Slow SATA performance on Mac Pro in XP/Bootcamp

[ehchan]

Audio only comes out of internal speaker?

Hey guys, got the SATA working and Windows installed on a separate SATA drive... I realtek audio drivers, but it only seems to output through my internal speaker... I can't seem to find a setting to change the output. Any ideas?

Ed

 

[nylon]

I just want to be sure I understand which Intel drivers to select. When you go to this link for the 5000X chipset drivers, do you only select number 1?

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scr...XP+Professional&lang=eng&strOSs=44&submit=Go!

And when you go to download the SATA drivers, you download using the single link which the following brings up:

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scr...2487&dwnldid=11207&agr=y&lang=eng&prdmap=2487

For the first link select #2 in the zip format. You need to extract the files from the Zip file and put them in a folder. Then download the file from the second link above. Again extract files from zip.

Create a folder on your desktop or on C: called "IntelDrivers". Within that folder have 2 sub-folders. "Driver1" (this can be where you put the files from the 1st link above) & "Driver2" (this can be where you put the files from the 2nd link above). Then follow the instruction on integrating the drivers from Terrabit's website.

Hope that helps.

 

[nylon]

Hey guys, got the SATA working and Windows installed on a separate SATA drive... I realtek audio drivers, but it only seems to output through my internal speaker... I can't seem to find a setting to change the output. Any ideas?

Ed

I don't think Apple has provided drivers that can do that as yet. The same problem occured with the MBP at first where you would plug-in speakers to the audio jack but the internal speakers still had sound coming out.

 

[aiongiant]

Hey guys, got the SATA working and Windows installed on a separate SATA drive... I realtek audio drivers, but it only seems to output through my internal speaker... I can't seem to find a setting to change the output. Any ideas?

Ed

mine is outputing both my internal speaker and using optical out external speakers also

 

[jansmith]

For the first link select #2 in the zip format. You need to extract the files from the Zip file and put them in a folder. Then download the file from the second link above. Again extract files from zip.

Create a folder on your desktop or on C: called "IntelDrivers". Within that folder have 2 sub-folders. "Driver1" (this can be where you put the files from the 1st link above) & "Driver2" (this can be where you put the files from the 2nd link above). Then follow the instruction on integrating the drivers from Terrabit's website.

Hope that helps.

It does! Thanks!

 

[cyboman]

I thought I made it so clear.

OK, I am a little confused by parts of this: first, my XP install CD (slipstreamed or not) will NOT install XP onto a separate, internal HD with my Mac drives installed. More specifically, if I want to use separate drives for MacOS and XP, the installer will not install XP onto the #3 disk when #1 and #2 disks contain ONLY MacOS paritions.

I'm reading conflicting info about the partitioning: most sites claim that EFI will not boot a drive unless it is GUID partitioned. This does not seem to be true since I placed a PATA drive in the Mac Pro from a PC (read MBR partitioned) and the Mac Pro booted XP fine. My guess is that most of this applies to Mac's that can't take multiple drives. So, if you only have one drive, it needs to be GUID partitioned, thus the need for BootCamp (but this is only because of the need to combine MacOS and XP on the same drive). It seems the Mac Pro will boot either type of partition.

So does anyone know the answer to any of the following:

1. Can the Mac Pro boot either a GUID or MBR partitioned drive?

2. What is the best way to install MacOS and XP onto separate, internal HDs in a Mac Pro?

Help.

The EASIEST way to get XP running is to Install a second SATA Drive in the bay next to the original Mac Drive that comes with your Mac Pro.

REMOVE the Mac drive prior to installing XP

Once you are finished you will put the Mac Drive back in and use the Option Key to select which drive to boot to.

You can populate the remaining two drive bays (3 & 4) with whatever you like BUT leave the first two bays alone.

I DID NOT give any instructions on how to setup XP on the same drive as MAC OSX and I DO NOT recommend it. Life will be easier if you follow the two drive setup I've described. Like I said - there is no need to use BootCamp in this scenario since you have a dedicated XP hard drive.

Eric

 

[I'mAMac]

The EASIEST way to get XP running is to Install a second SATA Drive in the bay next to the original Mac Drive that comes with your Mac Pro.

REMOVE the Mac drive prior to installing XP

Once you are finished you will put the Mac Drive back in and use the Option Key to select which drive to boot to.

You can populate the remaining two drive bays (3 & 4) with whatever you like BUT leave the first two bays alone.

I DID NOT give any instructions on how to setup XP on the same drive as MAC OSX and I DO NOT recommend it. Life will be easier if you follow the two drive setup I've described. Like I said - there is no need to use BootCamp in this scenario since you have a dedicated XP hard drive.

Eric

If you dont do that and use bootcamp to partition your hard drive, is it confusing or hard? That;s what ive heard.

