7N400 Pro2 ver 2, a few small problems

I have just built a new computer based on GA-7N400 Pro 2 ver.2.
It works fine, but a few things seem to be disabled, and normally I
would look to enable them in the BIOS but the bvery simple BIOS setting
does not offer such:

a) S.M.A.R.T - the hard disks are from older computer. They are WD800JB
and WD400JB both of them support SMART and SMART worked fine with them
on the older computer. When I boot the computer, after letting the
computer identify the drives, I get a message the S.M.A.R.T is disabled.
I found no way to enable it. The BIOS identifies the drives correctly. I
am used to having such an option in the advanced CMOS setup but here I
don't see such.

b) Hibernation - I have XP Pro OEM, and when I request it to hibernate,
the shut down process , including the "preparing to hibernate" seems to
work fine, but whem I power back the computer, it behaves as if it was
shut down improperly. it seems to be a problem with the motherboard or
BIOS. I have no problems in normal shut down. Hard drives are fine.

Thanks,

Uzi
Uzi
For e-mail contact and other, see:
http://www.uzipaz.com

Update, I wasn't aware of the CTRL-F1 issue. Now I could see the setting
for SMART and to change it. So it seems that SMART is enabled in the
BIOS setting by now, even though SMART programs seem to still not
recognize this. Anyway, this now seems to be out of this newsgroup's
scope.

The hibernation issue is still relevant here I think.

Thanks,
Uzi

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 09:11:24 +0300, Uzi <> wrote:

>I have just built a new computer based on GA-7N400 Pro 2 ver.2.
>It works fine, but a few things seem to be disabled, and normally I
>would look to enable them in the BIOS but the bvery simple BIOS setting
>does not offer such:
>
>a) S.M.A.R.T - the hard disks are from older computer. They are WD800JB
>and WD400JB both of them support SMART and SMART worked fine with them
>on the older computer. When I boot the computer, after letting the
>computer identify the drives, I get a message the S.M.A.R.T is disabled.
>I found no way to enable it. The BIOS identifies the drives correctly. I
>am used to having such an option in the advanced CMOS setup but here I
>don't see such.
>
>b) Hibernation - I have XP Pro OEM, and when I request it to hibernate,
>the shut down process , including the "preparing to hibernate" seems to
>work fine, but whem I power back the computer, it behaves as if it was
>shut down improperly. it seems to be a problem with the motherboard or
>BIOS. I have no problems in normal shut down. Hard drives are fine.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Uzi
>For e-mail contact and other, see:
>http://www.uzipaz.com

Uzi
For e-mail contact and other, see:
http://www.uzipaz.com

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 09:11:24 +0300, Uzi wrote:

>Hibernation - I have XP Pro OEM, and when I request it to hibernate,
>the shut down process , including the "preparing to hibernate" seems to
>work fine, but whem I power back the computer, it behaves as if it was
>shut down improperly. it seems to be a problem with the motherboard or
>BIOS. I have no problems in normal shut down. Hard drives are fine.

I have had the exact same problem for months now, so I hope for an answer
too.

GigaByte 8KNXP, rev 2
2 x IBM 60GB IDE in RAID-0 on built-in ITE controller
Windows XP Pro
--
Best regards,
Henrik Dissing

(e-mail: hendis AT post DOT tele DOT dk)

The old ACPI Mode S4 ( hibernate ) mode is not available in this BIOS. You
will have problem getting to hibernate mode.
Most use ACPI S3 ( Suspend to RAM ) and allow the USB mouse for wake-up.
Neither does this BIOS support S.M.A.R.T. S.M.A.R.T. is integrated into the
disk controller and may try to link up.
There are packages like ActiveSMART that can be installed.
Since most of us use RAID 0 on this high end board S.M.A.R.T. would be
hard to get to.
If it's out of our 'scope' it's because we have moved past it.
JPS



"Uzi" <> wrote in message
news:...
> I have just built a new computer based on GA-7N400 Pro 2 ver.2.
> It works fine, but a few things seem to be disabled, and normally I
> would look to enable them in the BIOS but the bvery simple BIOS setting
> does not offer such:
>
> a) S.M.A.R.T - the hard disks are from older computer. They are WD800JB
> and WD400JB both of them support SMART and SMART worked fine with them
> on the older computer. When I boot the computer, after letting the
> computer identify the drives, I get a message the S.M.A.R.T is disabled.
> I found no way to enable it. The BIOS identifies the drives correctly. I
> am used to having such an option in the advanced CMOS setup but here I
> don't see such.
>
> b) Hibernation - I have XP Pro OEM, and when I request it to hibernate,
> the shut down process , including the "preparing to hibernate" seems to
> work fine, but whem I power back the computer, it behaves as if it was
> shut down improperly. it seems to be a problem with the motherboard or
> BIOS. I have no problems in normal shut down. Hard drives are fine.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Uzi
> Uzi
> For e-mail contact and other, see:
> http://www.uzipaz.com
>

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 21:54:30 GMT, "jpsga" <> wrote:

>The old ACPI Mode S4 ( hibernate ) mode is not available in this BIOS. You
>will have problem getting to hibernate mode.
>Most use ACPI S3 ( Suspend to RAM ) and allow the USB mouse for wake-up.

Thanks,

I need the hibernation for only one purpose: the case when electricity
goes down for more than a few minutes. I can set the UPS software to
instruct the computer to hibernate, and it seems to me as the best
option. Better than shutting it down (the way it is configured now).
Suspend to RAM is clearly not an option in such a case. Other than
that, I do not need the hibernation, and in fact I do not turn the
computer off, but only set the monitor and the hard drives to take a
rest after 20-30 minutes of no activity.

