Win2k and ATA66 drives...

[Mike V 0]

I have two IBM 20gig ATA66 drives. I have used them in Win2k with two different ATA66 controllers, the HotRod 66 (HPT366) from Abit, and the Promise Ultra66. The Promise does seem more forgiving and has been around longer, but that isn't the problem. After four hours of "up" time, I start to get a Warning message in my Event Log. Here is a link to the Microsoft KnowledgeBase article with the error:

 

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q168/4/83.ASP?LNG=ENG&SA=ALLKB&FR=0

 

It's telling me that the firmware (I'm thinking the drive firmware) is old or out of date, this may degrade performance.

 

After I initally get the error, I get it every hour on the hour. I have an APC Smartups UPS, and I leave my machine on, so after a while, my Event Log gets pretty full. Needless to say, this is annoying, although it doesn't seem to degrade performance or cause instability.

 

I have written Highpoint/Abit, they said they have heard about it. I wrote IBM, they said it was Microsoft's problem that the drives Firmware have to be "Signed" just like drivers do know. Promise never responded to my e-mails. I have posted this problem on every newsgroup I can think of, only to get responses like "I get that too" or "Flash the bios in your controller".

 

I switched to the Promise, because I thought it was the HPT366. I tried various Highpoint drivers and BIOS versions. Nothing.

 

I have no idea how to fix this problem, other than getting new drives. I don't want to, they're fast, 7200rpm, and 2meg cache.

 

The drives are listed in my system as:

 

IBM DPTA - 372050

 

It's also known as the Deskstar 34GXP (don't know where they got the 34 from).

 

If anyone has any info that can help me, I would really appreciate it, I can't post another message about this! =)

 

Regards,

Mike

 

 

[This message has been edited by Mike V (edited 12 March 2000).]

[Seldzar 0]

First of all changing your drives won't do jack. And who cares?........if it's not doing anything who cares.......clear the log when you think of it.

 

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§E£DZÅR

http://www.win2knews.com

[Mike V 0]

I fixed it!

 

Thank god!

 

I noticed that the error was on device 1, meaning my second drive. After finding out the second drive had the same firmware revision (eliminating that theory), I downloaded IBM's diagnostic program, that makes a bootable disk for checking out your drives. It works only with IBM SCSI or IDE drives. I found out that these drives support S.M.A.R.T, a self monitoring standard, and it was turned off on the second drive. The program allows you to enable it, so I did, and the error has gone away.

 

Mike

 

 

[This message has been edited by Mike V (edited 13 March 2000).]