eSATA Harddrive doesn't always show up

[Tyderion]

hi everybody

i have a 1TB WD My Book external harddrive and i recently upgraded from a USB connection to an eSATA connection (which, logically, increased read/write speeds a lot due to the faster connection) ...

in some part of my bios-post it checks for disks that can be used as raid and it discoveres my 2 IDE discs as well as this eSATA external drive.
so far so good.

but the problem is that win7 sometimes discoveres the drive and sometimes not, even though the bios always discoveres it.
If i "look for new plug'n'play hardware" in the device manager it sometimes finds the harddrive and sometimes just freezes.
If it freezes ... nothing more happens (drive doesn't show up in OS)
If it finds it ... the OS still doesn't show me the drive.

If I need something from that drive (my games and apps are stored there) I need to reboot and hope it gets detected correctly.

It is really annoying because I don't want to revert back to USB (which connected always) due to the slower speeds... (i often copy big files onto that HD)...

Any ideas?


edit: please move to hardware&devices i clicked the wrong part of the forum

 

[johngalt]

Moved

Check to see if you have the latest BIOS< as well as motherboard drivers for your motherboard. Also, check to see if W7 is trying to be helpful by not detecting the drive b/c it has the eSATA port asleep on boot up....

 

[Tyderion]

i don't use the newest bios and i will not, had only problems with that.
(i run my Q6600 @ 8x400mhz with 1.3375v) and after updating bios, resetting the settings and redoing my OC it didn't even post.... i then upped the voltage to about 1.4 or 1.42 (something liek that, don't remember) and it worked again but then i decided to downgrade my bios because Q6600 produced a lot of heat more (5-7°C idle more...)

will look into bios for sleep mode of eSATA ports

ah and i use the cool'n'quiet to manage the speed of my cpu fan from bios (if not it turns with 2700rpm and is _really_ loud) and this didn't work either with most of the newer bioses...

 

[johngalt]

I can understand. 'gratz on getting your CPU to 3600 - mine hits a brick wall at anything above 3200, and it wants the voltage at 1.4+/- even at that....

However, a driver issues sounds like the primary culprit, followed by a possible PSU issue in not supplying enough power to the eSATA port.

 

[Tyderion]

nono my cpu is @3200 ... for 3600 i need at least 1.48v (didn't test thoroughly at this setting though) else it may load win7 or not ...
hmm maybe it's the psu i do have a lot of harddisks connected...
still looking through bios ... it has a lot of options ...

changed back to IDE mode on eSATA controller (i thought i set SATA to AHCI but i set eSATA to this so it may be that...)
now it shows up but sadly this doesn't prove anything ... sometimes it did show up while using the AHCI setting as well

 

[SquonkSC]

Hi Tyderion,

Overclocking to the max stresses your hardware and especially the capacitors and regulators which are supposed to keep your power stable.

John pointed you in the rigth direction of the powersupply being culprit.

Maybe it's not a shortage of power but a very dirty powersignal.

You can compare it with distortion of a guitar amp. By raising the stress on your capacitors and electronics they start distorting the power signal.

This could well explain why it sometimes works, and sometimes not.

Try downclocking a bit.

There isn't much real world speed to be gained anyway. It maybe 4 or 5 %.

Plus the lifespan of all your hardware is cut in half.

good luck

 

[Tyderion]

well ... the os reacts much faster with 3.2ghz instead of 2.4 so i'd like to keep it that way...

up to now it works with the IDE mode (dunno why i configured eSATA as AHCI ...) so if it remains working it's ok.
powersupply *should* be ok ... i don't use one of those new high-power-consumption-graphic cards ...

 

[johngalt]

Sorry, I misread - I see now your multiplier is 8 not 9 - 9 * 400 does yield 3600, which is what I thought it said.

Still, I have mine set to 9 * 360, giving me 3240 - I tried moving it up a bit and it goes stupid.

My RAM is rated at 1000 MHz, but if I use it at that setting then I have to tone down my FSB to ~357 - 360 is a much nicer, rounder number, so I leave the RAM at 800.

Anyhoo - I still think it is a PSU issue - I'd test the drive on another computer's eSATA port, or else disconnect some of your drives and see what happens - also, you might try loading BIOS defaults (in terms of removing the OC) and see if that makes a difference.

On my rig, I am using a 780W PSU - more than ample, until I take into account the dual GTX260s (also OCd), dual Seagate Barracudas with a single WD and a PATA DVD burner, plus all sorts of fans, USB internal AIO card reader, and all sorts of USB devices (MX Revolution, G15 Keyboard, Bluetooth dongle, dual iPAQ cradles, etc.) and I can understand why my CPU doesn't like going above 3200....

