Asus k8v optimization & general questions

[Allen Hallada]

I actually forgot to change mine over to IDE and left it as RAID in the bios. I'm using the FastTrack controller. It works fine for me. Both SATA drives are configured as "RAID1+0".

-s0nguy

Would be good to see your entire hard drive setup sOnguy. I'm thinking that you have three drives. One for system on the regular IDE or Promise IDE and the other two are on the SATA Fastrack setup in Raid 0+1?
I'd be interested to see your results if you only have a Raid setup for both your system and audio. That would be like a one drive system.
Thanks,
Allen

[Allen Hallada]

I can't find how to disable the fasttrack in the Bios. I'll keep searching for that. Also, I reread what you posted earlier and I made the floppy of the "makedisk.exe" from the promise folder. I disconnected one of the drives (for the XP install). I hope thats right.

Side question... My (dvd)ROM in plugged into my primary IDE slot. Is that ok?

Mike,
In the past to make things go easier, we usually set up the system drive (ATA drives) on the regular motherboard IDE channel until everything including the audio drive was setup and formated etc. Then we moved the system drive to the Promise channel. Hope that helps you if you run into problems with your system drive being detected.

Allen

[s0nguy]

Would be good to see your entire hard drive setup sOnguy. I'm thinking that you have three drives. One for system on the regular IDE or Promise IDE and the other two are on the SATA Fastrack setup in Raid 0+1?
I'd be interested to see your results if you only have a Raid setup for both your system and audio. That would be like a one drive system.
Thanks,
Allen

Here is my setup:

PriSATA is an 80GB Seagate Barracud running WinXP Pro. It is partitioned with Partition Magic into an 15GB system partition and a 65GBish Application Partition (Non-Digi Plug-ins, Wavelab, T-Racks masterling app, etc..).

Sec SATA: 80GB Seagate barracuda for PT audio only.

Both SATA drives are using the FastTrack controller and are configured as RAID1+0...NOT RAID0+1. In essence it is a "fake" raid setup. This is probably because I left the option on the coltroller to RAID rather than switching it to IDE in the BIOS.

Primary IDE: 80GB 7200 WD ATA. This is my little bitch drive.....any excess goes here including old PARIS files, Music Catalog, GAMES (Im a sucker for Battlefield 1942 and who can resist running it on an AMD64?!?!).

My DVD burner and other client audio/archive drives are on the Firewire bus.

So, I'm not REALLY running RAID.....but the PC thinks I am.

-s0nguy

[Straatocastoer]

Ok ... let's address a couple of issues here:

I can't find how to disable the fasttrack in the Bios. I'll keep searching for that. Also, I reread what you posted earlier and I made the floppy of the "makedisk.exe" from the promise folder. I disconnected one of the drives (for the XP install). I hope thats right.

Side question... My (dvd)ROM in plugged into my primary IDE slot. Is that ok?

To disable the Fasttrack do this: BIOS>Advanced>Onboard Devices Configuration ... third choice down should be "Onboard Promise Controller" ... there you can choose to enable or disable.

I have my CD-RW plugged into my primary IDE channel and works wonderfully.

Now, as far as making your driver disk (floppy disk that is), if we are disabling the Promise controller, and you are using the VIA controller (SATA1 and 2 on the mobo), we will need to use the VIA drivers found on the Asus CDROM in ..\Drivers\VIARAID\6420RAID\DriverDisk. Looks like you will have RAID and IDE options there. Once again, I went the Promise route, but this looks familar . Use the MakeDisk.exe utility there to make your driver floppy. Then go back to your Asus machine, press F6 during WinXP installation. You should be prompted to put in your driver disk, and follow the directions.

This is what I had to do for the Promise controller, and now I am running my system fine with both of my SATA HDDs running in IDE mode -- no RAID here.

[BioFeedback]

Strat-O, You are a badd MOFO! I went with your method.
Thank you fellas for the advise! I'm am installing XP right now. yay!

Special thanks to Allen. For the all the help and recomendations! Man, you must have helped thousands of people by now, think about that! OK, I'm psyched, I'll be posting my DaveC results soon.

