Finally, moving one RAID set off the ICH8R controller to the Jmicron controller and moving disks off ports 0-2 on the ICH8R did the trick (so far anyway).

I have no been running for about 24 hours with no timeouts, bluescreens or Error messages in the Event log under heavy disk load.

So, now I have:

1 RAID0 (drive C:) consisting of 2x WD Velociraptor 300GB disks on ports 3 and 4 on ICH8R

1 Samsung DVD burner (drive D:, SATA on port 5 on the ICH8R)

1 RAID0 (drive E:) consisting of 2x WD 750GB disks on ports 0 and 1 on the Jmicron controller.

The Jmicron controller on this Gigabyte Motherboard (Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 Rev 3.3) is usually referred to as the GIGABYTE GBX336 RAID controller but is actually a Jmicron made controller. I installed the latest Jmicron windows driver (1.17.38.5) from the Jmicron site and it now shows up as “JMicron JMB36X Controller” in Windows device manager.

For some reason HDTach now shows insane numbers for the WD Velociraptor RAID set, with Sequential Read Speeds peaking at 400 MB/s and burst speed of over 1000 MB/s. Must be software error.

HDTach for the other WD 750GB RAID set show a more (but still good) believable Sequential Read Speeds peaking at 140 MB/s and burst speed of 430 MB/s.

I have also overclocked again with stable results.

Keep in mind that the Registry “hack” and LAN PROM update are still in effect, so I guess if I want to be really scientific I should roll those changes back and see if the problem re-occur. But somehow I’m not so motivated to do that, at least not right now

Current Setup – Vista Business 32 SP1 – Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 Rev 3.3 (Intel P965 chipset, with ICH8R & Jmicron controllers on board) Both RAID controllers are enabled in BIOS and set to RAID mode and “SATA Port0-3 Native Mode” enabled for the ICH8R and “RAID/IDE” (for the Jmicron) enabled – Intel Q6600 Quad CPU (no overclocking) – BIOS: F12L – 4 GB RAM (Corsair, no overclocking) – 1 RAID0 (drive C:) consisting of 2x WD Velociraptor 300GB disks on ports 0 and 1 on ICH8R – 1 RAID0 (drive E:) consisting of 2x WD 750GB disks on ports 2 and 3 on the ICH8R – 1 Samsung DVD burner (drive D:, SATA on port 4 on the ICH8R) – 1 WD MyBook 1 TB external harddrive (Drive G:) connected on the firewire port on the MoBo – Graphics card on PCI-E slot – Soundblaster X-FI on PCI slot – Floppy drive

Was originally able to install Vista fine (using latest “F6” drivers for both ICH8R and Jmicron controllers) on the first of the two RAID sets. All Windows patches applied and was pleased to see incredible performance numbers for the RAID disks using HDTach. But as soon as you start intense filecopying or moving (either between disks or from the external drive), problems occur. I get timeout errors for “iastor” in the Event log, systems grinds to a halt and eventually BSOD with STOP error in iastor.sys. My problem seems to be very “heavy load” related as is many other peoples problem.

I dare to say I have tried all combinations of suggested fixes on the net that I could find (and then some) including : – Latest BIOS w. “stock” parameters – Deleting registry key “Parameters” for iastor and iastorV – Onboard Marvell LAN ROM update, – Latest Intel Matrix drivers, (8.2.0.1001) – Latest Intel INF – Removing external HD – Rolling back Vista SP1
etc. etc. to no avail.

Options remaining: – Move second RAID set off ports 2 and 3 on the ICH8R – Buy new Motherboard – Buy external RAID controller to put in one PCI slot.

Problem identified with both the “Native IDE” and “AHCI+IDE” modes of the
JMicron (JMB36X) onboard controller. Issue went away when I:

1. Removed all SATA HDDs from the JMicron
2. Disable the JMicron controller at the BIOS level
3. Use the “RAID+IDE” mode of the JMicron.

This last solution worked well for me. All 5 O/S’es can now use the 1TB
RAID on the ICH9R, and one or both HDDs on the JMicron (I’m currently running
the latter in non-RAID configuration). Apparently, the default SATA IDE
driver of Vista x64 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 cannot handle the JMicron;
and even JMicron’s own Jraid.sys driver has issues when running “AHCI+IDE”
mode. Under the “RAID+IDE”, I get NCQ and hot swap features, even when the
drives are not actually runing in a RAIDset.