 

[Tyderion]

yeah like i said i use a 8800GT which, afaik, uses a lot less power than those GTX260s or something similar.

btw. i have a question to ram:fsb ...
it does NOT give any performance increase if the RAM clock is faster than the FSB clock or does it NOT give a performance increase if it is more than double the speed?

e.g.
my FSB: 400 (=1600 because it is quadpumped)
so my ram should be either
800 mhz (=1600mhz effective)
or
400 mhz (=800 effective)
going faster than one of those to (i suspect the first option) does not increase performance because the fsb just can't keep up with the ram. though which one is it?
(effective = that what you select on motherboard and which is reported as final speed, like DDR3-1600)

i'm confused with the quadpumped/doublepumped etc.
which speeds should match up?
when OCed i use 400 fsb (faster fsb= faster system afaik, better increase then just increasing the multiplier) but if i increase more the voltage requirements go up extremely fast so i don't do that.

hope you understand this post it's become kinda messy

btw. ram is rated DDR3-1600 but because they're 4x1 i can't get to that speed. so would it make more sense decreasing FSB as my ram is causing a bottleneck because it runs slower than my fsb (it runs @640mhz (=1280) right now)

and again to cpu temps: my overclock causes my cpu to be about 4°C warmer so i don't care that much


btw. my 8800GT is overclocked from 625mhzto 707 (while memory from 900 to 1030)

ok some more clarification (it IS messy :S):

in cpu-z there is the Bus Speed (400) and the Rated FSB (1600) as well as the memory clock (640mhz) (which gets doubled to 1280). should now the memspeed match up with the bus speed or should it be double the bus speed (which means Rated FSB and effective RAM speed match)?

 

[pparks1]

If your FSB is set at 400Mhz, with Intel quad pumped it would be 1600.
And since DDR2 ram is doubled...400Mhz would be 800.

 

[Tyderion]

that means FSB @400 should have RAM@800mhz ...
in "effective" numbers: fsb 1600 and ram1600...
is that correct? xD

 

[johngalt]

No. FSB @ 400 * 8 = 3200. DDR2 @ 400 * 2 = 800. There is no 'second' multiplication for 1600. For DDR2 rated at 1600, you set the RAM to 800.

They do not have to match - but they seem work better if you pick a nice even ratio for them to operate on, and most OCing guides tend to agree - try to use as close to a 1:1 setup as you can....

Some folks like a 3:2 ratio, some like a 1:1 ratio only, and some have had success with oddball ratios like 5:4 and even stranger.

It is a matter of what your machine likes.

For example, if I set the ratio linking to be automatic, and I pump my RAM back to 1000 (500 * 2), then if I select 357 FSB ram is right around there - 999.6 - but if I go to 358, RAM actually drops back to around 982. My mobo is freaky like that.

Of course, now I run it unlinked, and have my FSB set at 360 and my RAM at 800 (400 * 2).

I can grab CPU-z and post a screen shot of my settings if you would like me to - it may help.

OTOH, I may also try reducing my multiplier and increasing my FSB to 400 to get a nice even 1:1ratio and see how it performs...then I might try a 5:4 ration (leaving the FSB at 400 and pumping the RAM back to 500) to see if I can get a nice set of stability....

In trying to OC the one thing I never really played with was lowering the multiplier - silly, now that I think about it. I just assumed that it has a CPU OC wall at ~ 3.2 GHz....

 

[Tyderion]

no you didn't understand it correct what i meant

i know they to not have to match but i just heard it works better.
with my 5:8 ration it's rockstable but if the ram or the fsb is a bottleneck i'd rather clock one down to save heat...

there is no second multiplication that is true, BUT
there is a BUS speed (which is 400 in my case, or 266 at stock settings)
then there is the rated FSB speed (which is BUS speed x4 because it is quadpumped)
then there is the cpu multiplier with which the real cpu speed is set (8x400 = 3200).
RAM only has 2 speeds ... real and rated (let's call it like this). Rated speed is always double the real speed ... double data rate as stated earlier.

so to have a 1:1 ration my Bus speed (=400) should match my ram speed. in this case
the rated FSB (=1600) would be double the "rated" RAM speed (= 800).
all ram-speed above that one would be kinda wasted because the FSB can't keep up with it, even though it is quadpumped ( = 400 mhz to each cpu core = 1600 mhz)...
or can the ram be up to 1600mhz (800x2)

btw. i can't unlink ram from fsb, i can just select the divider...

edit: my question is not to when my fsb:ram ration is 1:1 but to when my fsb starts to be the bottleneck...

 

[johngalt]

Sigh.

if you're RAM is rated at 1600 MHz - then it can run up to 800 MHz (which gets doubled to 1600).

 

[Tyderion]

sigh ... you still don't get what i want.
i'm not asking about what speed ram has to be at to reach its spec of 1600... i'm asking about the DATA the FSB can provide...
but don't worry i'm making tests to test the bandwidth of my ram (which, if the FSB causes a bottleneck shouldn't rise at some point... even when increasing ram speed, just because it the FSB can't give it the data as fast as the ram can process it...)

say: FSB @ 300 mhz and ram set @600 mhz (2x300) which is a 1:1 ratio.
now if i increase my ram to 1200mhz (2x600) which gives me a 1:2 ratio, but the rated FSB (4x300 because of quadcore) and the ram speed match (1200 = 1200)....
now the question is, does it increase my memory bandwidth and overall pc speed if the ram runs that fast (which, depending on which speeds to compare, is either 1:2 or 1:1)

i hope you see what i mean

edit: testing various ram-speeds right now to see which when the FSB starts to be the bottleneck...

