Boot and speed issues

[Cobrajr122]

Hey guys,

This is going to be a bit of a story so I can try and provide as much information as possible in one go, bare with me.

Today I come to you with a couple of problems, hopefully you can help me out as I have hit a dead end.
They both seem to be stemming from my SCSI Ultra 320 15K drives.

So here comes #1
I finally got fed up with my current install of windows, and with an upcoming lan party I wanted my PC to be preforming like it was brand new, So I went out a bought a WD 1TB HDD and proceeded to back everything up then reformat my my other 2 drives.

I made a custom windows install disc using nlite to include the latest video, sound, chip set, and other drivers along with the latest windoes XP pro 32bit drivers for the adaptec SCSI 2120S.

I threw the SCSIs into RAID 0 (a first for me, I was always scared id loose a drive, but after the uptime i have gotten out of them, I decided it was time to get some speed going. Before this they were always in RAID 1)

I proceeded to install windows onto the SCSI drives, I was worried because my last attempt failed and I ended up installing onto a PATA drive, but my install before that one went beautifully, so im not sure what hit the fan last time.
Everything was going great, saved some time by not having to deal with F6 drivers, rebooted, SAME PROBLEM... DAMMIT.
So what is this problem? Allow me to explain.
Windows will NOT boot without the cd in the drive, simply comes up with a disc boot failure. when I inset the cd and hit enter, it load up windows and goes fine.
When I attempt to boot with the disc in the drive from the start, windows will load up to the point where it is supposed to go to the log in screen, then just sit on a black screen.... and sit there... and sit there.......(EDIT: It is now BSODing at this point and rebooting) It will ONLY boot into the log in screen if I allow it to reach the disk boot failure then insert the disc and hit enter.

So there is problem #1
Onto the other problem.

As I stated before, I was stoked to be getting some intense speeds out of the SCSI drives, so I booted up HDtach and sent it to work on all of my drives.

All tests are quick bench (8mb zones)

WD 250GB SATA
Burst: 170.6 MB/s
Sequential: Started at ~63mb/s ended at ~36mb/s
Average: 52.8mb/s
Random access: 13.3ms

WD 1TB SATA
Burst: 236.3mb/s
Sequential: started at ~93mb/s ended at ~43mb/s
Average: 76.5mb/s
Random access: 13.9ms

Adaptec Array - RAID 0 SCSI Ultra 320 15K RPM - 146.8GB X2 = 293.6GB (formated)
Burst: 65.8mb/s
Sequential: started at ~47mb/s ended at ~44mb/s
Average: 46.7mb/s
Random access: 6.3ms

WTF

So I used a little common sense to narrow the causes for the slow SCSI speeds down to a couple things.
1) the card is a bit older (adaptec SCSI 2021S)
2) the card is running in a PCI8x slot, might not be enough for it.



So there it is, Sorry for the long read but as I said, I wanted to get as much info to you guys as I could. PLEASE help me figure this out.
I will try and answer ANY question to the best of my ability.

System specs:
ASUS P5N-e SLI
Intel Core 2 E6400 2.133Ghz @ 2.98 Ghz
4GB (2 X2GB) DDR2800
1 250GB WD SATA HDD
1 1TB WD SATA HDD
2 SCSI Ultra 320 15K 146.8GB HDDs in RAID 0 (1 compaq, and 1 HP)
Adaptec SCSI 2021S
EVGA GTX 280 ssc
PC Power & Cooling 750watt sclincer
Antec 900

THANK YOU,
Matt

[Jake_HT]

I don't think your PCI slot can handle that throughput. As for the boot issues... no idea!