taks Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 well, here's a fun one. i've got two drives, both SATA, on my current machine. one drive, a nice 40 GB screamer, has winders on it. the other, the new 7200.10 parallel read seagate, has linux. the second is 250 GB. both are installed on a via 8237 RAID controller (uh, one might be on the promise controller...). i installed linux since my previous job sort of required it. no more previous job, no more need (i like linux, but nothing i use runs with it so my 250 GB drive is wasted). anyway, i've got all this nifty new pooter stuff on the way and i figured i'd get ready to redo everything, including my drive situation. it seems this was not a good idea, or at least, not in the cards... here's the problem: when you dual boot, you need to put in a multiple-OS bootloader. i'm using GRUB. i want GRUB to go away, right along with linux. no problem. the only way i've found so far is to boot into the XP Pro CD and get into the recovery console (gotta love MS for this brilliant idea) then run fixmbr. that'll re-write the master boot record, allowing me to boot directly into winders (i.e. it will remove the call to GRUB), and then reformat my now useless linux drive. yay! hehe... should i be so lucky. nope. turns out that winders XP, in yet another brilliant move, does not include hardly ANY useful RAID drivers with their OS. in spite of the fact that my bios recognizes my drives, and happily allows me to boot from them, means nothing when booting into the recovery console. suddenly they are not there. booo. "windows XP cannot find any boot drives, press F3 to quit." now the brilliance of the "recovery console" becomes amazingly apparent: why is it not accessible via password or something through normal operation, or just as a separate boot option instead of safe mode???? morons. sure, the next obvious statement is "why not supply 3rd party RAID drivers during XP CD boot process when it asks?" yeah, well, welcome to the 21st century when NOBODY delivers drivers on a floppy and even fewer than that have a freaking floppy drive to begin with. i fall into both categories: no floppy drive, and no drivers on a floppy. i've got a really cool floppy controller device in windows that i cannot delete, of course, does that count? so, anyway, it looks like my next best option is to wait for my new stuff (booo), trick winders into finding my drives yet again (i don't remember what i did last time) and just do a clean install on the 250 GB drive. THEN, i'll copy all of my relevant shtuff over to the new drive, and rotate the 40 GB screamer (it is a fast drive) down to my wife. in the mean time, if there are any suggestions for deleting GRUB and getting on with my now shattered life, please feel free to test your knowledge on me. i'm open to suggestion... grrrr. taks comrade taks... just because. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kalimeeri Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 I've got a board with a Via raid chipset, and they do provide drivers for a floppy. But like you, I didn't own one--I ended up buying an external USB floppy for $9 at Geeks.com. True, it doesn't get much use, but the beauty of it is that the bios recognizes it and so does Windows setup, and it can be moved from machine to machine at will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taks Posted May 23, 2007 Author Share Posted May 23, 2007 greeeeeaaaat, yet another piece to the puzzle. most SATA drives that i've seen use RAID, and winders never comes with RAID drivers. grrr. taks comrade taks... just because. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metadigital Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 Can't you load the drivers onto a flashdrive, or burn to a CD/DVD? (Change the boot order in the BIOS.) OBSCVRVM PER OBSCVRIVS ET IGNOTVM PER IGNOTIVS OPVS ARTIFICEM PROBAT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meshugger Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 I had the same problem as taks had a couple of months ago. Luckily enough, i happened to find a floppy drive in my closet with some other old junk of mine (PS1, an Amiga 500, an Amd 900mhz processor, a 20GB ATA drive, etc...) "Some men see things as they are and say why?""I dream things that never were and say why not?"- George Bernard Shaw"Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man."- Friedrich Nietzsche "The amount of energy necessary to refute bull**** is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." - Some guy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaftan Barlast Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 There are versions of WinXP that come with RAID drivers for handling these kind of situations, Ive got one. You could just download an illegal copy somewhere, burn a bootable CD, and use that to clear the MBR. BUT... Windows should clear the MBR all by itself if you enable the hibernate function and allow it to go into that state once or twice. I know that is the main reason for crashed GRUB dual-boot systems. DISCLAIMER: Do not take what I write seriously unless it is clearly and in no uncertain terms, declared by me to be meant in a serious and non-humoristic manner. If there is no clear indication, asume the post is written in jest. This notification is meant very seriously and its purpouse is to avoid misunderstandings and the consequences thereof. Furthermore; I can not be held accountable for anything I write on these forums since the idea of taking serious responsability for my unserious actions, is an oxymoron in itself. Important: as the following sentence contains many naughty words I warn you not to read it under any circumstances; botty, knickers, wee, erogenous zone, psychiatrist, clitoris, stockings, bosom, poetry reading, dentist, fellatio and the department of agriculture. "I suppose outright stupidity and complete lack of taste could also be considered points of view. " Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwi Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 (edited) Many folks burn the SATA drivers to a CD and stream that to a copy of their OS' install/ repair CD. Windows asks for SCSI drivers during its install/ repair install, when it says press F6 to pause for those (and that is when you deal with the SATA drivers). The BIOSes for the earliest MBs that included SATA were still strongly rooted in IDE, as is Windows itself. RAID drivers are entirely different from SATA or SCSI drivers, and is a drive technology used on servers for redundancy/ security. RAID helps a standalone PC that deals with the very largest of files, including sound and video files. It does not improve game performance, and in fact may even be a penalty choice. Given my small PC hardware budget, compounded by the fact that I can't seem to be satisfied with only one or two of them, I don't have the very latest motherboards yet, and cannot speak to the ability to get around the SATA driver impasse without a floppy. I haven't