 2MB of cache, but i don't know How many cache have the controller!!).
The Burst Speed is too strange!!! quick bench error?
I made it so your image is clickable.
-Frankenputer

KT4 ULTRA / Promise Fasttrack TX2 100 RAID problems

I have my decided to retire my old MAXTOR and get 2 WD800JB for my new Promise Fasttrack TX2 100 RAID card. I set the RAID and stuff up everything is working fine but first I realized that my RAID benchmarks are low. I tried different stripe sizes(16/16 - 64/64), drivers and even tried both drives independent on different chanels RAID card.
I was still using old installed OS from my old HDD and I decided to install new OS on RAID 0 array and see how fast it boots up. I installed windows properly no problems but when I restart the system without WinXP CD in the CD drive RAID card did not boot up, I was getting an error message saying "error booting from the previous device" but when I put WinXP CD back in after cd boot screen it boots from RAID drives.
My RAID System;
KT4 ULTRA SR
Promise Fasttrack TX2 100
2 x WD800JB
here is my question; do you guys know any issues between KT4 ULTRA and Promise TX2 card. If no I'll get another card and see if there is sth wrong with this one.
btw my system is working fine!!!!

1 got the wd drives either jumperless........stand alone master or cable select
on the black end of the ide
2 have you set scsi second to cdrom in bios boot order
3 never have any other hard drives connected in the box when installing raid either

KT4 Ultra: problem config. raid array IDE3

I owe the MSI 6590 KT4 Ultra BSR mainboard and I have difficulties configurring the RAID array in striping mode, on the IDE3 controller.
The manual describes on page 2-18 it's possible to connect up to 2 hard drives, cdrom, 120mb fd and other devices to the IDE3 controller.
Unfortunately only one of my two MAXTOR D740X-6L (6L080J4) 80gig drives is recognized by the array.
One Maxtor hard drive is jumpered as MASTER and the other is set up as SLAVE.
When I hook up the cable to an ordinary IDE port (eg IDE1) the two drives are properly recognized.
Both drives can be formatted using the regular IDE ports, this means without any cluster errors or other errors so the drives are physically OK.
Before I wrote this post I checked the support section again to make sure I am using the latest BIOS which is 1.1. I also downgraded to 1.0, but that didn't solve my problem either.
Since I work in a computer shop now and then I had the opportunity to check two Maxtor Fireball3 30gig drives on a different MS-6590 RAID board (BIOS 1.1.) and exactly the same problem occurs: the 2nd drive won't be recognized in the ARRAY on IDE3.
Please tell me what to do to make the striping option fully work on my two IDENTICAL Maxtor hard drives since MSI support came up with a standard email, which didn't cheer me up at all. Hopefully this time they will investigate this matter since no doubt more people will experience this.

Thanks for the quick response, though it's not satisfactory for me (of course).
Actually before installing the new KT4 Ultra I owed the KT266 Pro RAID motherboard. It's true this board has two controllers for the RAID option. Nevertheless because after reading the manual of this new board I was convinced I could connect two hard drives on the IDE3-channel. This is the reason I decided to go ahead and to upgrade to this new mainboard.
I guess I have to go back to my employer and fall back again to my KT266 (MS6380).

Raid & KT4 Ultra BSR

;( Can anyone save my sanity!
Read all about updating PC, thought easy, I can do that. During summer fitted extra memorey 512, fitted new hard drive, then an extra one for back ups, all well so far, then at Christmas bought KT4 Ultra BSR board & AMD 2400XP. Fitted ok no probs, great.
So why can't I understand how the hell to get Raid to work. The guide is about as useful as a smack in the mouth. Can anyone point me in the right direction to get an easy to understand guide to which HDD connects where and what I do with the jumpers on each. Tried configuring as Master and Slave on same cable to IDE 1 works Ok. Then tried same on IDE 3 only MAster shown and cannot configure raid. Please help before I trash it!

hi,
i had the same problem,
i have pull the little white mini plug of the harddisk where you can put it on master/save/..........
that restarted my compu and in to the set actived the raid / serial controller.
than you niet to configure your harddisk ( push ctrl-f)
and than you use nr.1 (auto........).
restart and normaly is the job al done.
jupliner/belgium.
mb: msi kt4 ultra bsr
cpu xp 2200.
256 mb/ddr/333mhz
big tower
geforce2
western digital 80gb/7200(8mb cache)
liteon 52x24x52
16/48 dvd

KT4 Ultra RAID Issue

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