My Vostro 1700 with 2 HD's and Vista64 Raid

I have software raid configured fine. I just have 1 big problem and that is the notorious problem:

"The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period."

just google it: http://www.google.nl/search?q=The+d...ithin+the+timeout+period.&hl=nl&start=20&sa=N

its just incredible how many people have the same problems! And the problems seem to scatter over XP and Vista over laptops and desktops.

Some say that they just had to rearrange cdrom drive and there hd's (connectors) but that is a bit hard to do in a laptop...

others say play with the lpm registry setting of that iaStore service or with the bios hd acoustic mode, but what ever i do i keep getting the timeouts and hd lock problems.

I don't think it is a hd problem because i checked both of my hitachi hd's with the hitachi tools that can be downloaded from there site.

Only 1 thing left to try and that is to switch from AHCI to SATA mode in the bios (will do that tonight, hopefully i can still boot then and use my windows software raid)

Does anybody has another idea? Or should intel just really come up with a fix? Any idea how i can trigger intel or trigger dell to trigger intel to come up with a solution for this?

 

ok the switch from AHCI to SATA did the trick, now other none raid/ahci intel drivers are used, and now it seems to work perfectly. Intel should really fix there raid/ahci drivers because currently they are for me not really useable.

But happily i don't need them because pure software raid option under windows also works fine over my 2 hds

What more (except of this annoying problem) will AHCI bring us? So what do i miss now?

 

AHCI typically will give better performance on newer SATA drives as running in the other mode (some manufactures call it compatibility mode) the drive is essentially running in standard ATA mode which is about the same mode as a PATA drive uses. Not all HDD's will see the same amount of benefit from running in AHCI mode, but it is preferable if the drivers work for you (apparently not at the moment in your case).

I wouldn't really worry about it at the moment, a working PC not in AHCI mode is certainly better than a non-working one that *is* in AHCI.

 

Hi, Im sitting here with a vostro 1700 that I would like raid 0 with 2x32gb mtron 7000 pro drives - does anyone know if that is possible via bios/hardware instead of software?

If software, any pointers to how to do this, link or so?

 

Also interested on how to do Raid 0 on vostro 1700

 

Bump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Assuming the Vostro 1700 is exactly like the Inspiron 1720 then the only way to get raid is in software mode.

 

Software raid is not as good as hardware raid therfore i wouldnt bother. The way to get the best performance would be to install your os on one drive and your programs on the other.

 

That is what I did. I use a 200GB 7200RPM as my os drive and a 250GB 5400RPM as my data drive.