Problem with cardbus

[dmdsoftware]

I'm having problems with various cardbus esata cards. When you try to access a hard drive, it freezes, unfreezes, freezes a bit more, etc. Then the screen starts blinking and a balloon notification pops up saying the display driver stopped working but has since began working again.

I tried two cards, one with VIA chipset and other with SIL. I thought at first it was the AFT hard drive I was plugging in, since after doing a search, found that neither confirming support for AFT drives. I did try a bluray burner, and it worked, I could see the volume of a disc inserted. Today I finally had opportunity to try a non-AFT drive, and it was the same behaviour as the AFT drive, so it must be all hard drives.

If I persist and navigate between the freezes every other second, I can get to the disk management tool to see that it can see the partitions on the disk, but I'm never able to access the disk, constant windows freezes and screen blinking.

This happens on two X60, a X61, and two X61t. All running Windows 7, with 64bit on the X61* and 32bit on the X60*. The proper drives for the cardbus card are installed. There are no conflicts or issues noted in the device manager. The card is shown up as started.

One of the X60 has the latest bios, and it doesn't work. All the other machines have various releases of bios. The drives work if I connect by USB. I have tried 3 different esata enclosures and two different drives. The esata enclosure that worked with the bluray burner without any freezes had freezes when I used a hd instead.

Any ideas? Is there something in the bios I can try? I see there are IRQ settings you can set for PCI, but read the PCI settings don't include cardbus.

[loyukfai]

I'm using a SATA/eSATA Cardbus adapter with 2.5" drives on X61T for backups. They work, somewhat, because the system freezes after prolonged transfers (no BSOD, just freeze)... I'm suspecting of power issue (not enough).

Don't have the adapter right now but IIRC it's a VIA chip.

Cheers.

[Lino]

same problem, for long transfers it'a a lottery: when it freezes a reboot is in order.

[loyukfai]

You're also using a VIA-based Cardbus adapter...?

Maybe we could gather some information and try to narrow down the cause.

Cheers.

[dmdsoftware]

Mine:

VIA VT6421 Raid Controller

[automobus]

Just so you know, there is a third vendor of SATA controller which you can try: Initio 1620.

[loyukfai]

Mine:

VIA VT6421 Raid Controller

And the HDD used...?

I believe mine is based on the same chip. Let me check and get back later. Edit: Yes, it's the same one, and the driver installed by Windows is dated 2007-11-22 with version no. 6.0.6000.6210.

FYI, I'm connecting it to the Travelstar 5K750 using a cable like this, which draws power from a USB port. And it seems that the USB port on the X61T already supplies more power than usual, but freezing still occurs.

Besides, if I'm not mistaken, the 5.4K RPM Travelstars are among the group of 2.5" drives with relatively lower power consumption.

Are you guys running 2.5" drives or 3.5" drives with external power supply?

BTW I'm running Win7 x64.

Just so you know, there is a third vendor of SATA controller which you can try: Initio 1620.

Thanks, the problem is that usually the chip used is usually not stated and sometimes it's difficult to find out which chip is used for a particular model. Besides, it seems that Cardbus SATA adapters are not in high demand.

Cheers.

Edits:

Someone mentioned about it here and he resolved it by changing the SATA controller.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 56290d3a9b

I suspect and hope that it's a driver issue which can be resolved by an updated driver. Unfortunately none is available as of writing...

And this says disabling NCQ solved the problem...

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/7628- ... large-file

The problem is the VIA driver has no configurable options whatsoever.

BTW, I also tried fiddling around with the cache settings but doesn't seem to help.

Or it could be a cable issue? Maybe helps if limit the speed to SATA-150? <-- Edit: Apparently the VT6421 only supports up to 150Mbps.

Check this out too... Apparently the VT6421 is problematic...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1665984

But dmd said he tried 2 cards, and the SIL is no better...

Sorry for lots of edits, just throwing out some ideas...

VIA says it has a driver dated 2010-03-12 but the version no. is even lower (5.90A)...?

http://www.viaarena.com/Driver/via_vrai ... v5.90a.zip

[dmdsoftware]

My version of driver: 6.0.6000.6210

I've tried on the X60 which is Windows 7 32bit and X61/X61T which is Windows 7 64bit.

The drives are both 3.5" drives with external power. First one is Hitachi 5k3000 (512 sectors) and second is Samsung F4 (4k sectors). My external case is the NexStar CX that features both eSATA and USB. I also tried a generic 5.25" SATA enclosure (which the bluray burner is fine but hard drives make it freeze).

