Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (
More info?)
> I've read the other posters replies.
>
> I asume the motherboard is the ASUS A8N-SLI deluxe.
>
> I've just troubleshooted SATA drive problems on my own board ...
> Unfortunately I didn't find any answers how to correct it, but I found
> a work around.
>
> I had two drives one Maxtor 160 GB SATA Drive (my system drive) and
> one 250 GB SATA Seagate drive connected an experienced that they were
> much slower than could be expected. With extensive disk use, they
> would actually freeze, but it didn't happen too often, so I lived with
> it.
>
> I got this board because it has 8 SATA ports, I needed to connect 6 x
> 250 GB drives as a soft raid 5 (a windows soft raid NOT the inbuild
> raid) - they were all Seagate 250 GB drives.
>
> But the inbuild SIL3114 won't work as a simple SATA controller, so I
> had to get a Promise SATA II 150 TX4 4 SATA port controller. I then
> connected 4 of the Seagate 250 GB drives of the 6 drive raid to this
> controller. And the 2 other of the 6 drive raid to the NVidia
> controller, which will work as a simple SATA controller.
>
> This was slow, this crashed and trashed my drives all the time.
>
> I have now disabled BOTH the onboard Sil3114 and the onboard NVidia
> SATA controllers and connect two Promise SATA II 150 TX4 4 sata port
> controllers.
>
> For 60 Hours now ... Not a single BSOD or breakdown (before it would
> run max 2 hours IF I DIDN'T TOUCH THE COMPUTER, much less if I used
> it!!). Not only that - it's considerable much faster
>
> I don't know if the onboard controllers are bad, if they are not
> compatible with the drive I have - or what.
>
> If possible, try to disable the onboard SATA controllers and use an
> external one - it will give you some idea, if it works for you.
>
> regards Leif.
>
I have heard other people report problems with Maxtor drives on the on-board
SATA controllers. They changed one of the configuration options in the
device manager, but I don't remember exactly what it was (write caching or
something). I would also check with Maxtor to see if a firmware update is
available.