 

[Mipster]

The EASIEST way to get XP running is to Install a second SATA Drive in the bay next to the original Mac Drive that comes with your Mac Pro.

REMOVE the Mac drive prior to installing XP

Once you are finished you will put the Mac Drive back in and use the Option Key to select which drive to boot to.

You can populate the remaining two drive bays (3 & 4) with whatever you like BUT leave the first two bays alone.

I DID NOT give any instructions on how to setup XP on the same drive as MAC OSX and I DO NOT recommend it. Life will be easier if you follow the two drive setup I've described. Like I said - there is no need to use BootCamp in this scenario since you have a dedicated XP hard drive.

Eric

OK, then I wonder if something is wrong with my drive or my Mac Pro. That's exactly what I did (exept my XP drive is in Bay 3). I installed with the Mac Drives removed. I tried an install to a GUID partitioned drive, and a second time letting windows wipe the whole drive (making it MBR partitioned). Both times, booting the drive with the option key gives me the little folder with a question mark in it.

 

[Rock1407]

Due to bandwidth restrictions on the Dot Mac account, I have purchased a new webserver. The new address for the website is:

http://www.macprojournal.com/

or:

http://71.18.168.229 (if the above DNS entries haven't updated yet).

Terrabit:

Everything worked perfect! You have fixed the problem. You are a god among Men!

 

[aneks]

mega kudos Terrabit. you saved my sanity.

I have 4 drives working on my mac pro. bay 1 is system bay 2 and 3 are striped raid for media, bay 4 is my xp drive. Using bootcamp 1.1 you can install Xp on any bootable partition you will just need to reserve 5gb for a mac partition.

Little gotcha to watch out for. I used NTFS for my windows install to create a large 290gb windows install. this means that I can still see windows files in mac boot, but am unable to write to this drive in osX.

 

[AndyR1960]

After many attempts, I got it working...

Installed XP onto a new 250Gb drive (Bay 2), but formatted the C: partition to 50Gb (NTFS) during installation, once Windows was installed and working, I used Partition Magic to create two extra FAT32 partitions. Can now read/write to those 2 drives from OSX for easy backup and file swapping.

 

[topgunn]

I have not got this to work. I have tried it using one drive with a Mac and a Windows partition. I have tried using a dedicated Windows drive and no other drives in the machine. I have used a slipstream disk with the chipset and SATA drivers, a disk with just the SATA drivers, a disk with just the chipset drivers, and a regular XP disk with a floppy disk containing SATA drivers using the F6 method. Everytime, the hard disk is still slow. Sometimes, in the Device Manager, the first Primary IDE shows DMA 4 and others the second Primary IDE shows DMA 4 but never both. Each time, my hard drive is limited to around 4MB/s.

Any tips or tricks that I should know about? When you include the chipset drivers, do you include everything in the folder or just the XP folder? When you finish installing what do you check to see if it worked? How do you know which IDE Channel is controlling your hard drive? I am very frustrated that I can't get this to work. It seems like everyone else now has it up and running. Is there anyone else who still hasn't gotten it to work?

One thing I have noticed is that when I install Windows on my Mac Pro the colors are much more limited than they are when I install on my iMac. Has anyone else noticed a difference? I don't think it has anything to do with these problems but I just thought it was weird.

 

[Origin]

In fact, it seems that you MUST use the custom XP CD method, because you do need SATA drivers PLUS Chipset Info files. This is mandatory.

Unfortunetly, you cannot install Chipset Info files with the "F6" method. Only mass-storage-drivers are allowed here.

 

[MacProDude]

I used a Windows XP SP2 Professional. In my device manager it now shows something like Multi word DMA mode 2 for my HDD.

Cheers,
stingray

Mine also shows Multi-word DMA mode 2 for the SATA controller, now. Drive seems fast but haven't benchmarked it, yet.

Can somone please confirm that they're getting DMA 4 on *SATA*, not Ultra ATA?

Thanks!

 

[nylon]

Mine also shows Multi-word DMA mode 2 for the SATA controller, now. Drive seems fast but haven't benchmarked it, yet.

Can somone please confirm that they're getting DMA 4 on *SATA*, not Ultra ATA?

Thanks!

Yes mine says the same. However, I have run benchmarks on my drives under OSX and under XP and the drive speed under XP is slightly faster under "Multi-Word" DMA. So everything is working at the speed it should be.

 

[Laslo Panaflex]

Mine also shows Multi-word DMA mode 2 for the SATA controller, now. Drive seems fast but haven't benchmarked it, yet.

Can somone please confirm that they're getting DMA 4 on *SATA*, not Ultra ATA?

Thanks!

