ASUS P6T Deluxe & SAS

[trapezium]

Many thanks to DL126 for opening the thread and pointing this out- you saved me hours of frustration. Like many of you, I was planning on a fast RAID0 on the SAS controller for the OS (linux only), and a redundant RAID1 or RAID5 for storage on the SATA Intel controller. Like everyone else above, anything other than IDE mode in on the Intel controller completely turns off the SAS drives on the Marvel (or rather the Marvel SAS controller completely shuts off). The advertising was misleading to say the least- quite frankly unless there is some fix I see it as a flaw in ASUS P6T.

[DL126]

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id= ... uage=en-us

Several complaints and/or threads going on over there about it as well.

This is my first ever ASUS board. In the past I've only used Intel.
And to be honest, so far I'm not very impressed.
Only on VERY RARE occasions do I hand build systems for customers, but I do have a couple that like to keep a fairly hot, hand built system.
I must say that I wouldn't wanna build them one using this board .... yet. Maybe ASUS will get the kinks worked out ... time will tell.

[Elyone]

Lucky I read this BEFORE I assembled my system! First post here, nice forum.

I have a 74gig 15k SAS (was intended for OS on the marvel, like others here were going to do), 2x 320gig SATA drives I wanted to use for data in RAID1. And a 500GB for eSATA backup (kept offsite).

Not sure how to set them up now. It would be silly to set the OS on the SATA's and put data on the small drive haha. Should I return the SAS, put the 500 as OS and the other 2 as RAID1?

I REALLY wanted to put the OS on that SAS drive.

Or just not use RAID at all atm, use one drive for data and hope it gets fixed...

Thanks for any advice.

[DL126]

You could still put your OS on the SAS and run the other controller without RAID for your data I suppose.

I have Vista Ultimate 64 on the SAS and XP 32 on a Raptor hooked to the Intel controller.
I don't do benchmarking stuff much at all, but "to the eye", XP is still MUCH more responsive on the Intel controller in Enhanced IDE mode.

I'm not sorry I bought the SAS drive. I would have always been curious about it if I hadn't.
But I don't think I'll be buying another one any time soon.
Raptors seem to be at least almost as quick and they don't require a specialized controller to run them.

Another bit of info for ya ...
If you do configure the BIOS to boot from the SAS controller, it will add about 18 seconds to your boot time.
In the post sequence, it detects the controller, then initializes and spins up the drives just like the old SCSI controllers that are common in servers.

Knowing what I do now, if I didn't have a real need to keep a machine running XP .... and if I had it to do over .....
I'd install Vista 64 on the Intel controller in RAID 0 and disable the SAS controller in the BIOS.

[Elyone]

Hmm. Well I might simply return the SAS drive now. It's too small for data, and a waste, if not used for OS.

Still, it should run Vista 64 faster than a regular drive on the intel, no? I guess my question is, once it DOES boot up Vista (slower), do you feel running Vista off the SAS is noticeably faster than running Vista off an intel SATA controller? I know it's hard to compare, because you got XP on the the SATA drives, but maybe comparing to previous experience? I would be willing to deal with a slower boot time.

[DL126]

Yes.
It would be faster than a standard SATA drive.

I have another machine here running Vista 32 on a pair of fairly old SATA Barracuda's in RAID 0.
It IS slower.

But if you had Raptor's on the SATA, you wouldn't see much difference IMO.

[FZ1]

Lucky I read this BEFORE I assembled my system! First post here, nice forum.

Welcome to the LR forums!

[DL126]

Reconfigured my setup to run Vista64 w/the Raptors in RAID 0 on the Intel controller. (Didn't install XP at all this time.)
I have the SAS drive as D: with games installed to it.

No testing, or timing done, but it "feels" like Vista is faster to respond.
I can tell you it boots a bit faster.
Post time went down a lot by disabling boot from the Marvell controller.

