HP ProLiant MicroServer Owners Club! (Attempting to sell here will result in bans)

[AbRASiON]

Originally Posted by jonamafun

3. Download the AMD RAID driver:
http://wwwd.amd.com/AMD/SReleaseF.nsf/HPSW?openform
http://wwwd.amd.com/AMD/SReleaseF.ns...2%AEServer2008

SNIP

The 2 files linked in that post to enable RAID on an already installed version of Windows are prompting for a username and password @ AMD.COM incase anyone cares - I do not know the user / pass.

Also, as people stated unfortunately, HP has shitty links for this device. The normal support you'd get for a regular DC 7800 / 8000 etc is far better.
It links to a subsite upon subsite and eventually redirects you to AMD.COM and spits out a "No documents found" error. Also: no Win7 drivers, just Win server and so on (understandable I spose)




I ended up downloading this driver from AMD http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...d_windows.aspx
EDIT
I recommend (portions) of my post be merged with that other guys.

1, If you boot into RAID without adding the driver, Windows 7 will bluescreen, try to repair itself but it DOESN'T hose the install (phew)
2, if you download the file I linked and install it, then install that guys .reg file, it will work, that's seemingly all you need to do.
2a, the file I've linked includes multiple drivers matching the filename he mentions "ahcix64s.sys" for different chipsets - I'm going to ASSUME the AMD installer detected the right chipset and installed the right one
3, might be my imagination but disk performance on the ESATA port seems SIGNIFICANTLY slower after installing the RAID driver (yes, I know it runs in SATA 3gb, not 6gb mode normally) but this is insane.... it's really really slow - might be my imagination - will update if it's just doing some kind of search index or something.
4, windows explorer crashed for the first time ever on this box after installing these drivers, it might be just a fluke and it was only a soft crash but I will update this thread if I see more trouble.


Anyone seen this behaviour after switching to RAID drivers? Do I need to flash that bodgy SATA fix? I thought it was just for people who want 6gbs :/ which my disks are no where near.
The machine is basically running like crap now when serving files. I'm seeing 4.5mbytes/s sustained on files from it and this is apalling :/
Mine is populated with 5 out of 6 disks


EDIT again!, sorry
Is there a tool which will show me if a disk is in PIO mode or something? Even switching back to AHCI at least one of my disks is only doing 4.5mbytes/s which is just... it's not good enough - I'm guessing the AMD driver might have screwed something up in Windows?

[Soarer GT]

HP's business model is that you need to pay for support.. to access support files they with-hold from you... when you need support... ?

[Stanza]

Originally Posted by AbRASiON

<snip>

So on that note, does this version of the RAID driver work?
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...d_windows.aspx
I'm grabbing it now, although my Microserver could be hosed as it tried to repair Windows when I set it to RAID - so it booted up and did all kinds of nasty stuff to the disk.

Do we have a definitive link to Win 7, 64bit compatible RAID drivers?

<snip>

Did you try these ones I linked earlier?

E6760
E6460
E4690
E2400
G-Series
AMD 785E | SB8X0 Chipset
AMD 780E | SB710 Chipset
Radeon HD 6970M
Radeon HD5770

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...ndows_all.aspx

The ones you linked are for 700 series chipsets

.

[AbRASiON]

Originally Posted by Stanza

<snip>

Did you try these ones I linked earlier?

E6760
E6460
E4690
E2400
G-Series
AMD 785E | SB8X0 Chipset
AMD 780E | SB710 Chipset
Radeon HD 6970M
Radeon HD5770

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...ndows_all.aspx

The ones you linked are for 700 series chipsets

.

The link you just supplied says
"AMD Catalyst™ Display Driver" and has no reference to RAID on the page?



This one which I linked
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...d_windows.aspx

Description:
Package Includes:
AMD SB7xx RAID Drivers
AMD SB8xx RAID Drivers
AMD SB9xx RAID Drivers
AMD A-Series APU Chipset RAID Drivers
AMD E-Series APU Chipset RAID Drivers

Also I found it by going here
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...&swEnvOID=4037 Even though that's for Server 2008 it says

AMD SB7xx/SB8xx Chipset Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit SATA RAID Driver

So I googled "AMD SB7xx/SB8xx Chipset raid driver site:amd.com" and the first hit I got was the one I linked.
I'm going to assume I got the right file? Is the chipset NOT the 7xx series? and if it isn't why does HP's website say "AMD SB7xx/SB8xx Chipset"?

[Stanza]

The ones I linked to are 319Meg in size...

Yes a little misleading site...
But it does say

AMD Embedded GPU and Chipset Vista/Win7 Driver

Top right also links back to earlier ones if you need them.

One I actually used when running win7 was 8.86-110512a-120873C-EDG_Direct.zip

didn't give any troubles
.

[AbRASiON]

Considering the trouble I'm now having - it can't possibly be any worse, so I'll give them a shot!

