Delay Write Failed - ALL Maxtor SATA's with P4S800-E Deluxe

[Jocky]

Interestingly, SiSoft Sandra says "PCI latency too high". Wonder if that's worth looking at?

I also get this. You can change the PCI latency in the bios. I think I will change it to 32, too see what happens:eek:

[Jocky]

Just changed PCI Latency Timer to 32 from 64.

Watch this space going to flog it now to see what happens:eek:

[VSEKH]

Spoke to my friend. He had his Audigy2 sharing IRQ 17 with the SIS180 controller. He moved his Audigy2 from the 2nd slot to the 3rd slow below the AGP slot. He ran diskeeper several times and have not gotten the blue screen.

Looks like the SIS180 controller does not like sharing IRQs with anything else.

Anyone else want to check this out on their system and see if this helps?

[fluffedup]

Tried this, but still no luck. IRQ's 17 and 18 are used by the 180 and 181 respectively. 17 is also used by firewire controller while 18 is used by the SoundMAX. I disabled both of these non-SiS180-related things in BIOS, rebooted, made sure that there were no conflicts anymore [there were none], then did my usual test to see if it still was screwed up. Unfortunately, it didn't fix anything. Anyone else have any differing results?

[My usual test is that I attempt to rip a DVD to the SATA drive. When the problem exists (meaning: always), the computer blue screens with error 0x0000007a [or ~77] OR it shows 'delayed write failed OR during the ripping process, it more-or-less craps out and neither the light on the DVD drive is on nor is the HDD light on [and the drive isn't making any expected hard drive noises]. I've never gotten past 2% of the full movie. In case you're wondering, the disc is a typical dual-layer, pressed DVD and is in perfectly fine condition and I've successfully ripped it with the same drive (a LiteOn 16x) before "upgrading" to this motherboard.]

In short...the IRQ thing doesn't solve the problem for me [and I'd assume the others], but thanks for spending the time trying to help. It's cool that people are concerned the way they are.


Thanks,
Dan

a reminder, the significant parts of the setup:
motherboard: Asus P4S800D-E Deluxe with beta bios 1003.001
harddrive: Maxtor 160GB SATA plugged into one of the 964's SATA ports [plugging into one of the 180's ports made Windows not boot....not worth messing around in Recovery console to redefine boot settings only to have same problem]
Windows XP Pro with the 48bit addressing hotfix thing

[VSEKH]

Hopefully Stoneh will get some help from Asus, SIS, or Maxtor in resolving this issue.

It's not just Maxtor SATA drives. My friend's OS is on a WD 74GB Raptor drive. He only got the stop error when he ran diskeeper. Nero works fine for him when he burns CDs and DVDs.

[Jocky]

Originally posted by Jocky
Just changed PCI Latency Timer to 32 from 64.

Watch this space going to flog it now to see what happens:eek:

Right guys, the above does not solve the problem
All it does is make my system very slow and unresponsive

So I have went the other way and set PCI Latency Timer to 96.

Will post back the results

[Stoneh]

I dont think its an IRQ issue, as I have the WD SATA working nicely no matter what SATA connector I use, where its on 180 or other. Same thing. It would be good if people can contact all manufacturers concerned.

Just wondering if it could be UDMA6 mode thats causing the maxtors and the SIS controller to cause errors? all the rest of the SATA drives are UDMA5. UDMA6 not supported???? and there's no way to turn this off

[Stoneh]

VSEKH: The system will crash even if the SATA drive is just queried by the system. I have had this a few times, the system would lock up for no reason. The system has been rock solid for 3 days now (without teh maxtor drive) and ive yet to reboot.

[bal_abx]

This is a long post, but it describes what I've done and if you're experiencing SATA problems with Maxtors, you'll want to read.