Crysis will also load saved games from that SAS drive faster than it did from a stand alone Raptor in the past.

Installing the 3 versions of Crysis is slow anyway ... but installing them from a DVD drive on the Intel to the SAS on the Marvell was like waiting for concrete to dry.
Don't really understand that one.

[FZ1]

As soon as the OCZ Vertex drives are released I'm gonna drop one in my system to run the OS off of. Are you using the onboard RAID?

[DL126]

As soon as the OCZ Vertex drives are released I'm gonna drop one in my system to run the OS off of. Are you using the onboard RAID?

Yes ... onboard RAID.

[shortass2k6]

help required, i just built a new system, but having troubles getting the sas harddrive to work, i installed vista 64bit on a sata hard drive in ide mode (as it didnt give me the option to install on the sas harddrive). but for some reason when clicking on my computer, it only shows the sata hardrive, but when going on device manager it says the sas hard drive is there and working properly, it is also showing on system information. however on the standard bios not sas bios, it doesnt pick up the sas hardrive in storage configuration but when moving accross to boot option it says (Raid-st34.....(the model of my sas hardrive)) on the sas bios it also picks up the harddrive as a physical disk but not virtual,(not sure what this means). also on boot up it gets to a screen where it searches for bout 10 seconds for the sas harddrive then picks it up, then on next screen it says no disk detected.... i have also tried booting the system with just the sas harddrive in and vista 64bit disc but comes onto the screen saying please enter full command prompt.... can anyone help me with this as i havent got a scooby's cheers

sas hardrive is seegate cheetah 146gb 15.5k

[DL126]

...for some reason when clicking on my computer, it only shows the sata hardrive, but when going on device manager it says the sas hard drive is there and working properly, it is also showing on system information.

Did you go into Disk Management and create a partition on the SAS drive? And assign a drive letter to it?

...also on boot up it gets to a screen where it searches for bout 10 seconds for the sas harddrive then picks it up, then on next screen it says no disk detected....

This is normal.
The 2nd screen that says no disk detected is the ESATA controller looking for a drive.

... i have also tried booting the system with just the sas harddrive in and vista 64bit disc but comes onto the screen saying please enter full command prompt....

Don't know exactly where the "full command prompt" thing is coming from.
But you should be able to install to the SAS drive by loading the drivers from the ASUS system disk that came with the board when Vista asks you where to install to.
BTW .. those drivers are in a directory called "AMD64" on that disk.

[BrianM]

Hi.

I have a P6T deluxe v1.

First, damn it is slow when installing windows....

Well my setup.

2 sas hp 15K drives / raid 0 boot
4 sata drives / 2 times raid 0 for fast between.

To use your sas drives as boot, you have to enable sas as said in the manual.
To use your sata drives as raid, first in bios setup to raid.
Now ctrl/i to make your raid drives as you want them.
Back to bios, and set sata to IDE
Now ctrl/m to make your sas drive
reboot and install on sas drive.
When windows is finished installing, reboot, and switch from IDE to ACHI reboot
In windows install chipsetdrivers, and INTEL ich10 ACHI raid driver, and now the raid you made will show up.

Cheers.

[dlevans]

Greetings Everyone…

I felt compelled to join the forum (as I have a couple now) to share what worked for me with my install of Vista 64 Ultimate on an ASUS P6T with SAS & SATA drives – I was struggling as a few others, but with the help of all you generous posters, I finally got my setup complete.

Mobo: Asus P6T Deluxe (Marvell Controllers)
Ram: 12GB Corsair
Drives: Seagate SAS 15k 300GB Cheetah (x2) and 1 Seagate SATA 7200 1TB
CPU: Intel i7

Ok, as a few others’ I was having a devil of a time setting up my system to boot from 1 SAS drive (where I Installed Vista and my Adobe Suite) , use the 2nd SAS drive for data, and my working “project” files – and finally, my SATA drive for short term backup and older “finished” files. (Footnote, I use a Drobo for my data mirror – imo, superior to any raid setup)

In the Marvell SAS controller / disk setup (Ctrl-M on system start) make sure no raid is setup, drives should simply read as “FREE”

Now in the BIOS – set SATA to IDE (I left it enhanced).