Everything feels 'sluggish' on the machine - the fact I run my OS disk from the ESATA port probably doesn't help. Mind you this is the 3'rd Microserver I've opted to put the OS disk on the ESATA port. (Well the OS disk is the least likely to be removed isn't it? so I now have 4 bays which are semi-hot swappable)

4.5mb/s sustained on nice large files with NTFS 32kb clusters - I should be seeing a minimum of 30mb/s :/

Also, anyone know what the go is with BIOS updates? which is the one to go for? It seems the AHCI hacks are for the NL36 and HP have released a bios as late as Oct 2011 (mines dated July 29 I think) version 041

[Stanza]

Post your config up

Drives?
Attached to?
Memory?
Raid setup?

The Bios hack is to enable full speed on the internal SATA port... so it's not crippled to IDE UDMA-5 mode

.

[AbRASiON]

Originally Posted by Stanza

Post your config up

Drives?
Attached to?
Memory?
Raid setup?

The Bios hack is to enable full speed on the internal SATA port... so it's not crippled to IDE UDMA-5 mode

.

Drive #1 - ESATA port 2TB WD Green (Boot)
Drive #2 - DVD / Onboard 2TB WD Green
Drive #3 - (Cage slot #1 left) Empty
Drive #4 - (Cage slot #1 left) 1.5TB WD Green
Drive #5 - (Cage slot #1 left) 1TB WD Green (RAID0)
Drive #6 - (Cage slot #1 left) 1TB Seagate 7200 (RAID0)

I totally know the 2 disks are mismatched - but even in AHCI mode, performance specifically for Drive 1 / 2 has dropped terribly.
8gb ram
Totally no hassles at all before installing those RAID drivers tonight.

UDMA5 mode is still surely vastly superior to the speeds I'm getting, considering I never had a problem before without the BIOS update, I wonder if the new drivers just don't like those ports (until the BIOS hack is applied?)

[Stanza]

Originally Posted by AbRASiON

Drive #1 - ESATA port 2TB WD Green (Boot)
Drive #2 - DVD / Onboard 2TB WD Green
Drive #3 - (Cage slot #1 left) Empty
Drive #4 - (Cage slot #1 left) 1.5TB WD Green
Drive #5 - (Cage slot #1 left) 1TB WD Green (RAID0) <<<<This One
Drive #6 - (Cage slot #1 left) 1TB Seagate 7200 (RAID0)

What Model green drive is Drive 5? EARS?
if so have you jumpered it?

.

[AbRASiON]

Originally Posted by Stanza

What Model green drive is Drive 5? EARS?
if so have you jumpered it?

.

Hmmmmmmm I dunno - I don't think so, but it was working fine for the last few days. It's also not one of the "afflicted" drives? :/
Why would that one need jumpering and the top one not?
I do definitely have an EARS in there though.
2 EARX 1 EARS
and the final one I can't tell because it's hidden by the RAID array.

[AbRASiON]

Here's an interesting one.
Ever since I installed the driver (and your driver) I have the following.
"The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
ahcix64s"

Even though the device is clearly working,........... EventID 7026
I mean that tells me the RAID should be completely not working at all - but it's fine :/
(155mb/s formatting now)

[Stanza]

Originally Posted by AbRASiON

Hmmmmmmm I dunno - I don't think so, but it was working fine for the last few days. It's also not one of the "afflicted" drives? :/
Why would that one need jumpering and the top one not?
I do definitely have an EARS in there though.
2 EARX 1 EARS
and the final one I can't tell because it's hidden by the RAID array.

Possibly

If one drive is 4k emulating 512b ie the WD, and the seagate is straight 512b

Win 7 can deal with either... but when all it see's is a FAKE 2TB drive that is presented to it.... which is a mix of both sectors.

I would imagine thats your slowdown... 4.5mb/s is what Green drives slow down to when not aligned,

,

[Stanza]

Originally Posted by AbRASiON

Here's an interesting one.
Ever since I installed the driver (and your driver) I have the following.
"The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
ahcix64s"

Even though the device is clearly working,........... EventID 7026
I mean that tells me the RAID should be completely not working at all - but it's fine :/
(155mb/s formatting now)

See if it slows down after 15-20mins ala 4k emulating drives tend too.

.

[Dislexsick]

Lame, HP removed both the N40L base model and the MediaSmart EX490 from the EPP over the last few days.

N40L remains in a model with ODD and remote access card, but there is a $115 extra over the base price for those. I was going to pick up a remote access card for them, but still don't want to pay $40 for the ODD I will never use anyway

[Osiris]

Prob the wrong thread to ask this in but need some help with OpenIndiana.

While installing the OS, I just created a 50GB partition on the 750GB drive with the idea of using other partitions for VMs down the track. Now, I've found the wonderful 'format' tool and used 'fdisk' to create a second partition (non-Active, Solaris2). Now I'm stuck: the 'partition' command only shows the slices from the first real partition (with a max of 3260 cylinders instead of partition 2s' 26063). What do I have to do so I can make a zpool from this second partition?