GA-P55-US3L: unknown constant hard drive accesses

[forumjoe]

You'll have to forgive me if I've asked this before on this forum - it's been quite some time since I posted anything - but does anyone know if there's anything unique in hard disk controllers on Gigabyte Intel-based motherboards that could account for constant and very regular accesses to the system drive, even at idle?

I have to admit I've had some issues with the Seagate SATA hard drive I used when I built my P55-US3L and, at one point, was advised by Seagate to return the drive to them for replacing, but a firmware update on their website that's become available this week has fully cured one of the problems with it. Two other niggling ones remain, though - Seagate's utility Seatools cannot detect the drive (this is in all probability due to Seatools not catering for the particular Intel 5/3400 series hard disk controller that's on the US3L's motherboard) and the constant accesses.

No audible accessing noise is associated with the accesses, at least not now. I assume that they're hard disc accessses, since they're signified by the HDD LED indicator on the PC's case (fed from the motherboard's F-panel). They're occurring at a very regular rate of about 2 per second. Not there while in the BIOS or during bootup, only there when Windows is active.

A couple of months ago, I spent several weeks, on and off, investigating various Windows background processes, to see if I could pinpoint the cause, but I turned up nothing.

This might, of course, conceivably still be a problem with the hard disc itself but the drive seems to work flawlessly otherwise. I'm just wondering whether these incessant and very regular accesses might be being sourced from the motherboard for some reason. Anyone ever met this phenomenon before? I googled for it some time ago and found a reasonable number of people with the same problem, though nobody indicated which motherboards they were using. This is strange, as I've never seen it on any previous machine of mine, using the same operating system and the same apps and utilities.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome back.

Apart from your previous posts rregarding this problem I haven't seen any one else complaining of it. That, of course, doesn't mean it not happening just that nobody has noticed or written in about it.

As it happens I have just recently noticed this happening on my review build and have been investigating what is causing it. So far I might add without any luck! It can't hold out forever though and I will get to the bottom of it. I have noticed that if I make it use the controller it stops the accessing for  a few seconds while it looks at the other drive.

I will post back later when I hopefully have some news.

[forumjoe]

Well, at least I'm glad that it's been noticed by someone else here.

There are two hard disk controllers in my machine - a 2-port and a 4-port, to handle all six SATA2 connections. The Gigabyte SATA ports will be in addition to this and I guess use a further controller, but in my case I  use neither the Gigabyte ports nor do I use RAID.

I would have thought that, once in use, a disc controller will be active all the time?

A disc controller will presumably have a driver and, with that in mind, I've always had a gut feeling that the Intel driver for my motherboard still has a bug in it, not only because of these constant regular HDD accesses but also because, at various times, there are random accesses to the motherboard's floppy drive (which most certainly should not be happening!). I wouldn't mind betting that the two are linked. I of course reported it a long time ago to Gigabyte Support but they immediately trashed the possibility.

[Dark Mantis]

Ha! I can beat that my Device Manager tells me there is a floppy drive and it is all working fine when there isn't even a port for one. Work that out. Actually it is easilly fixed with a BIOS update but it does seem stupid.

[forumjoe]

As you may know, in my case, there definitely is a FDD port on the motherboard. And there's also a FDD setting in the FH BIOS, albeit that it amounts to no more than an on/off switch. Normal access to my FDD is fine, it's just that random accesses to it take place every now and then when it's not even in use at that moment. You can hear the FDD's motor momentarily energised. I agree that the FDD problem could well be just that bit of the software in the BIOS that's wrong, but getting Gigabyte to investigate it and to acknowledge that it happens is virtually impossible.

The constant accesses to the hard drive is something else.

[Dark Mantis]

Right well I have finally tracked it down and it stops if I disable the DVD drive in Device Manager. Whether this is because it is on the SATA2 port which is known to have problems on these boards I will have to see. It is just that I can't simply swap it over to the SATA3 port as ther is no spare because I am running a RAID 0 array off them. I guess I will have to break the array and reinstall Windows on a single drive instead to see if that cures it.