Listed my hard disk drives as SAS, SAS then SATA (using the drive model numbers of course)

Boot devices I set my SAS drives to #1 and #3 (although that #3 was likely unnecessary, I figured why not). The #2 boot device is of course my DVD drive. I have no installed floppy.

Then put Vista install DVD in the drive and reboot. Now the first time I did this, the install went blue screen after the initial status bar finished. I ended up leaving everything where it was and simply restarted my pc. This time the install began. Finally reached the point where the installer asks which drive to install to. All that was displayed was my SATA drive – BUT note the option to install a driver. Check it, grab your ASUS P6T support DVD – eject Vista installer – put in ASUS DVD – click browse on the installer menu – find the Marvell drivers under RAID in the AMD folder – choose it! The drivers are installed in a second or two – the SAS drives will now be found and available.

Once Vista is installed and setup, check device manager – all 3 disks (in this particular arrangement) should be listed (they won’t be available for windows use just yet).

Now in windows, go to Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management. Right click (for one) on the drives to initialize, then again to format.

Done! (with apologies if my sequence isn’t exact [or this post is a bit off topic], writing from memory – scary prospect.)

I hope this helps somebody out there – and thanks again to all you generous and kind people who post and reply to those looking for help – you’re a great bunch!

Rock On!

Doug

[tanglefoot]

HI,

I've been reading with interest and trying to follow all this through but I'm coming up with another problem right at the end that hopefully someone will be able to assist with. I have a P6T Deluxe and like a number of others want to run both RAID on the SAS drives and SATA Drives; however, after reading through the forums I've discovered like everyone else that this isn't as easy as you would think; however, there are a number of people that have said it's possible if you follow some basic procedures in the setup.

My config is:
2 x SAS Cheetar 15k 320Mb drives
4 x SATA 1Tb Drives.
XP Pro

I'm looking to get the SAS drives as RAID 1 and the SATA drives as RAID 5. The OS would be on the SAS drives and the storage on SATA

The procoess that I've done after going through the forums is

1) config sata as raid in the motherboard bios, then use the bios sata system to put these four disks as raid 5
2) change the bios for sata to IDE, configure the system to enable the SAS drives
3) using the Marvell controller, RAID 1 for the SAS
4) slipstreamed the SAS controllers into XP SP2
5) installed XP SP2 on the SAS drives, upgraded to SP3, updated BIOS to latest (1103 from memory)
6) so far so good...beer was had as this was nearly 2 days of fighting nlite for the slipstream!
7) changed the bios settings to ACHI for the sata drives
installed ACHI10R drivers & Intel Matrix storage

And this is where I am now. From the forums, I'm understanding that this should then expose the orginal RAID Sata as a single drive in XP; but it's not there. I've checked the following / have the following information;

1) Intel ACHI10R is intsalled correctly I think - it's shown under the device list (from computer managment) and the device driver (iostor.sys - from memory is correct as specified in the "have you installed the driver correctly documentation")

2) The intel matrix storage app shows the 4 SATA drives, but states "No Actions Available" on right clicks for any item. It lists each of the drives under the ports, no indication of virtual disks / raid etc.

3) A strange "storage" item is alongside the RAID 1 SAS drive under "drives" in computer management....not sure if this is relevant, but it seems a bit odd

4) "Disk Management" doesn't mention the drives individually or as a RAID set, and I've already done the re-scan.

The question is therefore, if the intel storage matrix sees the drives, I'm assuming they are working? but why can't the OS see it as a RAID set? I've since also changed the bios to set the SATA drives back to raid & checked that the raid set is still identified in the Cntl + I application.

