20091015

SATA2 backwards compatibility

I expected to have my SATA1 HDD's working properly on my SATA2 motherboard, but they didn't. For anyone of interest, here is the answer given by Shuttle support. The (two) problems i experienced are below, and seem directly related to the lack of legacy support. Not that it should support it, i just expected it to.  IMHO innovation shouldn´t be hold back by (over the top) legacy support.
Dear Shuttle customer,

As you wrote your HDDs have the old SATA-150 specification. Many old HDD
have trouble with new SATA-300 controller. Do you have any SATA-300 HDD
for test? First the BIOS have to recognize the HDD correctly.

After RAID config (that you did not do because your HDDs do not work)
the Windows installation asks for RAID driver. Later you can install
the Matrix Manager in Windows. Necessary for all RAID related driver
and software is the BIOS. The ICH10R has to switched to "RAID" or "AHCI"
mode. If the controller is set to IDE, the driver refuses the install.

The driver is an original Intel driver. Bugs are not known at present.

Please don't hesitate to contact us, if you have any other questions.

---
Best Regards
Shuttle Support

----------------------------------------------------------------------


barry***@****.nl schrieb:

Contact Information

Name: Barry Staes
Email: barry***@*******.nl
Location: Netherlands


Product Information

Model Name: SX58H7
System ID: sx58h700-B00-13 Serial Number: sx58h700******00044
BIOS: default
Purchased from: alternate.nl Purchased date: 2009/10/08


Configuration Information

Item Model Note
CPU model: Intel Core i7 920
Memory model: 6GB
HDD model: Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB
Display Card model: ASUS
CD ROM model: Atapi IDE
Network Card model: -
OS model: Windows 7
Others: I want to use two Samsung 200GB (SATA150) drives in raid. These get recognized & work fine in any other system.


Problems Encountered or Other Notes
Two problems. For starters the system works fine with only SSD in various OS's, and i wanted to attach two HDD's in RAID0 (both Samsung 200GB SATA150) to get more storage.

Problem #1
I connected these but the bios doesn't mention them, windows doesn't see them.

So i tried changing the bios setting for the controller from IDE to RAID. After applying the system powers down abruptly and powers up with the new configuration. The first bootscreen takes 10 minutes while trying (failing) to detect AHCI 0 and up. Eventually instead of windows it just resets, and when i pressed DEL in the meanwile the BIOS menu will b presented. Still with the RAID setting though.
If i change it to AHCI, same thing. This is an issue, i'm not able to boot (at all) with these drives working! Disconnecting the SSD doesn't change anything.

I tried resolving this problem by installing the drives for Windows 7, and visited the support site. The bundled CD had two programs that refused to work. More below.

Problem #2
I can't install the drivers from the CD, so i tried the website. I select Windows 7 on support page
http://global.shuttle.com/download03.jsp?PI=1219&OS=7
and tried the RAID related installations. One throws a "system doesn't meet requirements" error right after launching, the other doesn't have anything Windows 7 recognizes as installable.

Please address these problems, as i want to run RAID in my SX58H7. Its why i bought this system.

I am really looking forward to your response as i've hit this wall after owning the Shuttle system for only a few days.

Any suggestions are welcome. I beleive this might be a bug in the driver installation software.

Thank you,
Barry Staes
I might make a habit of putting support information on my blog, if its relevant to most and useful to one soul i´m happy.

20091014

Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB

I'm very happy with my SSD, but decided to backcheck on some stuff with Kingston. We all know SSD´s degrade performance when pages inside the device are full so it won´t stay 100% always, though it always outperform any HDD.

The Kingston website form required a part number which i didn´t have at hand (its inside the case, afterall) so i got a nice email from Kingston support asking if i had questions. Here was the questions i asked with the answers i received:
Hello Barry,

I consulted engineering regarding your questions on our V series SSD drive.  Their answers are below.




Q1) Does Kingston offer a utility to restore my drive to its newstate?
It is known formating a SSD, or deleting its files or partitions won't restore advertised / new-state performance.


Answer: No, Kingston at this time does not offer a SSD cleaning tool. However, you can use diskpart from command line (cmd) in Vista or Windows 7 to clean the disk. This will wipe the entire disk and all data. 




Q2) Because Q1 is only Will there be a firmware update to support TRIM command found in Windows 7 and later in Linux?


Answer: There will not be a firmware update available for the V series SSD's to support TRIM.




Q3) What firmware updates are in the pipeline?


Answer: For the current V series, none.




Q4) What exactly is it that makes this disk better than any other without the Toshiba chip?


Answer: The controller used on the drive. The controller on any SSD is the key to how well it performs.



If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to reply to this e-mail with full email history. Thank you for using Kingston on-line technical support.

Regards,

Matthew Eaton
Kingston Technology
Technical Support



If they don't offer TRIM support in the future, this SSD is doomed. Well ok not that bad really, but its not what i expected. So i'd say don't buy this Kingston SSD, for answer #1 alone. The fact that they don't clarify "what" makes the drive better as its their primary sales argument doesn't make things better.

I want to check out the Intel utility though, so if anyone could pass me the HDDErase tool they bundle with their solid state disks its much appreciated!