I went to a back to basics system:
The WD Raptor is connected to SATA 1 and works well.
I have a new install of Windows XP SP1 with the RAID drivers installed and the Q331958 HotFix from Microsoft for 48-bit addressing (that is a suggestion for Delayed Write Failed).
I have turned off the on-board sound and the 1394 controller, so there's now IRQ conflict.

My test case is a 1.3GB backup image that I pull off my C drive (the Raptor).

I have my two PATA WDs connected as Master and Slave to the 180 controller (which shows up as 181 in Windows), and set up as RAID 0. These connect as UDMA 5 and seem to work OK, and it takes about 20 seconds or so to copy my test file over. I also tried copying the Windows directory to this array and it takes around 2 minutes and seems to work.

I am experiencing either Delayed Write Failures or all out lock-ups in these configurations:
1. My two SATA Maxtors connected to the 180 controller, and set up as RAID 1.
2. My two SATA Maxtors connected to the 180 controller but with no RAID setup.
3. One of the SATA Maxtors connected to the Southbridge, with no RAID setup.

In each case the drives have been properly formatted (i.e. not QuickFormat).

I have adjusted the PCI latency from 64 to 96 and then to 128, but this doesn't seem to do anything.

Interestingly, I cannot get Powermax to see the Maxtor drive even when it is connected to the Southbridge controller (I thought it was able to do this, but maybe it only works with Intel chipsets?)

Recall that I wrote that the PATA drives connect as UDMA 5? The SATA drives (including the WD Raptor that works) connect as UDMA 6. I had hoped that the very useful multi-purpose Hitachi Drive Feature Tool would enable me to change the Maxtor to UDMA 5, but sadly it doesn't. It does, however, show me that the Maxtor 6Y160M0 has firmware YAR51FW0.

Now from my old build I have two SATA-PATA converters (based on the Silicon Image SataLink 13611CT80. I have an 80GB Maxtor 6L08J4 PATA drive and connected this through the converter to SATA 2. This connects using UDMA 5 and I was able to copy my test file across, and it seemed successful although it took 2.5-3 times longer than going to the RAID 0 array. Since it already contained data, I copied a large directory (3.5GB) of pictures to the Raptor and that also worked.

Next, I placed this same drive on SATA 3, so connected to the second 180 controller. This also connects as UDMA 5 and I was able to copy my test file across. I also tried copying my 3.5GB pictures directory now on the Raptor to another directory on this Maxtor and it worked.

At this point, I'm going to have to draw the conclusion that the SiS controllers (Southbridge and 180) and the Maxtor SATA drives I have don't get on. I don't know whether it is due to the UDMA mode or Maxtor drive itself. It makes little difference though since the WD Raptor seems to work fine using UDMA 6, and I can't change the UDMA mode of the Maxtor.

I went back and re-enabled the on-board audio and 1394 controller, so we now have IRQ sharing again. The same test file copied across successfully.

So the next step is going to be to try two identical SATA drives from another manufacturer and see if they work. If they don't, maybe my money saving idea of getting this board is biting back and I should've gone for that 875P board to start off with?

Postscript: The observant will note that I hadn't installed the SoundMax drivers. This means that even with the on-board sound enabled Windows didn't show the separate 180 controller (181) sharing IRQs with the sound chipset. I installed the sound drivers after the final test above and reran that test and it still worked.

[Jocky]

Bal, nice post

Right I have been having a play for most of the day:eek:
Failed miserably.
I also tried the PCI latency thing, no change.
What I've ended up doing is going back to a WD PATA drive and ripped out the maxtors Not had one error or delayed write failure since

The plan is to get 2 different SATA drives and put the maxtors back in my SINXP, no problems on the SIS963, Sil 3112.

I was thinking on getting 2 raptors. What do you guys recommend Raptors are £90 in the UK for 36gb:eek:

What do you think of WD SATA Dives (non raptor)

[VSEKH]

Jocky and Bal, sorry to hear that the maxtor drives are not working out. Hopefully Stoneh will hear back from SIS, Maxtor, or Asus soon on a resolution.

