NEW: Intel Matrix Storage Manager 6.2.1.1002, released Jan. 4,2007

[shaihulud]

Whoa, the great people over at Intel answer the plebs! It was obvious that one was going to be replicated . Now that is a perfect example of a bug and something that is not a relative issue.

[Acid8000]

Originally Posted by Dandruff

just got this answer:

Thank you for contacting Intel(R) Technical Support.

We appreciate your patience. Your issue has been replicated. We are now investigating the issue to determine if it is expected behavior or a possible bug, and will provide an update when one is available.

Any updates on this? I wonder whether leaving it as it is by default is any different from having it greyed out upon attempting to enable it.

[Dandruff]

no new version released yet

[Tokat]

Hey everyone! This is my first post here. I already feel like I'm in safe hands though! I hate to be the bearer of even MORE bad news with matrix storage manager driver trouble/windows trouble, but I sincerely hope to sort out these problems with your help before it drives me mad! The problems I'm having are with setting up a RAID 1 array on Windows XP Pro from scratch.

I have an asus P5B-V motherboard with the intel G965 chipset and the ICH8 chip. The motherboard also has a jmicron 363 raid controller chip which controls the 1 and only IDE port on the motherboard, 1 internal SATA port and 1 external. Before I knew that, I thought that a RAID array could be set up by connecting my 2 new SATA HDDs to the normal ports... but then I found out that the chip only controls 1 internal and 1 external port. What kind of logic of mobo design is that for RAID?!?! Stupid idea imho.
So my idea was to connect it to the normal ports controlled by the ICH8 and install the matrix storage driver using the F6 method. it all seemed to go well, but when i got into windows, it appears that only normal windows SATA drivers had been loaded to the controller, not the RAID one i specified.

so i downloaded the storage matrix application and tried to install in windows but it comes up with an error saying my system does not meet the minimum requirements. I have tried the previous release to the same effect. I am really really confused. Please help!!

Thankyou so much in advance people! Appreciated

[FightingChance]

Tokat, your board has the ICH8, not the ICH8R, so the Intel SATA ports do not have RAID capability, only the JMicron ones do (the one SATA port on the board that is not Intel's and the external facing one.)

[Tokat]

Originally Posted by FightingChance

Tokat, your board has the ICH8, not the ICH8R, so the Intel SATA ports do not have RAID capability, only the JMicron ones do (the one SATA port on the board that is not Intel's and the external facing one.)

Thanks very much FightingChance for your reply/comment. Very appreciated. I'm still a little confused as to why Intel would offer their matrix storage manager for the G965 chipset if raid is not available on it. I presume it would be for enabling AHCI compatibility?

Any practical tips on how to get raid from the jmicron chip if one port is external? That seems a bit backwards to me! why would one want a disk on the inside and one on the outside for raid???LOL

Thanks again for your time :-)

[Acid8000]

Originally Posted by Tokat

I presume it would be for enabling AHCI compatibility?

That is the case. Even though I have an ICH6R, I enabled only AHCI mode to enable NCQ and other SATA-only functionality.

[FightingChance]

Originally Posted by Tokat

Thanks very much FightingChance for your reply/comment. Very appreciated. I'm still a little confused as to why Intel would offer their matrix storage manager for the G965 chipset if raid is not available on it. I presume it would be for enabling AHCI compatibility?

You'd *think*. I could not, for the life of me, utilize AHCI on my P5B motherboard no matter what I did. I just don't think it's possible, or Intel doesn't provide the right driver set. Even though there's a setting in the BIOS for it, I couldn't get Windows to install correctly. I eventually returned it, and now I'm wrestling with my Abit AB9 Pro.

Yes, an external hdd for RAID is very silly, also you need a special SATA cable for external SATA.

[Tokat]

Originally Posted by FightingChance

I could not, for the life of me, utilize AHCI on my P5B motherboard no matter what I did. I just don't think it's possible

Oh dear, oh dear. And the whole point of the new system was to have as reliable and fully functional system as possible. But it's actually not my fault! Dad purchased the new parts for the system build to have as an office machine... Looks like we're gona return that mobo for another one.

Did you try to load the AHCI drivers for your mobo(s) using the F6 method on windows install? Was the SATA setting in the bios set to AHCI as opposed to IDE?

I tried to set mine on AHCI once after I'd already loaded XP onto it, and it just didn't start windows. I don't think it can cope without the drivers being pre-loaded.
I bet if you phoned for support they'd just say "upgrade to vista to sort out your problems!" LOL

[FightingChance]

Correct, you cannot switch from a legacy IDE emulation mode and AHCI mode after the OS has been installed (at least, WinXP and older.)

I did try the F6 method with a floppy diskette loaded with the Intel drivers; thing is, if you examine the selections you'll see that only the 82801HR/HH ICH8R, 82801DO ICH8DO, 82801DH ICH8DH are the valid choices to load drivers for; the 82801HB ICH8 is not listed and apparently not supported even though the object is not to get RAID, just the benefits of AHCI (Software interface providing advanced storage interface for Serial ATA, including native command queuing, link power management and native hot plug.) There's nothing in that description that indicates you can't have that for a single drive, so I sort of suspect the ICH8 is capable of it, but the support structure to make it work simply does not exist.

You can of course still run in traditional IDE emulation mode, and performance will probably not really be diminished too much. Then again, I want to take advantage of everything I bought, so I ended up switching out motherboards.

[Tokat]

Oh right, yes. When I was setting up windows and using the F6 method, I was just trying to load on the ICH8R RAID driver, but also naturally assumed that if I indicated the ICH8R AHCI that would have come up. But from what you're saying that won't work either... so they need to make an ICH8 AHCI driver ... bit silly how a product has the potential for something but can't actually utilise its function through lack of drivers from the makers of the chip!

To get RAID1, my dad and I decided to purchase an add-in RAID controller card. It's an adaptec SATAII 2port PCI-E x1 board... in theory sounds good... let's just hope it works! I'll keep you updated on that :-)

[lerhodes]

I too can not enable cache writing but I just ran Sandra and it improved from 205 meg to 215 meg burst... I think it just may be cosmedic because it allows me to check the boxes, it just doesn't remain checked with reopened...

[lerhodes]

I just checked it again it states the following, I didn't notice the first time...

"This device does not allow its write cache setting to be modified"

[Acid8000]

Looks like it's always on regardless of the setting.

[lerhodes]

It appears it would have to be at that benchmark...