Day: 24 March 2011

Solved – Slow startup on ICH8R / Asus P5B-E / SATA RAID Disks

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Since I swapped out four 250Gb SATA drives for two 750Gb drives the startup time has been delayed by a matter of minutes as the ICH8R Raid Controller sat thinking about detecting the new drives. Changing the BIOS setting from RAID to IDE removed the problem completely, but alas no RAID.

I recently came across a known bug on the ICH8R Chipset where the controller would stall for 1.5 minutes if SMART was disabled on the drives. It turned out that the disks SMART status was set to Auto and this was enough to cause the delay. It is not obvious when the disks are in RAID configuration though as there is no setting for SMART. However if you change the Controller to IDE and set the SMART status of the drives to Yes then go back to RAID, this solved the problem in my case. Below are the details of my particular resolution.

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Making Life Easier

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As someone who spends a lot of time at the keyboard I find that RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) is a constant visitor. Working on a laptop, even with a full-sized keyboard I find that the little finger of my left hand is the biggest problem as it spends so much time at the bottom left of the keyboard on the ctrl and shift keys, bent back on itself under my hand.

A fried (thanks Rob) passed me a link to AutoHotKey a utility for scripting the mouse and keyboard and I have found that by remapping the keys on the left of the keyboard this has helped no end. I list my script here for interest, but you will need to find what works for you.

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