I talked (emailed, actually) to both JMicron and DFI. JMicron believes that
DFI’s BIOS needs an update. DFI tells me that they are working on such an
update, and hope to have it ready soon.—————————-
OS: WinXP SP3 x86, Win2003 SP2 x64 & x86, Win2008×64, Vista x64 SP1
CPU: Intel Q6600 Quad Core
Video: ATI HD 3450 PCIe with 512MB, with latest ATI Catalyst Drivers.
NIC: Marvell 88E8052 Gigabyte LAN PCIe
Mobo: DFI LP UT P35-T2R
Mem: 8GB (4×2GB Patriot Viper PC2-8500, 5-5-5-15)
Disk: 5 x WD 5001ABYS Caviar RE2, 500 GB each;
and Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ, 750GB (external enclosure, eSATA)
Raid: ICH9R 4xHDD RAID10 = 1TB
Other HDD: non-RAID config on JMicron SATA (running in RAID+IDE mode)
DVD: HP DVD Writer 1040r (IDE)

UPDATE: I came a lot closer to the real problem yesterday. If I disconnect the one SATA HDD that I have on the JMicron controller (JMB36X), the boot for Win2008 and Vista SP1 will both proceed.

I don’t know if it takes both ICH9R RAID and JMicron SATA HDD to create this problem, but a “problem” it certainly is. At this point, I have a workaround, but it certainly is not satisfactory—I want to use HDD’s on the other controller too!

Situations I’ve tried:

1. with JMicron (Native IDE or AHCI+IDE) SATA HDD attached when booting from DVD*: HANGS
2. with JMicron (Native IDE or AHCI+IDE) SATA HDD attached after O/S* is installed: HANGS on boot
3. with JMicron (Native IDE or AHCI+IDE, default drivers) SATA HDD attached after O/S* is up: IGNORED
4. with JMicron (AHCI+IDE, Jraid.sys driver installed) attached after O/S* is up: will connect successfully
5. with JMicron disabled: Install works, O/S* boot also works
6. with JMicron and IDE Optical only (Native IDE or AHCI+IDE): Install works, O/S* boot also works

*the operating system is either Windows Vista x64 with SP1 bundled in, or Windows Server 2008—their behavior in this regard is identical.
—————————OS: WinXP x86, Win2003×64 & x86, Win2008×64, Vista
CPU: Intel Q6600 Quad Core
Video: ATI HD 3450 PCIe with 512MB, with latest ATI Catalyst Drivers.
NIC: Marvell 88E8052 Gigabyte LAN PCIe
Mobo: DFI LP UT P35-T2R
Mem: 8GB (4×2GB Patriot Viper PC2-8500, 5-5-5-15)
Disk: 5 x WD 5001ABYS, 500 GB each
Raid: ICH9R 4xHDD RAID10=1TB
Other HDD: AHCI on JMicron SATA
DVD: HP DVD Writer 1040r (IDE)

Intel’s own website at http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/cs-025783.htm talks about recently introduced issues with the now bundled drivers screwing up the LPM registry settings for the drivers. I think Microsoft needs to get it right first instead of making ME the “beta tester”.

I have a Dell Precision 370 with an Intel P4 3.2GHZ CPU, 925X Express Chipset (ICH6), 4GB RAM and 2 x WD Caviar 160GB SATA HDD’s.

Was up until 4:00am last night trying to get Vista to install on a RAID0 stripe. Eventually got it to install, but wow, it was slow! Vista gave the machine’s HDD throughput at 2.2 in the perf results!

Am horrified that Intel have done nothing to remedy this. RAID is all about perf and stability, no? Intel is delivering NEITHER! It’s not as if Vista is new or anything too – it’s been around publicly for over 2 years now.

The ICH6 drivers are still at rev 7.0 despite Intel’s site suggesting that v7.5+ should be installed. They published new v8 drivers a couple of days ago, but the v8 drivers don’t support ICH6.

C’mon Intel – time for you to support your products. Please fix your 7.x drivers too.

Can som one give me a solution to stop this iaStor recording in my Event Viewer?