I have a 250GB WD SATA drive, but sold this drive the overall perfomance was better with the Maxtor 250GB SATA drive. The same goes for the 120GB WD SATA drive. I had sold this drive and gotten the Maxtor 120GB SATA drive for the same reason.

I have settled on a single 74GB WD Raptor for my OS and application data with a Maxtor 250GB SATA drive for my downloads & other data.

My friend has not had issues since moving the sound card to a different PCI slot. He was getting ready to return this motherboard and going with an i865PE chipset motherboard. He is going to hang onto this SIS655TX motherboard for now.

[fluffedup]

for what it's worth, I [someone who has the same problem] filed a support request with Asus, but haven't heard back. I did, however, talk with Maxtor's tech support people. The Maxtor guy was really friendly and tried to be helpful, but they didn't have anything on record of the problem happening, so in the end, Maxtor has it on record, but had no solution. I think it's reasonably safe to assume that the problem isn't on Maxtor's end, being that we'd probably run into a whole lot more problems involving Maxtor's with intel chipsets, nvidia chipsets, via, etc.

Thanks,
Dan

[bal_abx]

OK well after a trip to Fry's Electronics to secure two Western Digital 120GB SATA drives, I can now report the following:
1. Success with one WD plugged into SATA2.
2. Success with the same WD when plugged into SATA4 (so now connected to the second RAID controller).
3. Success with the WDs connected to SATA3 and SATA4, and configured as a RAID 1 array. Copied my test file across from the Raptor as well as a whole directory of small files, and my Pictures directory from the RAID 0 array.

Here's a very interesting finding: these new WD SATA drives are being run in UDMA 5, whereas the Maxtors were being run in UDMA 6.

One might conclude that the SiS 180 controller is rubbish and doesn't like UDMA 6, but if you will recall the WD Raptor that's sitting on my SATA1 has always been running in UDMA 6. So, this leads me to believe that there's something about the way that Maxtor does UDMA 6 that makes the SiS controller throw a wobbly.

So I am going to RMA the Maxtors now.

If anyone is interested, one of the WD drives I am now testing with is a WD1200JD-00GBB0 and the other is a WD1200PD-00FZB0. Go figure... they were both bought from the same store and have WD1200JDRTL on the bottom of the retail box!

[fluffedup]

bal, if you don't mind me asking...

I have the Maxtor 160 SATA drive [as opposed to a similar drive from Western Digital] because of how quiet it is. I replaced two Western Digital 7200rpm, 2mb cache models [a 40GB and a 100GB] with this single Maxtor 160 when I bought the motherboard. Granted, those Western Digital drives were no longer cutting edge when I bought the new stuff [4 weeks ago], but the sound level difference between the WD drives and Maxtor drive is amazing. I don't mean to come off as a Maxtor fanboy, but the Maxtor drive is all-but silent at idle, something the WD drives were definitely not. The noise from the WD drives wasn't anything that was unexpected [not the whine that some drives develop].....just plain old loud.

In your experience, considering you have both drives at the time being, are these new WD drives [not the Raptor....but the 7200 SATA drives] comparable in volume to the Maxtor or are they noticeably louder? It looks like, from the WD data sheets, that the WD's are louder, but from using the assortment of disks, is that what you've found?

I don't mean to turn this thread into a hdd manufacturer vs. hdd manufacturer battle or anything like that, just wondering if you, bal, have an opinion on the matter? Of course, if you didn't even notice, that's fine.

Thanks a lot,
Dan

again...I don't mean to turn this into a hdd manufacturer battle or anything like that.....I'd just like to know his experiences with a possible replacement for my problematic setup

[bal_abx]

fluffedup - I will give it a go.
You will see from the attached picture that the PC is sort of in pieces, so it is easy enough to try things right now!
The case fan will drown out pretty much everything so I'll temporarily disable them.