[Lsdmeasap]

Do you guys have the Gigabyte web update utility installed, if so uninstall it.   If you used "Express Install" from the motherboard CD it is installed, and this also applies to my next questions.   Did you guys install drivers you are not using, such as J.Micron(GSATA) drivers, again Express Install would be to blame.

If none of the above applies, the only other time I have seen users report HDD LED issue was if they have DES installed- and the HDD LED was actually the Energy Saving LED blinking instead to indicate that DES is active.   Uninstall this program and reboot if you think this might be it.

[forumjoe]

Lsdmeasap,

I've carefully read your piece and can report that absolutely none of those apply, in my case. The few drivers needed for my setup were installed separately and individually by me, them having been downloaded.

As regards any utility that claimed to save energy by altering the duty cycle of a tiny little LED, the idea is just laughable, as a typical LED consumes about 30 milliwatts of power. That's a grain of sand on a beach, compared to the total power consumed by an average desktop PC at idle.

Afterthought: perhaps you just meant that, with that utility, the LED is flashed merely to indicate that power-saving on the PC is in operation? Regardless, though, I don't use DES or any utilities remotely of that kind.

What I did determine some months ago was that these presumed regular accesses to the hard drive were happening even with nothing but SP3 for WinXP and the basic motherboard drivers installed; I was able to temporarily restore my setup to that condition. So, as far as I can see, the evidence points strongly to one of the motherboard drivers - either the Intel INF driver 9.1.2.1007 or the PCIe LAN driver 5.778.1208.2010 - as being at fault. Clearly, the most likely of those two to be the culprit is the INF driver. Gigabyte Support don't want to know, though. Their view is that the driver is perfection personified and that therefore it doesn't need looking at.

[Dark Mantis]

Lsdmeasap,

As regards any utility that claimed to save energy by altering the duty cycle of a tiny little LED, the idea is just laughable, as a typical LED consumes about 30 milliwatts of power. That's a grain of sand on a beach, compared to the total power consumed by an average desktop PC at idle.

No I think you misunderstood Lsdmeasap when he was talking about the power saving. The LED is only displaying that the powers saving is active not that it is saving power on the LED usage.

Lsdmeasap
Good point and I must admit I hadn't thought of it but mainly because it doesn't apply in my situation as I always only load the necessary drivers and never any of the bundled utilities at all.

[forumjoe]

Sorry, you two. Our postings crossed. See my afterthought above.

[Lsdmeasap]

It's cool!   ya, I just meant the LED is an indicator of the DES program being active is all.

If you think the INF drivers might be to blame you can try the latest ones always from here (Second link)
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=816

[forumjoe]

Hmm, that's an interesting few webpages, but I don't actually see an INF driver there for my chipset, even when I search separately and click on "Intel 5 series chipset". Instead, what I see there is a utiliity to then enable you to install the chipset drivers after you've installed the operating system. But the chipset drivers on offer are not the standard ones, they're ones for where you need to use RAID. Do correct me if I'm wrong.

Nevertheless, if I were to accept that these are appropriate utilities and drivers to install, then Intel's versions are considerably higher-numbered than Gigabyte's. For example, on that webpage, for the 5 series chipset, there's the file 9.2.0.1025. Gigabyte's latest INF file is 9.1.2.1007. If there's supposed to be a sensible correlation between Gigabyte's files and those directly from Intel, isn't it high time that Gigabyte got its own up to date?

Have you yourself used any of these original Intel files for your board, rather than the files offered by Gigabyte?

[Dark Mantis]

forumjoe

I can assure you that if Lsdmeasap recommends them they are correct and he will have used them at some time I'm sure.

[Lsdmeasap]

Hmm, that's an interesting few webpages, but I don't actually see an INF driver there for my chipset, even when I search separately and click on "Intel 5 series chipset". Instead, what I see there is a utiliity to then enable you to install the chipset drivers after you've installed the operating system. But the chipset drivers on offer are not the standard ones, they're ones for where you need to use RAID. Do correct me if I'm wrong.

