Second Harddisk drive....
- Thread starter Maxamus
- Start date
dx
1
Sorry, but I'm not a Win2k expert.
Did a little research for you though. I checked with a friend who runs Win2k-sp2 and IBM 75GXP HD. Just like you, his enable write cache is greyed out in Windows. He is using a Promise ATA-100 PCI card, so I don't think it's your Highpoint controller. We used IBM DFT and his drive WAS write cache enabled.
Did a Google search and found that M$ recommended DISABLE
of write cache with Win2k-sp1. And now you cannot enable it
in sp2???!!! Very curious.
I'm using XP which is really close to Win2k in code and yet mine is enabled (albeit grayed out). Windows is obviously optimizing it
automatically.
This post thread is getting stale...why not try to post this problem
as a new thread. Perhaps you will get a more responces.
Did a little research for you though. I checked with a friend who runs Win2k-sp2 and IBM 75GXP HD. Just like you, his enable write cache is greyed out in Windows. He is using a Promise ATA-100 PCI card, so I don't think it's your Highpoint controller. We used IBM DFT and his drive WAS write cache enabled.
Did a Google search and found that M$ recommended DISABLE
of write cache with Win2k-sp1. And now you cannot enable it
in sp2???!!! Very curious.
I'm using XP which is really close to Win2k in code and yet mine is enabled (albeit grayed out). Windows is obviously optimizing it
automatically.
This post thread is getting stale...why not try to post this problem
as a new thread. Perhaps you will get a more responces.
well the only thing i can come up with is that windows reconises the drive as being SCSI because it is on the highpoint controller and because of this has no preferences over the device. But i think that the write cashe has to be enabled because i enabled it with the IBM DFT.
When i had the hd on IDE1 i could easily enable/disable it in the device properties page.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BTW dxkim,
when yesterday i changed the HDD over to the IDE3 channel, i decided to format aswell and do a clean system install (i find it better like this, and also like this i know how the system is gonner react when i do format because i format nearly every 3 months to keep the system in top performance) I tried HPT370 driver versions:
2.0.0919
1.2.0612
1.11.0512
1.03b
i copied all the above drivers to individual floppys because someone said to me that some drivers might not work with some systems (read this at http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kg7kr7/kg7kr7faq.htm) and got ready to do the clean install. During installing windows i pressed F6 and put in the HPT driver disk starting with v2.0.0919, windows installed the driver and continued. I goto the point when it started formatting the drive and when it done all of, all 100%, it would return with a screen saying that windows was unable to format the driver because the device might be damaged and so on and on....
So, i decided to do the format again but this time with another HPT driver, but the same happened again. I tried all 4 drivers and the same thing happened all 4 times. So i had to use my freinds computer to d/l v2.3.0. And finally it worked!
Do you know why this happened????
When i had the hd on IDE1 i could easily enable/disable it in the device properties page.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BTW dxkim,
when yesterday i changed the HDD over to the IDE3 channel, i decided to format aswell and do a clean system install (i find it better like this, and also like this i know how the system is gonner react when i do format because i format nearly every 3 months to keep the system in top performance) I tried HPT370 driver versions:
2.0.0919
1.2.0612
1.11.0512
1.03b
i copied all the above drivers to individual floppys because someone said to me that some drivers might not work with some systems (read this at http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kg7kr7/kg7kr7faq.htm) and got ready to do the clean install. During installing windows i pressed F6 and put in the HPT driver disk starting with v2.0.0919, windows installed the driver and continued. I goto the point when it started formatting the drive and when it done all of, all 100%, it would return with a screen saying that windows was unable to format the driver because the device might be damaged and so on and on....
So, i decided to do the format again but this time with another HPT driver, but the same happened again. I tried all 4 drivers and the same thing happened all 4 times. So i had to use my freinds computer to d/l v2.3.0. And finally it worked!
Do you know why this happened????
dx
1
I do a reformat and reinstall every 5-6 months religiously. Its
the best way to do a clean install. So you get 50 points for that one.
As for your format problem...some possibilities:
1) D/L the "DRIVE FITNESS TEST" (DFT v2.30)
h**p://w*w.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm
Use it to test all your HD sectors. It does a more extensive test than M$ Scandisk. Your sectors are probably fine, but it never hurts.
2) Next time you format, use this same program to erase your boot sector and hard drive. This utility will LLF (low level format) your drive and wipe it completely clean. When you do a standard format, your files are still there. Just the file header is removed (just as if you deleted from trash). The data is still recoverable and could possibly cause your format program to detect this data as corrupt.
3) Instead of D/L your HPT-370 drivers from Highpoint, try
Abit
h**p://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/index.htm
Highpoint drivers may well work, but they are not optimized
for individual motherboards. Abit's drivers are. I'm using driver 2.0.1019. However if Highpoint's driver v2.3 works, keep using it.
As they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
4) Corrupted drivers: Are you on dial-up? Sometimes on dial-up
connections you get corrupted downloads. Seems possible since
the file downloaded fine on your friends computer.
the best way to do a clean install. So you get 50 points for that one.
As for your format problem...some possibilities:
1) D/L the "DRIVE FITNESS TEST" (DFT v2.30)
h**p://w*w.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm
Use it to test all your HD sectors. It does a more extensive test than M$ Scandisk. Your sectors are probably fine, but it never hurts.
2) Next time you format, use this same program to erase your boot sector and hard drive. This utility will LLF (low level format) your drive and wipe it completely clean. When you do a standard format, your files are still there. Just the file header is removed (just as if you deleted from trash). The data is still recoverable and could possibly cause your format program to detect this data as corrupt.
3) Instead of D/L your HPT-370 drivers from Highpoint, try
Abit
h**p://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/index.htm
Highpoint drivers may well work, but they are not optimized
for individual motherboards. Abit's drivers are. I'm using driver 2.0.1019. However if Highpoint's driver v2.3 works, keep using it.
As they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
4) Corrupted drivers: Are you on dial-up? Sometimes on dial-up
connections you get corrupted downloads. Seems possible since
the file downloaded fine on your friends computer.