XP Pro and Promise FastTrak 100-Lite Problems

[silence251023 0]

I have a machine that I have been building for some time. I just put the finishing touches on it yesterday and now, all I am having is problems. I have an ECS L7VTA 1.0 Motherboard, Athlon 2600+, 768MB DDR 333, GeForce FX5500 GPU, 40GB Maxtor primary drive, and two 160GB Samsung drives on the Promise FastTrak 100-Lite RAID card that is integrated on the motherboard. I had loaded XP Pro on the Maxtor drive and have been running it for some time now, also on XP SP2, with no problems. Yesterday when I installed the two Samsung drives, XP has started randomly freezing about every 15 to 20 seconds, stick for about 5 seconds, then resume. It repeats this no matter what I do. If I disable the RAID card, XP will run just fine. Next, I tryed loading XP on the RAID drives and running the OS from there, but 80% of the way through the install, I get a BSOD, and a message "Unknown Hard Error", and it will freeze. If I try to redo the install, XP will not recognize the RAID drives unless I delete and re-define the array. Anyone have any ideas?

[adamvjackson 0]

It sounds to me like a bad driver for the RAID card, or perhaps an unstable firmware.

 

Have you checked on the RAID card manufacturer's web site for driver/firmware updates?

[jmmijo 1]

The other thing you may need to test for is swapping out both the data cables just in case and of course (2)Two different HD's to test out with, just in case one or both of the current HD's is not working properly.

 

Also note that I've seen weak power supplies cause random issues like this. When you disconnect the drives from the onboard raid, do you also disconnect the HD power cables(s) as well ?!?

[adamvjackson 0]

Good point about the power supply.

[silence251023 0]

I have tested both drives independently of eachother and both drives work, will format, will fdisk, and I can load an OS on them. The power supply is a 420W Antec. I had it tested, and seems to be fine. I have checked for a firmware update, but was unable to find one. I did download the newest driver and that did not work. I haven't tried new IDE cables, as the ones I am using I purchased when I got the drives Yesterday. BTW, thanks for the advice. I am beginning to wonder if the RAID card isn't defective.

[jmmijo 1]

Well it could very well be the onboard RAID is not functioning properly.

 

I've never really liked ECS boards, they are the parent manufacturer for such brands as PC Chips, Amptron, Matsonic and my personal favorite, Fugu Tech

 

The only other thing you could try would be to test out the drives on a Promise Fastrak 100 TX2 card and see what happens. If it works then it's the onboard controller.

[silence251023 0]

I am considering that. I have started looking into new RAID cards. Any good recommendations? New to the RAID area and don't know a whole lot about the Brands. x)

 

Or maybe I should just go with a new Motherboard?

[jmmijo 1]

Originally posted by silence251023:

Quote:

 

Or maybe I should just go with a new Motherboard?

 

 

I highly recommend a new motherboard with onboard IDE RAID, this is only because I dislike ECS and their minion brands so much

 

However, getting a secondary controller card would be much cheaper...