Nevertheless, if I were to accept that these are appropriate utilities and drivers to install, then Intel's versions are considerably higher-numbered than Gigabyte's. For example, on that webpage, for the 5 series chipset, there's the file 9.2.0.1025. Gigabyte's latest INF file is 9.1.2.1007. If there's supposed to be a sensible correlation between Gigabyte's files and those directly from Intel, isn't it high time that Gigabyte got its own up to date?

Have you yourself used any of these original Intel files for your board, rather than the files offered by Gigabyte?

The second link (Exe) is the latest chipset drivers you want to install, they are the exact same as what Gigabyte host only Gigabyte's are outdated.  They often do not keep every single file up to date, same applies with RAID/AHCI and LAN Drivers.

The drivers hosted at Gigabyte's site are the exact same you would download from Intel, Realtek, ect, only repackaged and hosted at their site for end users convenience.

Yes, I ALWAYS download my drivers direct from the source, no matter which source that is Intel, Marvell, Realtek, Ect.

As I mentioned before, if you want the latest chipset drivers for your board I linked you to the exact page and noted which exact link you need.   It's the second link here, trust me, first is zip which is not what you want.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=816

Latest AHCI/RAID drivers
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Chipsets&ProductLine=Chipset+Software&ProductProduct=Intel%C2%AE+Rapid+Storage+Technology+(Intel%C2%AE+RST)

Latest RealTek Audio (LAN is here as well, if you want the link and can't find it let me know and I'll link ya up)
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsCheck.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=14&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

[forumjoe]

This all looks very hopeful. I need some help from you, though.

First, how do I confirm, from my hardware, the particular chipset that my board uses? The motherboard user manual makes no mention of the Intel chipset series. The only reason I mentioned 5 Series before was because that's what comes up when I analyse the IDE Controller driver in Device Manager. But, of course, that'll only be there from my having installed Gigabyte's driver. Although my board is ostensibly a P55, that's a bit of a misnomer as it actually uses only an H55 chip. There's no onboard graphics chip.

Now to the driver, etc at that URL. Just to confirm: is it the second one down in the list that I need? The one called "INF Update Utility - Primarily for Intel 6,5,4,3, 900 Series chipsets, v.9.2.0.1025, dated 3/3/2011"?  Further, is that the actual file, or is it just a downloader/installer (the webpage makes a distinction between "Software Archives" and "Utilities, Tools and Examples"? The description "utility" is confusing me. For the INF driver and its installation, do I need anything else? I don't use RAID/AHCI, I'm just using the SATA hard drive in IDE mode.

Are the INF and Realtek LAN files designed to be installed over the top of the existing ones, or should the existing ones be uninstalled first (especially since what I already have, in the case of the INF file, is the Gigabyte version)?

Gigabyte's offerings, as regards drivers, are bewildering, as currently their INF driver seems to be well out of date and yet their PCIe LAN driver is, apparently, completely up to date (v.5.782). Actually, during the installation of Gigabyte's INF driver, you're told that it's only a beta version!

I may have a window of opportunity shortly for installing the board's drivers completely from scratch, cleanly, as I may be buying a new hard drive and installing everything from ground zero again. I need a reserve SATA hard drive, anyway. I do have means to backup and restore complete partitions but there's odd rubbish on the existing drive that I want to completely eradicate anyway. Clearly, if I invest in a further drive and install everything from the bottom up, I'd want to be fairly assured that using the recommended chipset drivers will eliminate the remaining 'accessing problems' I've described.

Another afterthought: I've returned to that Intel webpage several times now, to read all its assocoated notes. I don't think that installing this particular INF file is going to make any difference at all to the strange hard disk and floppy disc drive problems I've been experiencing. I'd previously assumed that this was an INF file that also contained an IDE driver, but from what I read there, this is literally the INF and nothing else. It merely inserts the appropriate device name into Device Manager, nothing more. On reflection, I think this probably accounts for why Gigabyte's version of the file is so old, namely that the naming of a few devices is actually not going to change much as time moves on.

It would appear that the board doesn't require any IDE or graphics drivers at all. Either that, or they're being somehow automatically obtained from Windows.