Promise Serial - ATA Utility

Some make think this thread as being lazy, however I remember reading somewhere here or on msi site about using the 'Promise Serial - ATA Utility' from the software supplied. I have spent about an hour searching this site but can't find it. Can someone help?
PS in my recent threads I have been given advice from this site about memory issues and SM controllers, my pc is now nearly flying off my desk. Many thanks to those who helped

Yes I know the utility...As I said it's on the CD but it will only show up in the auto-run utility if it detects that you are running drives on the promise controller with "as SATA" selected in the bios. I'm running SATA Raid on the promise so when I run the MSI CD it shows me the Promise Raid utility but not the cache utility you want.

Similar Messages

Promise Serial-ATA Utility ??? Doesnt work...

I have a SATA drive installed on SER1. and my system works fine now...
But i cant configure the CACHE. In the MSI manual.. they say I should...
But when i open the program (thats on the MSI UTILITY AND DRIVER CD)... it doesnt detect my SATA drive.... and i cant click anyware.. I can only close the program....
any ideas???
what can i do???
thx
Greez Steph

Ohhh.....
I see... Cool..
Well thanks again Danny... I'll just leave it then...

MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR and Serial ATA Drive

I've got a very strange problem....
Yesterday i have installed my new motherboard (MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR) but i have a problem with the SATA feature.
I've got two drives : one 40GB ATA (Western Digital) and one 160GB SATA also from Western Digital.
My SATA drive is recognized by the FastTrak BIOS (v2) but i'm unable to reinstall Windows XP Professional (with SP2 Slipstreamed) because Windows Setup didn't recognize the SATA disk. I have loaded the Promise Serial ATA Drivers at the begin of the installation (F6)...
I have also tried 2 different versions of the Promise SATA Drivers; the one that cames with my motherboard CD, and the most recent from the MSI website. But with both drivers the same result. How can i get my Serial ATA Harddisk get work with this motherboard?
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks,
Computerfreakje.
PS : My specifications are the following:
MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR (Rev. 7.4)
AMD Athlon XP 2500+
2x 256MB Kingston PC3200 Dual Channel
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb (R360)
Western Digital 40GB ATA
Western Digital 160GB SATA

Thanks for your reply Richard,
My motherboard didn't came with a floppy (I have bought an bulk version..) I have created a SATA floppy by myself. (I have got the drivers from the motherboard cd..) These drivers are also good, right?
Which type of RAID Array should i create? Because i have only one SATA drive.....
I think the "auto" feature is the easiest way?
Thanks.
Computerfreakje.

Serial ATA troubles

I am having trouble getting my XP install to see my Serial ATA HDD...? Help please

You're posting in the incorrect forum this is the via 32bit forum you should be posting in this forum.
I can still give you a hand though firstly forget about the via drivers you need these drivers you have a promise sata raid controller on your board. Secondly make sure that it's enabled in the bios, and lastly right after the post screen(i.e. the memory & cpu speed screen) there should be a prompt for the promise raid controller that should show the drive then a key to press to enter the utility once inside that you need to figure out how to create a raid array choose raid 0 or performance setting.

KT4 Ultra and new Serial ATA drive

Hi there
I've got a WinXP machine with a KT4 ultra, 2 regular IDE hard drives, a CD write and DVD (all working fine).
Yesterday I bought a Serial ATA DiamondMax Plus9 160Gb to use as a 3rd drive. I don't want it to use RAID, I just want it as an additional drive available to windows.
I fitted the drive last night, but when the BIOS runs through the drives at the start it didn't show up. I did however get the RAID utility come up on the screen, and by pressing Ctrl-F it allowed me to create a RAID array (which I didn't).
When I got into windows the drive couldn't be seen, running Maxblaster found a SCSI drive but thought it was 0 bytes capacity.
Can anyone tell me if what I want to do is even possible?
And if so, how do it do it?
Thanks in advance
Rich

Hi Sharp, thanks for the info.
I have the promise drivers installed, so there really shouldn't be a problem there.
Having scanned through a load of other messages on here, updating the BIOS has been recommended.
I was a bit wary of doing this as I have a history of messing up machines, what are other's experiences with upgrading the BIOS?
Thanks again
Rich