Thanks againg guys, You all rock the earth!

[Straatocastoer]

Now, let's make some music, Mike!

[BioFeedback]

OK, DaveC 32+9 ... Without ANY tweaks. After living with crappy computers, I've learned how to tweak the heck out of them. I'm positive I can get much better results with this. But, I actually don't feel like doing it now.
I'm extremly happy with this machine!

(next day i got bored, did the digi tweaks and raised my CPU usage to 85%. 32+23 on the daveC)

wait a minute... what's this strange feeling coming over me? ... I think I'm loosing interest in testing things ... feeling the unusual need to get back to work!

My Machine (well..Allens)
X-Dreamer II case (stock)
Asus K8V Deluxe
AMD 64 3200+
Corsair XMS twinn matched 512MB (1024)
WD SAT 80gig drives (Via route. [sata1 sata2])
Rocstor external Firewire Drive 80G (I used this for the test not second internal)
Asus 9200SE AGP
NEC DVDRW-ROM
Lil' Old MBox

I would like to point out. I check every other message boards, before i cryed to you guys with my problems. None of them helped me. Not the Asus site...not the WD site... You guys are Gods among eggheads!

I cant thank you all enough.

[Guitarman002]

Hi Allen,

I bumped into this explanation regarding the VIA and Promise controllers and thought that you might be interested...and that it may help some to understand the problems that exist with VIA...

The ASUS K8V has two sets of S-ATA controllers on it.
The VIA VT8237 is the Southbridge controller and controls the regular IDE connections as well as the two S-ATA connections right next to the chip (they're positioned "above" eachother, next to the floppy connector).

The Promise R20378 controller is for the RAID IDE connector (bottom IDE connector) and the two S-ATA controllers underneath it.

The 64-bit Promise driver is out. VIA has also released 64-bit drivers, but unfortunately these cannot be used to install Windows on an S-ATA drive, because they cannot be used during installation. Let's hope VIA fixes that problem soon.

Thanks again for your help...hope that this bit of info is helpful.

[Straatocastoer]

he Promise R20378 controller is for the RAID IDE connector (bottom IDE connector) and the two S-ATA controllers underneath it.

Just so everyone is clear on this note, you CAN configure the Promise conroller to use the SATA drives as a RAID, or there is also an "IDE Mode" which enables the drives to be used individually -- not in a RAID (very important since Digi does not support RAID configurations).

The 64-bit Promise driver is out.

I don't see that specifically listed on the download page for the K8V Deluxe (unless it is listed as "Promise SATA378 Driver V1.00.0.26 (ATA Mode)). If this driver is available I have two questions:
#1: Will it run in a 32-bit operating system?
#2: If so, where do I get it?!?!?!?!

[Guitarman002]

WHEW !!!

I am typing on my new computer....and I had trouble getting the ASUS K8V to see my hard drives as was described here. What I did not realize was that the MakeDisk.exe file was one of the files that I had downloaded from various sites. I was trying to copy Windows XP drivers to the old floppy disk to use...but the files were too large. I finally saw the MAKEDISK.EXE file in the array of downloaded files ... and IT WORKED !!! (I shouldn't complain....it only took me 7 hours to realize this). Anyway, I hope that this post will save future users lots of time and agony.

Thanks everyone for all of your help....I wouldn't have ever made it to this point without you.
Now....starting tomorrow....I will hook this baby up to Digi 002 and see how it smokes!

AMD 64 3400+
74 GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM Serial ATA Hard Drive
250 GB Western Digital 7200 RPM Serial ATA Hard Drive
Corsair 2X512MB DDR RAM Twin X Chips
ASUS K8T800 K8V DELUXE Motherboard (my temporary pain in the arse)
etc. etc. etc.

I ended up installing the hard drives, (SATA), on the VIA (SATA 1 and SATA 2) controller. I will try this configuration out first...(I read somewhere that Digidesign recommends that you not use RAID arrays), and see how it works. If it doesn't work out as I hope ... I will go back and try the PROMISE controller and the setup that was described by Mr. Strat. Thanks again for your help...and I'll try to provide some feedback.