Fresh re-install of Vista....pauses sometimes, hard drives spin up, unpauses

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SocceRich20

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I recently did a fresh install on my gaming machine, the hard drives are two Raptor X's in Raid 0. I'm encountering an annoying problem. Whenever I try to point to a directory, the computer freezes, I hear the hard drives spin up, then it unfreezes and continues normally. An example would be installing software. When I try to expand a folder to point to the directory that I want to install to in the explorer window, the computer will pause, then I hear the hard drives spin up, then it will unpause and continue normally. Ideas on how to resolve this?
 
What did you set up as your stripe size?

Also, are you using different raid storage drivers?
 
They should only go to low power mode if it's at idle. If he's using it, they shouldn't.
 
bigdogchris said:
They should only go to low power mode if it's at idle. If he's using it, they shouldn't.
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Yes but the description almost sounds like they do go into a low power mode. Granted this seems a bit odd and I am interested in what the solution turns out to be.
 
mtrupi said:
Yes but the description almost sounds like they do go into a low power mode. Granted this seems a bit odd and I am interested in what the solution turns out to be.
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Exactly, it sounds like the drives are in power saving mode.

I'm curious. When the OP points to a directory, exactly how does he "hear the drives spin up, and then everything unfreezes"? This means that at some point, the OP has had to hear the drives spin DOWN.

Check to find out at what point this happens, and you'll have your solution. If he has them in RAID 0, maybe one of the drives are only being used? Just a guess. Make sure power saving for your hard drives are disabled in the Power Options.
 
The drives are not in any kind of power saving mode obviously. That would be the first thing to check. The drives never spin down either, they just whirl up when it does this crap. It doesn't do it when I return from not using it either, it does this when I am actively using it.
 
SocceRich20 said:
The drivers are not in any kind of power saving mode obviously. That would be the first thing to check. The drives never spin down either, they just whirl up when it does this crap. It doesn't do it when I return from not using it either, it does this when I am actively using it.
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The descriptions are very hard to understand. Generally HDD spin at a constant rate or not at all. Do yours have variable rpm settings? Or are you interpreting disk activity as whirling up? Vista does a lot of indexing when first turned on. Until this is done, apparent by little to no disk activity, other disk accesses will be delayed. Are you truly using RAID 0? Does vista think the secondary drive can be shut down? Go through the device manager to the HDD and controller properties. Try things like turning off NCQ. Look at the disk manager, is it correct? I am probably way off base but I am trying to think of things that may have been overlooked as obviously.
 
Check the SATA/molex power connection. Replace with different SATA/molex connectors or even rails with seperate wires. Also check data cables, just to rule out anything with them [though these shouldn't be the problem] & replace them if you have extra ones lying around.
 
SocceRich20 said:
Same array, I just reformatted. Stripe size is set at 128K. Same drivers.
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Should be using 64k for home use. It may be an issue that the drives don't like the stripe setup you have. I've heard some HDD's are picky about raid. The controller might also be wacked.
 
Is there any other HD's in the system? What your describing sounds just like the drives going to sleep. In vista it would get on my nerves as i have 2 drives in my system that i hardly ever use at all, however if i did almost anything like use firefox/view movies/play games then half way through these drives would just spin up (even though no data needed to be accessed) and cause the pause/unpause your getting......in the end i went through all the power management and disabled it.....problem solved.
 
I have a 750GB SATA II drive in the system as well that holds my music and movies, independent of my Raptor array. I swear I've double checked every power saving option, and there's nothing. This pause only happens in examples such as the following: I'm downloading a file, say my graphic drivers or something. It asks where I want to save them to, and shows the default directory. As soon as I click to expand the folder hierarchy to pick another folder, I get a pause, hear the drives whirl, followed immediately by the computer unpausing and showing me the directory of folders.
 
SocceRich20 said:
I have a 750GB SATA II drive in the system as well that holds my music and movies, independent of my Raptor array. I swear I've double checked every power saving option, and there's nothing. This pause only happens in examples such as the following: I'm downloading a file, say my graphic drivers or something. It asks where I want to save them to, and shows the default directory. As soon as I click to expand the folder hierarchy to pick another folder, I get a pause, hear the drives whirl, followed immediately by the computer unpausing and showing me the directory of folders.
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Perhaps there is a setting your BIOS that is set for hard drive power management. Check there just to be sure. I've seen some BIOSes have power management that can be set to aggressive or minimal, so it could be possible that there's some type of power management going on at the BIOS level if you indeed have checked to make sure that there are no power management features enabled for the drives in Vista.

I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that maybe, just maybe, it's your PSU? Like the drives are sucking for power at that very moment when they need to access the folders or something. I've had something like this happen to me when I was trying to repair a client's system, and subsequently found out that the PSU was dying.
 
99% sure it's your 750GB drive powering down and back up. Vista did this to me also. It's annoying as hell.
 
That makes sense, as I don't know why my OS drives would be spinning up, otherwise I wouldn't be able to use the computer at all. Were you able to fix it?
 
sounds like Vista has decided to put your drive into power saving mode. I'd go into the advanced settings of the Power options and double check the profile and Disk settings being used. I know you've said that you've already checked the options. Also, the idea on BIOS power savings is a good idea as well. Here's another thought, which I have not yet seen mentioned...is the drive a green drive? Maybe they put something "intelligent" in the controllers firmware to spin down the drive when not in use. That would drive me f'in nuts.
 
It's not one of those faggoty green drives. I refuse to sacrifice power for efficiency, which is why I laugh at all these hybrid cars as I blast past them on the highway with my 5.7L V8. I haven't checked the BIOS yet, but I'll look into that. I didn't change any bios settings recently, and I'm almost positive that the computer didn't do this prior to the fresh format. The only thing that changed is that I used to have Vista Home Premium installed, and I installed Vista Ultimate this time. Does Ultimate have some sneaky hidden power saving crap I need to look at? So far I've disabled everything in the standard control panel >> power options area.
 
Not that I'm aware of... nothing sneaky. I'll check again when I get home but I'm fairly certain that all I had to do was set the power save general settings to Performance instead of Balanced.
 
SocceRich20 said:
It's not one of those faggoty green drives. I refuse to sacrifice power for efficiency, which is why I laugh at all these hybrid cars as I blast past them on the highway with my 5.7L V8.
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ROFL :p

I too have a 750GB WD drive, but it never behaves like that.

Power management is happening...somewhere. Find it, and shut it off for good.
 
I had this problem before. Use an older version of the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (Nov. 2007).
 
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