One Slipped By – AOpen S145A Mini-ITX Chassis Fail

A while back we posted about our experience with A-Open’s S145A Mini-ITX chassis that we picked up with a bunch of Intel Mini-ITX boards.

• MPECS Inc. Blog: AOpen S145A Mini-ITX Chassis – Total Fail

Well, one slipped by as we received a call from a client in the middle of last week that one of their systems had seemingly died on them.

It turned out to be one of the systems we deployed with the AOpen S145A Mini-ITX case. The power supply fans are quite weak on them with the PSU actually burning out.

When we contacted AOpen for a replacement power supply, fan, or even case they referred us to our Canadian distribution points for RMA purposes. We surmise that distribution dropped them as quick as they did due to this particular problem coming back to them.

With distribution dropping the S145A AOpen would not give us _any_ warranty support at all. So, we ended up replacing _all_ of the S145A cases with Antec Minuet 350 cases that we have had a lot of success with.

The whole mess ended up costing us a lot in terms of money and time lost replacing all of those cases.

With system building being a part of our business model we have always been quite particular about the system configurations we send out the door.

• Intel processors and boards.
• Kingston or Crucial RAM
• Antec cases
• Seagate hard drives
• Intel SSD drives
• Lite-On optical
• ATI/AMD video

The above recipe has served us quite well with the exception of the Seagate firmware bug we were hit with a year or two ago. We ended up swapping out quite a few AS and NS drives. However, Western Digital was not without their problems for the high end systems built on the Raptor and VelociRaptor drives either.

So, in the end, we have learned a very expensive lesson: Stick with what we know and run with it never looking back!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

160GB Intel SSD Gen 2 Performance = WOW!

There have been a few blog posts here on the new second generation Intel Solid-State drives (post category search) lately.

A while back, we put together a box for a client that included an EVGA nVidia based motherboard (EVGA category search). We have had quite the odyssey with this particular system.

The Raptors have consistently broken the RAID 10 array we created via the onboard RAID setup. There has been no rhyme or reason to the array breaking. We even replaced the entire drive set with brand new drives hoping that it would be fixed. No joy there.

Each time the box visited the shop we made sure to update the BIOS on the motherboard and we were still hit with broken arrays.

So, we removed three of the four Raptors leaving the one behind for storage.

We installed a single Intel X25-M 160GB second generation SSD.

We then installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 retail in 12 minutes using our OCZ ATV Turbo as the source.

Both the SSD and Windows 7 Ultimate retail were provided to our client at no cost along with the labour to install all of their needed applications. We needed to make sure that we made things right.

The scary thing is that the single Intel SSD boots the entire Windows 7 Ultimate OS from start to finish in about 15 seconds! 15 Seconds!!!

• Original blog post on the system configuration.

We define a completed boot as having the ability to click on the Start Button and open any program in the recent list or pinned there.

Even a set of four VelociRaptors configured in a RAID 10 array can’t touch that and they are fast too!

Since installing an Intel 80GB SSD in the Netbook, and soon the Tecra will be getting a 160GB version, bumping out the spindle for an SSD has been an easy sell to our clients.

They can see the visible excitement in me when I am demonstrating a full OS boot in 20 seconds on a Netbook with Windows 7 Pro and an SSD for a drive. Then the application performance for opening them as well as flipping around between open windows and more is pretty impressive on a Netbook.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

EVGA 790i Ultra RAID Error – Drive Failure

We built this system for one of our clients a while back: EVGA 790i Ultra MB and Kingston RAM.

The system came back to us a couple of days ago due to a RAID array error message.

Nothing out of the ordinary was going on when the system spontaneously locked up on the user.

The RAID array consists of four (4) 150GB Western Digital Raptor drives configured in a RAID 1+0 (BIOS indicates 0+1 which is incorrect).

Of the two pairs, one in each managed to survive the array malfunction. Thus, the array and subsequently the OS survived the failure. We were able to boot into Windows Vista with no issues.

The puzzling aspect of getting things back together was how to reset the two failed drives.

We had taken the drives out of the system and ran the Western Digital utility that does an extensive disk scan and both came up error free.

The RAID BIOS does not make it too clear how we need to reset the failed array members either.

We ended up deleting the entries in the RAID BIOS array management for the two drives that were in error state. Once we did that, they appeared as available and we were able to add them back to the array by highlighting them and setting the array into rebuild mode. Remember, all we are doing is adding the second drive that will mirror the original drive in the RAID 1+0 array (nVidia calls it RAID 0+1 in the BIOS).

The catch to an array rebuild on this setup is that we need to boot into an OS before the rebuild starts.

When we went to reboot, Windows Vista complained about missing NLS data. So, something had changed with the resetting of the “failed” drives.

We booted into the ShadowProtect Recovery Environment to verify that everything was intact on the C: drive, which it was, but we were not able to get any further. We tried copying the NLS files over but that did not work.