Macbook pro having serial-ATA issues

I was working on a project in xcode that an error poped saying it can't save the file, after that mac os just hanged, so I restarted it, but it couldn't get pass the apple logo, so I booted the recovery partition and tried the disk utility and it said there was a problem with the startup partition, so I tried the repair volume, but it didn't work, saying there was a write problem, so I tried to reformat it and then restore it to time machine backup, but it didn't work, so I removed the hard from my laptop and used a sata to usb enclosure and insert it to another mac and I formated the hard and reinstalled mac on it. when the hard is connected to usb I can boot from it and use it, but when I put it in the macbook it just can't boot from it. I figure there's a write problem with the serial-ATA. I live in a country, that doesn't have an apple store, so I want to fix this myself if I can, so please if anybody knows how to fix this please help.

Ok, I will try it tomorrow and see if it will fix it.
thanks for the tip.

External Serial ATA versus Firewire HD

I am debating between getting the LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple (300GB) and the LaCie d2 Hard Drive Serial ATA (400GB).
I would be backing up a PowerMac G5 (160GB HD), Dell Laptop (80GB HD) and an ibook (40GB HD). They are connected by ethernet cables via Belkin router which is also connected to a Motorola cable modem (Time Warner/ISP). The PowerMac G5 would be running Retrospect.
If I am planning on using one of them to run backups at home, which would be faster? I would think the LaCie HD Serial ATA to be faster. Maybe it would not make a difference with my current setup. Also, I am probably limiting my self since there are no USB or Firewire ports on the LaCie HD Serial ATA.
On a side note...the Maxtor OneTouch II 500GB External Firewire looks interesting. The size of the drive is definitely a plus. I am just not sure if I am comfortable backing up to a larger drive in case it unexpectedly fails. Plus I read some users getting locked out because of the Maxtor's built in "DriveLock" feature. Has anyone had good experiences with a 500GB drive? I generally hear mixed experiences regardless of the manufacturer.
Here are the links to the PDF datasheets for the products I am considering for reference:
http://www.lacie.com/download/datasheets/d2hdSATAen.pdf
http://www.lacie.com/download/datasheets/d2extreme_tripleen.pdf
http://maxtor.com/files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iidatasheet.pdf
Thanks!
Power Mac G5 / 2GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Oh, nobody seems to have answered your post so I'll give it a stab.
1: Serial ATA (SATA) is the fastest standard interface on PowerMac's only (far as I know), it's the interface connecting the internal drives. To get a external SATA you will need a SATA PCI card and external SATA drives. Unfortunatly other Mac's cannot connect to SATA as they use Firewire 400/800/USB. (there might be adpaters) So this might not be the best way to go. A triple interface external drive like the LaCie's Firewire 800/400/USB would be best for moving around different Mac's. However that doesn't mean you can't transfer data through the PowerMac from other Mac's to the external SATA drives, but your are bottlenecked by the slowest interface in the chain. So if you use a Firewire 400 network between the Mac's at that interfaces speed will be your over all performance. (Fastest interfaces: SATA, Firewire 800, then 400, then USB)
2: Windows uses a different disk formating than Mac's, so this will cause complications backing up a Windows machine to a common use drive. I advise getting a external drive just for that machine and "ghosting" or cloning the PC drive to it. Keeps the Windows problems off your Mac drives.
3: Another seperate drive for the iBook to clone to would be best. But you can take a larger drive and partition it to clone your PowerMac G5 to one partition and the iBook to another. Seperate drives is better as this gives you room to expand and use the drives for something else also if the partition map gets corrupted then you might have have trouble recovering data using utility software. Donationware Carbon Copy Cloner (visit the forums and read instructions for proper cloning) can help you clone or search Apple's site for Deja Vu for a great auto-cloning software.
4: When your using your network for the internet you can't be backing up, you need to creat a new network. Mac's can run more than one network at once. Via Airport, Ethernet, Firewire etc, each doing something different. So in your case a simple Firewire target disk mode may work perfectly for backing up the iBook through the PowerMac G5. All you have to do is use a 6-pin firewire 400 cable between the two machines and hold T and boot the iBook (or the PowerMac) the hard drive of the other appears on desktop of the other which simple drag n' drop can occur. Cloning requires booting and running cloning software from the machine being cloned and it will replace the other drive completely with the first drive (it's a clone) as this is the only way to duplicate a bootable drive. Cloning is best done drive to drive and it's not advised to run differnet Mac's with bootable clones from other Mac's as different Mac's have different OS's for their hardware.
5: A lot of these "big' drives are actually two drives in one case. Too much data in one hardware basket is asking for trouble. Plus they may be hot.
6: I have written some performance and other drive info (test download)
Large slow filled boot drives seriously affect Mac OS X performance.
clcik me
7: If your looking for internal drives, I recommend a 16MB cache to help the performance so look at this site
http://www.barefeats.com/hard63.html
8: You should read the book Mac OS X Tiger: The Missing Manual, it gives detailed steps and information to set up networks and other things.
Good luck and Happy Holidays.