Download Sisoft Sandra and HD Tune

These will tell you how fast your HD is running.

 

[Origin]

I'll try my custom CD this evening (in france, it's 8.00 PM now ).

I'll post my experience with custom XP CD patched with SATA and CHIPSET drivers later this night (Paris localtime )

 

[MacProDude]

Download Sisoft Sandra and HD Tune

These will tell you how fast your HD is running.

That's really not what I'm asking, but thanks, Laslo! I downloaded sandra last night but not yet run it, as I had to go to work this morning.

What I want to verify is what Windows is reporting as the xfer mode. There are people who say they're running in some kind of DMA mode 4 after following the new steps. I suspect that they're talking about Ultra ATA, not SATA.

In the end, all that really matters is the true speed - regardless of what mode is reported - but it's also nice if everything else checks out, y'know?

 

[nylon]

That's really not what I'm asking, but thanks, Laslo! I downloaded sandra last night but not yet run it, as I had to go to work this morning.

What I want to verify is what Windows is reporting as the xfer mode. There are people who say they're running in some kind of DMA mode 4 after following the new steps. I suspect that they're talking about Ultra ATA, not SATA.

In the end, all that really matters is the true speed - regardless of what mode is reported - but it's also nice if everything else checks out, y'know?

Although windows is reporting the "Multi-Word DMA" HD Tune reports the drive as UDMA Mode 7.

 

[MacProDude]

Although windows is reporting the "Multi-Word DMA" HD Tune reports the drive as UDMA Mode 7.

Ah, interesting - thanks for your responses!

 

[chrismmx]

I'll try my custom CD this evening (in france, it's 8.00 PM now ).

I'll post my experience with custom XP CD patched with SATA and CHIPSET drivers later this night (Paris localtime )

Bonne chance! DON'T FORGET to tell me that!

 

[SmashingPumpkin]

I see quite a lot of venders selling the Mac Pro with Bootcamp and Windows XP pre-installed. I wonder if all of those machines are running slow too? I have a feeling they are.

 

[Origin]

Okaaaaaay guys, My Windows XP is working GREAT. My system disk is running in UDMA Mode at near 60 MB per second

So, as many persons already said, i can also confirm that the solution of the custom Windows XP CD with SATA and Chipset drivers work perfectly !

Great great ...
So, my dream finally came true : one computer for the best of the two worlds ! Windows XP for games .... and Mac OS X for the rest

 

[stewzie10000]

I have not got this to work. I have tried it using one drive with a Mac and a Windows partition. I have tried using a dedicated Windows drive and no other drives in the machine. I have used a slipstream disk with the chipset and SATA drivers, a disk with just the SATA drivers, a disk with just the chipset drivers, and a regular XP disk with a floppy disk containing SATA drivers using the F6 method. Everytime, the hard disk is still slow. Sometimes, in the Device Manager, the first Primary IDE shows DMA 4 and others the second Primary IDE shows DMA 4 but never both. Each time, my hard drive is limited to around 4MB/s.

Any tips or tricks that I should know about?

Basically, this failed to work for me 5 or 6 times. Now, it's working. And it really DOES make a huge difference.

I really did not do anything different on this successful attempt than the previous attempts. The only tips I can give you after reviewing my own voodoo are:

Follow the instructions exactly.
Unplug _everything_ from your computer except the keyboard, mouse and monitor.
Be sure to set the Windows XP drive as the startup drive in the Mac OS X control panel during the installation process.
Once Windows XP loads for the first time, install the Apple Boot Camp stuff from the CD.
Click finish to reboot once the drivers are installed. Don't do those windows new found hardware wizards until after restart.
After that reboot... and before plugging in any of your other devices, follow all the new hardware wizards.
Then, start plugging in any firewire or usb devices. Follow the wizards.

I know this seems ridiculous, but this is the only way it worked for me. I thought people were ********ting us after attempt number 4. It harks back to the days of extension managers and SCSI voodoo for me. I created four different slipstreamed disks that should have been identical but only the last one worked for me.

You will notice that Windows seems to install faster too, once you have things going properly. Windows is WAY more responsive... it really makes a huge difference and I would say it was worth the trouble.

Anyway, Half Life 2 has finished installing here... good luck!

 

[chrismmx]

Okaaaaaay guys, My Windows XP is working GREAT. My system disk is running in UDMA Mode at near 60 MB per second

So, as many persons already said, i can also confirm that the solution of the custom Windows XP CD with SATA and Chipset drivers work perfectly !

Great great ...
So, my dream finally came true : one computer for the best of the two worlds ! Windows XP for games .... and Mac OS X for the rest

Félicitation! Just one question: after the installation with this Windows XP , do i have to install again the boot camp‘s drviers? Merci!

PS: i'll get my MacPro next week!