So, we deleted the array in the RAID BIOS, recreated it, and attempted to restore our ShadowProtect image that we took just prior to messing around with the system. That restore attempt failed.

We finally learned the proper methodology for using ShadowProtect with Windows Vista for any backup/restore operation: First Successful Windows Vista ShadowProtect Restore! No Winload.exe Error! (previous blog post)

We had not run the preparation step indicated in the above blog post on the Windows Vista OS so we ended up needing to rebuild the box from scratch.

Once the box had been fully installed, one of the hard drive array members choked and caused the system to lock up. Perhaps we have finally found the culprit of the original array failure! We changed that drive out for a new drive using the array delete and create process and are now well into a burn-in process with no hiccups.

This time, we ran the above prep steps and then imaged the system using ShadowProtect before breaking the RAID array. We were able to then successfully restore the Windows Vista OS.

The failed drive in this case was not a part of the original pair of “failed” drives. Hopefully we now have the source of the problem. The burn-in will continue to run until our client picks up the box late Monday afternoon.

The burn-in produced no array failures and our client was happy with the system when we followed up at the end of last week.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

150GB Raptor AHFD Series with clear view panel ...

Not being much of a gamer, nor one who extensively mods the cases we setup systems in, the Western Digital 150GB AHFD series Raptor was virtually unseen in our shop.

Until a regular ADFD series died and the only RMA drive we could get back from WD was the AHDFD series.

150GB WD AHFD Series with see-through top

It is pretty neat to see the internals of the drive working after first plugging the drive into a live system via USB.

While waiting for a command from the system, the heads sit right in the centre of the platters given them a 50/50 placement for the quickest access to the outside edge or inside edge of the platters.

Once the drive was initialized, we ran a full format to NTFS and the heads do indeed slowly work their way across the platters from the outside to the inside.

If ever you wanted to know exactly how a drive works internally while processing the various storage commands from a system, this is definitely the way.

Note the warning that accompanies the drive to very careful around the Plexiglas ... to the point that the warranty is void if the cover is damaged in any way.

Neat idea, but not the most practical. :)

This series will probably be a one-off with the advent of the small form factor VelociRaptors that outperform their older siblings by a huge margin ... and do not have the cover real estate to allow for a view port of some sort.

And, there is probably nothing too attractive running under the hood of the new Solid-State Drives either. ;)

Definitely a 10 on the geek kewl factor scale though. We are glad to have had one here to check it out.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

WD 300GB VelociRaptor - Wow

The new WD VelociRaptor sure are fast ... especially relative to their older sibling the Raptor.

We just finished doing a bit of tweaking and upgrading to one of our client's personal system.

The setup:

• Intel QX6700 Quad Core Extreme
• ASUS Maximus Formula
• 4GB Ballistix DDR2
• Sapphire HD 4870 512MB PCI-E Video
• 2x 300GB WD VelociRaptor in RAID 1
• Antec Nine Hundred case
• Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit

Once we had the system together and the OS installed, the subsequent boot ups and reboots for driver updates were pretty stunning.

Off the top, the two VelociRaptors come close to performing as well as the 4 Raptors configured in a RAID 0+1 setup!

The new 300GB drives even come in a 3.5" hot swap backplane ready model too.

So, we are looking to configure a set of four in a RAID 0+1 setup to see how much of an increase in performance there will be. We would bet that the performance increase is significant over the RAID 1 VelociRaptor setup, and substantial over the Raptor RAID 0+1 setup given our experience with them this afternoon.

Western Digital is definitely one to watch in the spindle based performance category ... though with the advent of Solid-State Drives (previous blog post), WD has to hope that their significant investment in high performance spindle based drives pays off in the long run.

For now, WD VelociRaptor definitely makes performance to value sense!

From Western Digital's description:

Double the capacity - State-of-the-art technology packs twice the capacity per disk compared to its older brother WD Raptor resulting in 300 GB of high-performance storage space in this enterprise-class 2.5-inch drive. (Not compatible with notebook computers)

Note the lack of laptop support.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Vista x64 RTM - Stop 0x0000007e on EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI Mainboard

A relatively new client of ours wanted us to figure out why their system was not able to "SLI" on a pair of EVGA 8800GTX Ultra video cards in the system. They had recently picked up a game that they wanted to run on a larger high resolution monitor. There was also a need to tune up the system after about a year of usage.

The system configuration as it came to us:

• Intel QX6850 Quad Core Extreme
• Asus Maximus Formula X38 motherboard
• 4GB Crucial BallistiX DDR2
• EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra PCI-E Video (pair)
• 74GB Raptor (OS), 400GB Seagate (storage), and 500GB Seagate (storage)
• 1KW PSU
• Antec Nine Hundred Case
• Windows Vista Ultimate x86

Anyone catch the reason the nVidia SLI function was not available?

In this particular case, our client had gone to one of the local computer stores in the city to get the components needed to setup a new system.