If i lose the drivers for windows detect my serial ata hd during installation?

SATA (serial ATA), FC-AL (fibre-channel-arbitrated loop), and SCSI host bus adapters may require additional drivers provided by the HBA (Host Bus Adapter) manufacturer to be installed during setup. I want to know if there is a web site where i can download those drivers. I have promise 20378 on-board controler. I didn't lose the floppy containing the drivers, but is too far away from where i am! And I need to format my hd and install windows. If anyone knows where I found those drivers, plz help me!
p4 2.8 prescott fsb 800
msi 875p neo series
2x 256ddr 400
hd seagate 120g serial ata
ati 9800pro 128mb
power supply 480w

Series 1 board drivers:
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/driver/dvr/spt_dvr_detail.php?UID=434&kind=1
Series 2 board drivers:
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/driver/dvr/spt_dvr_detail.php?UID=554&kind=1

Serial ATA on a KT3 raid controller

Hi,
i'm gonna buy new harddrives for my MSI KT3
in a little more time i wil switch MLB aswell but not at this time
my question:
I'm thinking of buying 2 Serial ATA drives but I'm not sure if they wil work on my KT3 ultra 2 MLB on Raid 0 (it has no serial ATA).
does someone know if this work or not?

The only way you're going to to get SATA is to buy either a new motherboard with onboard SATA e.g. a KT6 Delta or KT6V the latter is hard to find. The other way is to buy an add-on pci card from Promise or Highpoint or Adaptec is good.

Bad Serial ATA Drives?

I've got a Daul 2.5ghz G5 that's really had a lot of problems since I bought it. The graphics card has been replaced, the motherboard has been replaced, and both processors have been replaced.
The other day, I noticed that rendering in Final Cut Pro 5 was just crawling.
Processor intensive tasks seem to go fine, but tasks that involve writing to the disks (both of the 250 serial-ata drives) go very slowly.
Computer is, of course, out of warranty now.
I wipped the computer and started from scratch and reformated both drives, same problem. Disks are not fragmented.
I ran Xbench. All computer tests scored above the 100 point baseline, except the drive tests:
Disk Test 71.27
Sequential 104.09
Uncached Write 109.13 67.00 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 100.96 57.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 99.81 29.21 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 107.04 53.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 54.19
Uncached Write 20.81 2.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 131.48 42.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.06 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 134.96 25.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Both drives scored really low on the random uncached write speed. Any ideas on what the problem would be? Could both drives go bad at the same time? Hard drive controller? Is there a way to test it without buying a new drive?
Russ
Dual 2.5ghz G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

What make/model of drives? how old are they?
Hitachi 7K500 might fit the bill. Or 10K Raptor (but probably need SeriTek controller now, a must for the 150GB model and now the 74GB - both are excellent for boot drive). The 500GB 16MB cache Hitachi is also a solid drive.
Disk Utility: Erase: Options: Zero-all is what I would do first.
I try to keep one drive's outer track partition (100GB) just for OS / Apps (and use the 2nd parition for static archive and backups).
Then use Drive #2 for data / media / Users.
Maybe extra (external0 eSATA drives for FCP, scratch, backup and projects.
Some drives, SATA is going through a lot of changes, are trouble, not compatible, have SSC enabled, firmware doesn't support RAID as well as it could/should. NCQ being enabled doesn't help desktop use and isn't supported on G5 SATA ports.
Xbench is not the most 'reliable' test, but those are not normal numbers.
Keep your disk drive in "good health" (run Disk Utility, Disc Warrior etc from a cloned emergency drive regularly to do any repairs) as well as keep log and temp files to a minimum? run cron tasks at least weekly?