chosen to put any SATA drive into a Primary OS status yet. Edited May 24, 2007 by Kiwi . Kiwi * * Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aVENGER Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 turns out that winders XP, in yet another brilliant move, does not include hardly ANY useful RAID drivers with their OS. It takes a bit of work, but it is possible to slipstream SATA drivers to your original Windows XP installation CD. now the brilliance of the "recovery console" becomes amazingly apparent: why is it not accessible via password or something through normal operation, or just as a separate boot option instead of safe mode???? Actually, it is. You just have to install it first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kalimeeri Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 It is possible to slipstream the raid/Sata drivers into an install CD; other than the floppy, that's the only other way I know to make Windows accept them during the installation process. But as Kiwi pointed out, chipsets vary in the way they treat Sata drives, and I suspect it may also depend on the architecture of the drive itself. In my case, Via installed a fresh copy of Windows and booted instantly (it needed the raid drivers to even see the drive--making raid volumes was optional). Ironically, it was NF4 that gave me fits. Setup could see the drive (the only one in the system at the time), but after install it repeatedly refused to boot, giving me the 'missing NTloader' whether the drivers ASUS provided had been loaded into setup or not. The theory was sound, it just ... didn't work, no matter what I tried. I didn't fool with it beyond that--it was Christmas eve/day, and an old SATA1 drive would have given me little or no performance gain over IDE anyway--so I don't know if recovery console options would've fixed it or not. I was out of time and ticked off and didn't bother. The theory is sound, lol. But I'm interested in knowing if you're able to make it work, because it still tasks me just a little. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taks Posted May 24, 2007 Author Share Posted May 24, 2007 Can't you load the drivers onto a flashdrive, or burn to a CD/DVD? (Change the boot order in the BIOS.) unfortunately, you need a floppy drive, or something recognized as a floppy. the best suggestion i've heard to date came from one of my linux guru buddies (colleague from my previous company). he recommended simply booting into linux and deleting all of the linux entries in /boot/grub/grub.conf. i'll still have grub, which may be useful for future installs (should i put linux back into the mix). taks comrade taks... just because. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taks Posted May 24, 2007 Author Share Posted May 24, 2007 It takes a bit of work, but it is possible to slipstream SATA drivers to your original Windows XP installation CD. interesting... i'd have to burn a new CD, but that's cake. Actually, it is. You just have to install it first. hmmm, if this can be done while i'm already booted, there's potential. thanks for the tips. taks comrade taks... just because. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taks Posted May 25, 2007 Author Share Posted May 25, 2007 fixmbr in the recovery console made this sucker a non-bootable drive, btw. i've got a new install on what used to be the linux drive (now goners), which was a painful process. damn P5B-E... taks comrade taks... just because. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metadigital Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 I just read a review of the new Solid State HD (the other definition using the SSD acronym ); and, while they are still far too expensive for mainstream, they are approaching mass-market appeal. The best value is the 32GB Samsung MCAQE32G5APP-0XA NAND Flash, which costs OBSCVRVM PER OBSCVRIVS ET IGNOTVM PER IGNOTIVS OPVS ARTIFICEM PROBAT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gfted1 Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 ^I always thought defragging a drive was basically reordering all the files contained therin to be streamlined and continuous. Are you saying it has something to do with the mechanical nature of todays HD's? "I'm your biggest fan, Ill follow you until you love me, Papa" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diamond Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 There is much less sense in defragmentation, but it is not completely eliminated. SSD are just flash memory, they do not have any rotational delay and seek time, and that's where HDD spends most of the time when reading a fragmented file. It is a major component, but minor delays are still there (greater number of actual read operations for fragmented files). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metadigital Posted May 26, 2007 Share Posted May 26, 2007 Yeah, as Diamond is saying, SSDs have no delay caused by the physical movement of the mechanical head, reaching the desired sector to read/write, as they access all the sectors with the same headroom. It's also worth noting that SSDs don't write data as fast as a harddrive, so you wouldn't typically use them for a swap file. Although most of the SSDs on the market are quite high-end (NASA uses solid state drives) and use a hybrid mix of technologies, for example the HyperDrive4 mentioned above, which uses volatile DRAM with battery back-up to SSD to eliminate this bottleneck. OBSCVRVM PER OBSCVRIVS ET IGNOTVM PER IGNOTIVS OPVS ARTIFICEM PROBAT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaftan Barlast Posted May 27, 2007 Share Posted May 27, 2007 You could just buy a 10gb USB memory stick and use that with an IDE converter. Seek time is minimal but read and write is exremely slow so the gain is questionable DISCLAIMER: Do not take what I write seriously unless it is clearly and in no uncertain terms, declared by me to be meant in a serious and non-humoristic manner. If there is no clear indication, asume the post is written in jest. This notification is meant very seriously and its purpouse is to avoid misunderstandings and the consequences thereof. Furthermore; I can not be held accountable for anything I write on these forums since the idea of taking serious responsability for my unserious actions, is an oxymoron in itself. Important: as the following sentence contains many naughty words I warn you not to read it under any circumstances; botty, knickers, wee, erogenous zone, psychiatrist, clitoris, stockings, bosom, poetry reading, dentist, fellatio and the department of agriculture. "I suppose outright stupidity and complete lack of taste could also be considered points of view. " Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metadigital Posted May 28, 2007 Share Posted May 28, 2007 That kinda defeats the purpose ... OBSCVRVM PER OBSCVRIVS ET IGNOTVM PER IGNOTIVS OPVS ARTIFICEM PROBAT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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