At that time, about a year ago, DDR3 memory was hard come by and extremely expensive. So, it looks as though the sales clerk had move our client into the Asus Maximus Formula for its DDR2 capability.

The sales clerk missed something very important in the process: The Asus Maximus Formula was an ATI CrossFire enabled board! With the ATI setup, the video card bridge comes with the video cards. With the nVidia setup, the bridge comes with the motherboard. ATI CrossFire and nVidia SLI motherboards are not cross compatible. That is, one cannot plug in a pair of SLI video cards into a CrossFire based motherboard and expect to get nVidia SLI to function.

Since the video cards were also made by EVGA, and we had access to the EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI Mainboard, that was the direction that we recommended and our client accepted.

Once we had the EVGA motherboard and a set of 4GB DDR3 1,333MHz Kingston memory, everything went together relatively well.

One caveat we ran into was the length of the video cards versus the hard drive cage setup in the Antec 900. We needed to move the cages a step out to enable the video cards and the Raptors to work together in relatively the same space.

EVGA 8800GTX Ultra snugged up to the 150GB WD Raptor

We were fortunate in that the SATA data cable on the back of the Raptor was able to fit just so in behind the EVGA's plastic housing.

When installing Windows Vista Ultimate x64 RTM on the system, we had the full 4GB of RAM installed on the motherboard.

During the initial spool up of the Windows Vista setup routine we received a BSOD with a 0x0000007E indicator and that was it.

It has been our experience on the Intel side of things that Windows setup will fail with more than 2GB of RAM installed on the motherboard. It looks like the nForce chipset suffers the same problem.

Once we removed two of the 1GB RAM sticks to bring things down to 2GB on the motherboard, setup proceeded as expected.

The system was fast! Vista Ultimate x64 installed in no time flat.

One thing to keep in mind when setting the system up is to not plug in a network cable into either of the NIC ports. Make sure to install the EVGA nForce 790i board drivers first, then the nVidia video card drivers and the requisite reboots.

The EVGA motherboard had production BIOS P01 installed out of the box. No matter what we tried we could not get the second video card recognized without a Vista BSOD.

So, we needed to update the EVGA nForce 790i Series BIOS (EVGA support forum) to the most recent version which was P05p released the day before yesterday. P05 would not allow the second video card to be recognized either.

For the SLI or dual card setup to work properly for us:

1. Single card to start.
2. Update the BIOS (record those settings and restore to defaults before updating)
• Note that any RAID configuration would not be lost when the RAID controller was disabled.
• Make sure to enable the RAID controller and set the appropriate drives after the update.
3. Reboot
4. Make the requisite BIOS settings changes.
5. Power down.
6. Install the second SLI video card and the SLI bridge.
7. Boot into the OS.
8. The nVidia drivers will probably need to be reinstalled.
• The BIOS update and second video card wiped out our nVidia driver setup.
9. Reboot and engage SLI if required.
• The driver will pop up the management screen after the reboot.

Once we finished getting the SLI function going, the system was pretty much good to go.

There was one more snag, but that one will go into a separate post.

There certainly is an art to overclocking systems. Looking through the forums with all of the discussions around system hardware configurations and BIOS settings for all of the different variables was mind boggling!

Here was the existing components with the components we added:

• Intel QX6850 Quad Core Extreme (existing)
• EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard
• 4GB Kingston KVR1333D3N8/1G (PDF spec sheet)
• EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra PCI-E Video (pair) (existing)
• 300GB Western Digital Raptor 10K RPM in RAID 0+1 (4 150GB Raptor drives)
• Zalman CNPS9700NT CPU cooler
• Antec Nine Hundred Case (existing)
• 1200 Watt Thermaltake Toughpower 4 Rail PSU

Here is how the system spec'd out on the Windows Vista Experience Index:

5.9 across the board! Time to update that assessment. ;)

Neat :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Western Digital Raptors and Intel On Board RAID Caveats

We seem to be experiencing some hardware related hiccups specific to the 150GB Western Digital Raptors when mirrored on an Intel on board RAID controller.

We have a large number of Seagate RAID 1 mirrors on Intel on board RAID controllers and to date have not experienced this same issue under similar circumstances.

What we have been seeing is the breaking of the mirror if there is a hardware stall or freeze due to either an incorrectly installed/configured hardware driver or a malfunctioning piece of hardware that locks up the system.

So far, the breaking of the mirror seems to be isolated to the Raptors.

In one case, we had a mirror break that also took out the OS.

Keep in mind that we are only installing the Raptors into high end systems that we build in-house for key clients. This is our first run back into Western Digital drives in over five years.

However, any systems that we have put together so far that have displayed the above issues have indeed experienced the RAID 1 mirror being broken and at least needing an array rebuild or in some cases an array reinitialization and now in one case a reload of the OS.

On initial observation, it looks like the Raptors are a little more sensitive to a break in the data stream.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.