Linux and serial ata

Hey. I just got a msi kt4 ultra-bsr. I went to install mandrake 9 last night and i couldnt find a driver for my serial ata raid controller. If anyone knows if promise or msi are coming out with a driver plz link me =)

You need to figure out which drives you'll be transferring data between and avoid a setup where you're sharing a channel. If you've got a large mpeg file in a temp folder, create the new divx,avi or whatever on a different drive and on a different channel.
I'm not familiar with your editing patterns but I would suggest the following:
Move the IDE drive to IDE1(master). This will probably require a reinstall of Windows since the Promise SATA driver is no longer used.
Put the DVDRW on IDE2(master)
Put the DVDROM on IDE2(slave)
If you need to be able to copy from DVD to DVD "on the fly", you'll probably have to put the DVDRom on IDE1 but this may affect your hdd performance.
After above is up and running, attach and install the SATA drives to Serial3&4, enable the Promise in Bios "As Raid" and follow instructions as per the Raid Guide.
Hopefully, this should give you the best use of data bandwidth. Be sure to keep everything defragged regularly.

Promax serial-ATA Drivers

If anyone using the Promax serial-ATA Raid, aka satamax, has the drivers, I need them. My raid won't mount after reload of OS. The Raid doesn't appear in Disk Util either.
J

I guess that means that they aren't a decent vendor.
Another strike against ProMax...
Shane

Serial ATA on MSI KT4 Ultra FISR??

Hello
Just a general query here about Serial ATA on the 6590 board (KT4 Ultra FISR).
I am hoping to build a system with this board and was hoping to start with only one HD, preferably an 80Gb Serial ATA drive. Does the promise raid controller on this board allow you to boot on a single serial ATA drive?
P.S. I was also hoping to add a Radeon 9700 card (not pro) but have read about many problems within this forum. Does anyone know if the problems have been cleared?
Thanks
?(

Well, my idea was to buy a Serial ATA drive from the outset and use it as the only HD in the system. Therefore, it would have to start on the serial ATA raid port.
The only other boot option I can see which may be relevant is "Legacy SCSI". Doesn't sound right though. There are also a lot of BBS (BIOS boot specification) choices from 0 to 9 but I dont know what they are.
There are about 25 boot options including from USB CDROM drives but nothing specific to RAID!

Adding a Serial ATA Drive from old windows machine?

Hi,
I have recently bought a new Mac Pro, to complete my conversion from Windows to Mac. However, in my old Windows machine, I have a 120GB Serial ATA hard drive.
I believe that I wouldn't be able to simply put this 120GB drive into my Mac Pro, as it is in NTFS format, which Mac cannot understand. I think that it has to be in FAT32 format, correct? So, if I was to re-format this serial ATA drive into FAT32, would it be able to work in my machine? Or are there more compatibility issues I might face? (Make, Model, Age issues?). I assume most SATA drives are similar, and that it should work, but I thought I should probably check before attempting it!
Thanks,
Steve

Any SATA drive can be installed in the Mac Pro. OS X can read an NTFS drive but it cannot write to it. However, if you just want to use the drive with OS X then you should repartition and reformat the drive for OS X:
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button and set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.

Replacing a Serial ATA Drive with a SSD HD

Does anyone know if its difficult to replace a Serial ATA Drive with a SSD? And if possible and not difficult, which specs should this SSD have?

if you buy your SSD as a kit, it comes with sata to usb connector.
if you buy your SSD as a bare drive then go out and buy an usb external enclosure.
Before you install your new drive, turn your computer on with your old drive, hook up your new drive via external enclosure to your usb port.
Launch Disk Utility, erase/format your new drive with MAC OS Extended Journaled.
Open Carbon Copy ( free download if you don't have it) and start to clone your drive, a pop up will come up saying you haven't created a recovery partition, follow the instructions in Carbon Copy then proceed to clone your drive after.
Once that's done, open the back of your MB, take out the old drive, install your new ssd, then turn it on. You're back in business.
As for your old drive, put it in the external enclosure and use it as a back up drive.

Promise Serial - ATA Utility

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