 

[pparks1]

Tyderion,
I understand the point that you are trying to make. In a nutshell, does it improve performance in any way to run your RAM at a faster rate than your FSB speeds. I've been thinking about this as well, as I have always tried to maintain a 1:1 ration with mem:fsb. So, right now, I'm running a Q9550 @ 3.2ghz (376FSB x 8.5). My gigabyte mobo (GA-EP45-UD3R) allows a RAM setting of 2.0B or 2.4B. At 2.0, I'm running my DDR2 800 at 752mhz and at 2.4B, I'm running at 880mhz. Since I want to run a 1:1 ratio, I just let my RAM run at 752mhz. But I've wondered if speeds would increase if I upped FSB to 400Mhz...thus raising CPU speeds to 3.4 or if I should up to 2.4 on my ram multiplier and push my ram to 880. I'm on stock intel cooling, so i don't really want to move to 3.4ghz on the CPU as I think I would really have to get a 3rd party cooler. So, I've kinda ruled out bumping FSB to 400Mhz...so changing RAM multiplier to 2.4 might be only other choice. However, then I don't maintain my 1:1 ratio. My gut tells me that increasing the RAM speeds above FSB speeds wont' effectively change anything and I should just leave it alone at 752 and keep stable.

 

[Tyderion]

yes you know what i try to find out.
i made tests with various settings (could not get my ram to work @under 800mhz (=2x400). so i couldn't test with a different setting than a 400mhz fsb. (i wanted to test 1:2 and 1:1 ratio)
i tested the bandwidth of my ram with Everest ultimate Cache and Memory Benchmark and as well "winsat mem" to have 2 programs test it

i used the following settings:
FSB = 400
CPU multiplier = 8 (thus giving me 3.2ghz)

RAM:
timings: auto (lower speed gives lower timings that's normal, i left i on auto to use the default values for a given speed), i'll mark what it set it to at the results.
RAm voltage: 1.9v (i need that for 2 of my dimms to get to DDR3-1600)
AI Clock twister = light (enhances stability at the cost of performance)
AI Transaction booster: relax level 8 (more stability at the cost of performance)
i set those to like this because i can't get the RAM stable enough to boot into the OS if not... at ddr3-1600

it doesn't matter that i get less performance like this, it's only for testing up to what ration the memory bandwidth increases.

test results:
i just used full MB/s and didn't care about the digits after the decimal point
RAM: 2x800 (=DDR3-1600) (9-9-9-24 2T) fsb:ram ratio = 1:2
everest read: 7950 mb/s
everest write: 7206 mb/s
everest copy: 7713 mb/s
latency: 68.5ns
winsat mem: 6940 MB/s


RAM: 2x600 (=DDR3-1200): (8-8-8-22 2T) fsb: ram ratio = 2:3
everest read: 7056 mb/s
everest write: 7172 mb/s
everest copy: 7483 mb/s
latency: 77.7ns
winsat mem: 6721 mb/s


RAM: 2x400 (=DDR3-800) (6-6-6-20 2T) fsb:ram ratio: 1:1
everest read: 5942 mb/s
everest write: 7091 mb/s
everest copy: 6888 mb/s
latency: 94.4ns

winsat mem: 5989 mb/s


conclusion:
you can run your ram up to a 1:2 ratio without making your FSB a bottleneck (at least with a quadpumped FSB).
If you run your ram in a different ratio, either your RAM or your FSB is a bottleneck, because one of those two can process/provide more data than the other...
in my board i can't select ratios like 1:3 or something so making the FSB a bottleneck is impossible for me. But i can select ratios like 5:8 (which gives me a 1280 mhz ram) and, according to my teste theory (LOL) the RAM then is a bottleneck because it can process less data per second than the FSB can provide/process.

so you can safely up your ratio to 1:2 and gain more power without changing FSB or CPU speed because, simply said, your ram now can keep up with your FSB/CPU.

addition: afaik this is correct only for Quadcore cpus but i don't know and i can't test i don't own a dualcore to test it out...

 

[pparks1]

One of the things that I discovered last night on my box was that I was able to drop off the .5 part of my multiplier to drop my Q9550 from 8.5x to 8.0x. One thing this allowed me to do was then increase my FSB speeds to 400Mhz x 8.0 leaving my CPU at 3.2Ghz where it runs just fine on stock cooling with no voltage changes.

This change in turn, upped my RAM speeds from 376 x 2 = 752, to 400 x 2 = 800 which left my FSB:mem ratio at 1:1. And my timings are still 4-4-4-12 running 1.8v with the G.skill PI black DDR2-800 ram.

I saw a jump in "winsat mem" from around 7,000MB/s to 7,500MB/s with this change.