Help please.....
Thanks

[tanglefoot]

Good news that I wanted to share in case others are in the same situation. As above, I wanted to put raid 5 on my sata disks and then expose them within XP. The disk it turns out is shown under "disk drives" within device manager, but still not under the Disk Management area. It turns out after loads of trial and error, the reason for this is nothing to do with bios or drivers as I expected. The drivers, each 1TB when RAID 5'd gives around 2.7TB This is too big for XP to address, max is 2TB. Going back to the bios and the raid mangement tool, if you split the raid 5 into 2 virtual disks, both span the 4 physical disks, then you end up with 2 * 1.4TB disks...which....are then shown up in the disk managment and you can format them etc

Live is better again; thanks to all those that have put details on forums that I've spent the past 4 days reading

[rustyNISSAN]

I have struggled with this issue for a day now and I finally got it to WORK! (Only one day, I know...) Just thought I'd post what worked for me and maybe clear some stuff up.
The KEY to getting your SAS HDD to work as your boot drive (initial install) is...

USE THE DRIVER IN THE AMD64 FOLDER!!!
("but I don't have an AMD...")

The beauty is that you don't have to find it or slipstream it or anything. I believe all the BIOS default settings are sufficient, just install your SAS HDD (I had no other HDDs attached). Pop in the Vista install DVD, and when it asks you where to install Vista, there will not be any HDDs listed. Fear not! Simply click on "Install Driver" or whatever it says. Then, you remove the Vista DVD, insert the DVD that came with your ASUS mobo, and it should find the drivers for the Marvell SAS controller. After that, it installs the driver. It will whine about how much it misses the Vista install DVD at some point, so just swap the ASUS DVD for the Vista one and it installs the rest of the way.

It should probably be noted that I upgraded the BIOS to v1206.

Thanks to all the people on here that have posted useful replies! Updating Vista, checking drivers, etc. Looks like this thing is going to be sweet!

I have:
ASUS P6T Deluxe V1 mobo
Intel Core i7 920
Fujitsu 147GB SAS 15K RPM HDD
3 x 2GB Patriot Viper DDR3 1600MHz
OCZ 700W ModXstream-Pro PSU
Quadro FX 570
Vista Business 64-bit
and a partridge in a pear tree

[Sowser]

I was planning to use one of the SAS ports as a SATA port for a SSD which will contain my OS and then use the normal SATA ports to configure a RAID 5 aray. Anyone know if this is possible or will I run into the problem of not being able to use a SAS port for boot up even though it will be utilized as SATA?

[Sowser]

I have struggled with this issue for a day now and I finally got it to WORK! (Only one day, I know...) Just thought I'd post what worked for me and maybe clear some stuff up.
The KEY to getting your SAS HDD to work as your boot drive (initial install) is...

USE THE DRIVER IN THE AMD64 FOLDER!!!
("but I don't have an AMD...")

The beauty is that you don't have to find it or slipstream it or anything. I believe all the BIOS default settings are sufficient, just install your SAS HDD (I had no other HDDs attached). Pop in the Vista install DVD, and when it asks you where to install Vista, there will not be any HDDs listed. Fear not! Simply click on "Install Driver" or whatever it says. Then, you remove the Vista DVD, insert the DVD that came with your ASUS mobo, and it should find the drivers for the Marvell SAS controller. After that, it installs the driver. It will whine about how much it misses the Vista install DVD at some point, so just swap the ASUS DVD for the Vista one and it installs the rest of the way.

Thanks to all the people on here that have posted useful replies! Updating Vista, checking drivers, etc. Looks like this thing is going to be sweet!

This worked to allow me to install Vista 64 on my SSD using it as a SATA device connected to the SAS controller! Many thanks rustyNISSAN!

[rustyNISSAN]

Hey, glad I could help, Sowser. This mobo has a pretty bad rap, but I think if people put on their big boy (or girl) pants and use Vista, they'll find nothing to complain about.