>Neither does this BIOS support S.M.A.R.T. S.M.A.R.T. is integrated into the
>disk controller and may try to link up.
>There are packages like ActiveSMART that can be installed.
>Since most of us use RAID 0 on this high end board S.M.A.R.T. would be
>hard to get to.

But the BIOS claims that SMART is enabled. See my second post.
Anyway, it seems a bit early to neglect SMART. If the mobo supports IDE
PATA than it should also support SMART.

Uzi

On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 10:42:56 +0300, I wrote:

>But the BIOS claims that SMART is enabled. See my second post.
>Anyway, it seems a bit early to neglect SMART. If the mobo supports IDE
>PATA than it should also support SMART.

Correction. It should always support SMART even on SATA.

Uzi
For e-mail contact and other, see:
http://www.uzipaz.com

Hi,

I have 8knxp rev 1 with 1 HDD with smart enabled that is not raid and mbm5
reports the hdd temp correctly so from what the mbm site says this indicates
smart is working. The raid 1 disc I have does not appear as per mbm5 web
sites comments ...

The problem you may have with hybernate has nothing to do with sleep states
that I am aware of since you can power off a computer while it is
hybernating, but not while sleeping.

Yip, just proved it. I just configured my XP system to hybernate (it was
disabled to conserver disc space), shutdown -> Hybernate. Power off. Pulled
out the mains plug, counted to 15, and started up and this email is still
here.


So, I would suspect the drivers you are using on the ITE. There were some
updates over the last few months - have you got the right driver in? (one is
raid, the other is ATAPI only I think).

If you have your System disc on RAID 0, then I would advise moving it to
either RAID 1 or un-raid it as it is risky. The performance boost from RAID
0 is only 8 - 10% and isn't worth the risk.

- Tim



"Uzi" <> wrote in message
news:...
> On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 10:42:56 +0300, I wrote:
>
>>But the BIOS claims that SMART is enabled. See my second post.
>>Anyway, it seems a bit early to neglect SMART. If the mobo supports IDE
>>PATA than it should also support SMART.
>
> Correction. It should always support SMART even on SATA.
>
> Uzi
> For e-mail contact and other, see:
> http://www.uzipaz.com
>

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 18:43:31 +1200, Tim wrote:

>If you have your System disc on RAID 0, then I would advise moving it to
>either RAID 1 or un-raid it as it is risky.

Define "risky".

It's true a RAID-0 array with two disks is exactly twice as likely to break
down because of harddisk failure as a single drive setup, and the livelihood
that both disks in a RAID-1 array breaks down before you can do anything
about it, is very, very small in comparison.

However, what many people forget is that harddisk failure is only one of
many threats to your system and data, and far from the biggest one. Data is
lost more often because of things like file system errors, virus attacks,
software bugs and simple user errors, none of which RAID-1 protects you
against.

For this reason, the first thing to make sure is that you have an
appropriate backup scheme, in which case a RAID-0 array is no major hassle.

RAID-1 is only truly useful if you have very valuable data coming in all the
time or if you cannot afford the downtime when restoring your backup.

If you think RAID-0 isn't worth the risk, I'd say RAID-1 isn't worth the
wasted disk space unless you run a server or something.

>The performance boost from RAID
>0 is only 8 - 10% and isn't worth the risk.

The last time I tested, I saw a 60% improvement compared to non-RAID. I
never compared with RAID-1, but in theory and ignoring any overhead
involved, it should read as fast as RAID-0 and write as fast as non-RAID.
--
Best regards,
Henrik Dissing

(e-mail: hendis AT post DOT tele DOT dk)

Exactly! I came to the same conclusion that RAID-1 didn't really afford sufficient protection and
re-arranged the drives here so that the extra drives are connected as external SATA drives. That
way I can switch them on or off without having to reboot the PC.

I switch the external drive on, use Ghost to put an image onto the external drive and then switch
the drive off.

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 17:37:42 +0200, Henrik Dissing <> wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 18:43:31 +1200, Tim wrote:
>
> >If you have your System disc on RAID 0, then I would advise moving it to
> >either RAID 1 or un-raid it as it is risky.
>
> Define "risky".
>
> It's true a RAID-0 array with two disks is exactly twice as likely to break
> down because of harddisk failure as a single drive setup, and the livelihood
> that both disks in a RAID-1 array breaks down before you can do anything
> about it, is very, very small in comparison.
>
> However, what many people forget is that harddisk failure is only one of
> many threats to your system and data, and far from the biggest one. Data is
> lost more often because of things like file system errors, virus attacks,
> software bugs and simple user errors, none of which RAID-1 protects you
> against.
>
> For this reason, the first thing to make sure is that you have an
> appropriate backup scheme, in which case a RAID-0 array is no major hassle.
>
> RAID-1 is only truly useful if you have very valuable data coming in all the
> time or if you cannot afford the downtime when restoring your backup.
>
> If you think RAID-0 isn't worth the risk, I'd say RAID-1 isn't worth the
> wasted disk space unless you run a server or something.
>
> >The performance boost from RAID
> >0 is only 8 - 10% and isn't worth the risk.
>
> The last time I tested, I saw a 60% improvement compared to non-RAID. I
> never compared with RAID-1, but in theory and ignoring any overhead
> involved, it should read as fast as RAID-0 and write as fast as non-RAID.

I have same MOBO and use a SMART aware program, viz., Speedfan, and this
picks up the SMART info fine...

--
Susan


"Uzi" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Update, I wasn't aware of the CTRL-F1 issue. Now I could see the setting
> for SMART and to change it. So it seems that SMART is enabled in the
> BIOS setting by now, even though SMART programs seem to still not
> recognize this. Anyway, this now seems to be out of this newsgroup's
> scope.
<snip>