[BladeRunner]

Well, lets be honest, they can't really make a Highpoint controller work any worse can they?

[Xiven]

I have. Still using 2.31 BIOS/drivers at the moment, but when I get around to it, I'll try the new ones.

[Behemoth]

Can't be botered to get the update, the old version seems to be workling for me, so not much point in fixing something that isn't broken.

[JP-]

Ive got the controller but when i realised that RAID was pointless for the desktop user, i just disabled it and thats how its gonna stay.

[JP-]

Id like to see some actual real world comparasons of raid0 in action then, not sandra benchies!

I was running it myself at 1 point but i couldnt notice the difference, maybe it was just the crappy highpoint drivers at the time.

[JP-]

Yes, my drives were on RAID0, using the highpoint controller. 2x IBM 60GXPs, which at the time were the best drives i could buy.

I set them up on there own first, and then thought i would give RAID a go, sure enough HDTach reported 80-90MB read speeds. But i couldnt really notice the difference in real world usage, as i dont edit video or do CAD, or whatever.....

Also, as i only had the 2 drives, by sticking them in RAID0 i was effectivly removing all redundancy, as if 1 failed i could say bye bye to the whole lot.

I would really love to beleve RAID0 was worth it for the desktop user, but in my experience...it isnt

oh and btw, as i really wanted to beleve desktop RAID0 was good, i tried it with every possible stripe size.

[JP-]

Ive had these 60GXPs ever since they were first released (whenever that was :)) and ive had 0 problems to far, and you are right bout the 75GXPs, i beleve its them that have the reported problems.

I also thought about a mirror but by doing so i effectivly lose 40GB of storage space.

What ive got atm is just 2 drives running as 2 seperate drives, so i just keep all important stuff on both drives, so if 1 breaks ive got the info on another drive.

[JP-]

I did do a speed comparason at the time yes, but i dont recall the exact figures for the non-raid drives. Ill test them again tonight when i get home, i seem to remember that the actual benched speed was at least 20-30mb/s higher when raid-ed. But the problem was that i couldnt see a difference in actual usage

Ill test em again when i get home and let ya know what they get

[Xiven]

I have my drives on the HPT controller even though I'm not using them in a RAID array (because the original KT7-RAID can only do ATA33 on the standard IDE ports).

[JP-]

Well how typical is this!

Having said how great they are, 1 of my 60GXPs has gone pear shaped Constant ticking and it fails the IBM quick diags Suppose ill get this 1 RMA-d but ive bought an 80gb WD SE with 8mb cache, so ill use that as the primary now

Ive just lost so much stuff

[JP-]

Yeah, ive lost alot of cool stuff, including a website that i was working on but i guess ill have to start it all again

Was actually thinking of going back to windows 2000 instead of XP

[Xiven]

Quote:

I bit the bullet on this patch... oddly, the BIOS upon trying to use the LOAD.exe program to instill the new BIOS prom image said it could not find a valid one to load or something like that (and I did read it & use the load bios372.273. whatver commandline & even the /e switched one too after first one failed, std. type commandline!)

I think you'll find that the BIOS that Highpoint supplies is for the PCI version, not for on-board controllers. You'd need to get a modified motherboard BIOS (with the new HPT controller firmware embedded in it).

For the KT7-RAID (ONLY!!!) I use the modified BIOSs from http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/faqdownloads.html since ABit still seem to be supplying BIOSs equipped with an ancient version of the HPT firmware. They have BIOSs for other ABit boards there too, just remember that they are hacked versions of the ABit originals so use with care.

Quote:

Having said how great they are, 1 of my 60GXPs has gone pear shaped Constant ticking and it fails the IBM quick diags Suppose ill get this 1 RMA-d but ive bought an 80gb WD SE with 8mb cache, so ill use that as the primary now

Yeah that really sucks Those IBM hard drives have given nothing but trouble to many people I know (including myself).

[JP-]

Whats even more annoying is i have to send it to holland to get a replacement ;(

Got 2000 installed on this new Western Digital drive though seems impressive so far (well as impressive as a hard drive can get anyway :))

2000 makes you realise how sluggish XP seems