Update 20091101: Intel released a firmware update for its SSD line, now suppors TRIM and improved random access speed. Due to it bricking some SSDs' they've withdrawn, but that'll be a matter of time.

Coppermine duplicate records

If you´ve got duplicate records in Coppermine, but no duplicate files this article is for you. This query will find all duplicate records, and its easy to do a DELETE on the bad id's. On the least hits duplicate ofcourse, you wouldn't want to lose sweet historical data!

I use Coppermine to host a photogallery on veldtoertochtulicoten.nl and after uploading some 400 photos i found out that some where duplicate. Bugger, but easy to rectify i thought. Not! After removing one via the webinterface, i found out that the sourcefile gets deleted as well. No problem, except when your other duplicate is using the that same file!

There exist other tools, like this commandline PHP script by remdex found at the Coppermine forum. Nonetheless this was to much of a hassle so i´ve created a simple mysql query to find all duplicates:

Requirements
I wanted to know the id of the least visited duplicates, thus preserving the most popular/visited one each time. Its all done in one mysql query, but i left out the delete line. I've got Coppermine Photo Gallery 1.4.14 (stable).

The mysql query
SELECT * FROM (

SELECT a.pid, a.aid, a.filename, a.hits, a.filepath
FROM cpg14x_pictures AS a
RIGHT JOIN (

SELECT aid, filepath, filename, COUNT( filename ) AS cnt
FROM cpg14x_pictures AS b
GROUP BY filename
HAVING cnt >1
ORDER BY cnt

) AS c ON c.filename = a.filename AND c.aid = a.aid
ORDER BY a.aid, a.filename, a.hits DESC

) AS d
GROUP BY filename

If you don't understand the DELETE command (yet) you shouldn't run code this radical. I give no garanties on other databases, or coppermine installations, so validate its output before you insert the delete command and always make a backup first.

Every pass it only deletes one duplicate, so if you've got triplets or more duplicates you should run it twice or more.

PS i used phpMyAdmin, if only blogspot.com was so effective! There is no code button here, nor ident. :(

Update 20091103: Decided to put my comment inside this post to avoid blog migration issues;
How to add delete functionality:

Replace the (first) line "select * from (" with
"DELETE from cpg14x_pictures where pid IN (
select d.pid from ("

and add a ")" at the end of this query.

Remember to backup and test first without deleting!

20091013

Bootloaders: Windows 7 and GRUB

My recently bought SSD is only 64GB, and i've been toying with all OS's i might like. Sometimes, a bootpartition gets damaged. Here's how to fix it.

Restoring the Windows 7 bootloader:
Since my computer contains only Windows 7 i no longer need GRUB. Its defect anyway since extending the Windows 7 partition, and i like a fast boot so i don't like the countdown menu.

How to:
  • Boot from Windows 7 DVD
  • Select language
  • Choose Repair
  • Choose Windows 7
  • Choose Command line
  • Type this in without the quotes ("): "bootrec /fixmbr" and press enter.
  • Type "bootrec /FixBoot" and press enter.
  • Restart
Ofcourse its also possible to just restore GRUB: check out Supergrubdisk.

My new i7 workstation

If you're just interested in what the configuration of my i7 workstation is, see below. Still reading? Now for some history and introduction.


Recently i've gotten sick of my old computer getting sick, so i gathered my options. I decided to get myself a new system, the old setup served well for over 5 years. That's a lot for any geek. I liked my system, it was good.

Now that i've ordered a new system - carefully picked each component by hand - i decided to share the configuration with anyone who cares. I normally wouldn't care at all what kind of system some other person has, that is until i would have to go shopping.

So this article is for those currently looking for a sexy workstation.

Recycling my old workstation
This setup (Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz, 4GB DDR2) would be ideal to join my fileserver (Intel Pentium 4 3.06Ghz, 1GB DDR2) in a yet to be created GlusterFS setup. Its videocard issues won't bother me there, and i have some spare 478 socket motherboards to boot. (pun intended) More on that subject in the following weeks.

The i7 workstation configuration
For those interested - i ordered all parts unassembled at Alternate. The following column lists order#, piece name, price, and months of guarantee.

Or in human readable format:
  • Shuttle Barebone SX58H7
  • Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67Ghz
  • Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB
  • 3x 2GB SDRAM DDR31333
  • Asus EN9400GT 1GB 
  • a Samsung DVD rewriter, a terrific Brother printer, and a powercable i ended up not needing.
I will motivate each part in a future post using references and experience, but for now its fair to say each has its perks - except for the videocard. I just got a cheap one that doesn't occupy two PCI-E slots which the shuttle case only has two of.

This system will be a fine home server when retires. Server perks:
  • i7 has 8 cores (of which 4 actual cores and 4 virtual by means of hyperthreading)
  • 6 SATA (of which 3 ESATA) devices in RAID,
  • two Gigabit pots,
  • 2 PCI-E x16 slots (to facilitate RAID controllers)
  • easily allows for homemade air filtration (= tape + some hospital-ish paper cloth on inside of case), 
  • effective cooling,
  • tried and tested components.
But until then my workstation sits on my desk, so add:
  • Small, portable, fast, quiet,
  • and (very important to me) plenty of multimonitor possibilities.
If you are looking for a workstations with fitting demands, i suggest this configuration. You might want to add a big HDD for storage capacity.