I should note, all the hardware tested works fine on T410 with its built in eSATA, and also with various eSATA expresscards. I also have success using eSATA expresscards on HP to access the hard drives and burner.

So the problem lies with the Thinkpads. One of my machines (the X60) I upgraded to latest bios, knowing that there were some fixes to speed up cardbus cards, but the bios update made no difference.

[loyukfai]

The VIA driver package's Vista driver is dated 2010-02-23 with version no. 6.0.7600.6230

Let me see if it makes a difference.

Cheers.

Edit: Still the same... Froze and had to reboot...

Edit 2: Related...?

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-Th ... ight/false

Edit 3: Next to try...

A) This driver...? http://www.team-xecuter.com/forums/show ... hp?t=53281
B) Limit HDD to 150Mbps speed.

Edit 4: Apparently the UniATA driver doesn't support x64, and is not ready for everyday uses.

And found out the Feature Tool cannot limit the 5K750 to 150Mbps speed. It can disable the cache though.

Edit 5: Formatting the drives in 64kb clusters didn't seem to help either. Freezing still occurs.

[dmdsoftware]

The VIA driver package's Vista driver is dated 2010-02-23 with version no. 6.0.7600.6230

Let me see if it makes a difference.

Cheers.

Edit: Still the same... Froze and had to reboot...

Edit 2: Related...?

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-Th ... ight/false

Edit 3: Next to try...

A) This driver...? http://www.team-xecuter.com/forums/show ... hp?t=53281
B) Limit HDD to 150Mbps speed.

Edit 4: Apparently the UniATA driver doesn't support x64, and is not ready for everyday uses.

And found out the Feature Tool cannot limit the 5K750 to 150Mbps speed. It can disable the cache though.

Edit 5: Formatting the drives in 64kb clusters didn't seem to help either. Freezing still occurs.

I tried the UniATA driver yesterday by copying and renaming the vsmraid.sys. But, like some people would report, it would then show up as Error 10, can't start. this was on Windows 7 32bit, so I think it simply doesn't work on Windows 7 even though the website says Vista/7. I haven't seen anyone report it does, and the instructions don't mention Vista or 7. Also, the drivers area really old, 2007.

From the forums I read, most people were having problem with the VIA chipsets on "laptops" when trying to flash liteon drives because the VIA chipset makes it get probed over and over until the system freezes up, hence the UniATA drive is supposed to fix this.


What is interesting is how in my case I can't even access the drive, forget about copying to/from. It shows up in device manager etc (with lots of freezing during the whole way of pulling up device manager), but when I try to actually do something with it, it's a an endless freeze and screen blink until I eject the card.

It would be a dream to have eSATA working on these things. I'm copying 1TB of data right now from one eSATA to another eSATA drive on my HP with expresscard in under 2 hours.

One of my primary reasons for making eSATA work on the Thinkpad was to repurpose one of my X60 laptops to act as a bridge to sync data between NAS units on my home network. The data is stored on EXT2 partitions, and Windows 7 simply doesn't support it (even though the Microsoft Windows 7 Unix services are supposed to, I never got it working, and besides, would I even want to considering the risk of having Windows 7 wipe out a drive accidentally). So in this case, I was going to install ubuntu on the X60.

so next step is, doe these even work on Linux. And quick search of the forums is that the VIA chipsets have problems there too.

[dmdsoftware]

Edit 3: Next to try...

A) This driver...? http://www.team-xecuter.com/forums/show ... hp?t=53281

I tried this in the morning. I deleted the old drivers, installed the new ones and rebooted. Now I have to device manager entries for this device, one showing up as the original 6.xx driver and one showing up as 5.1xx driver, with the 5.1xx driver with an error 10.

I think Windows 7 in general doesn't do a good job with transfering big files. On the HP, I transferred 1TB of data between two eSATA drives. When I tried to eject the drives using the eject windows function, it halted for about 5 mins, chugging away on the drive I was writing the 1TB to. I assume it was clearing the cache. It came back after 5 mins with could eject. So I tried again, and 20 mins later, it was still accessing the drive to presumably finish the big transfer? I eventually did a windows reboot, but I wonder how much of that 1TB actually made it safely onto the disk. I'm going to have to do a chkdsk to confirm.

On the weekend I was moving files off the X60 hd because I wanted to reformat it. I moved about 100GB onto an ultrabay HD. After shutting down the system and accessing the ultrabay HD in another computer, I noticed almost all the files I had just transferred were missing (almost all, but not quite all, and ones that appeared were neither at the start or end of the transfer). But before I panicked too much, I did a chkdsk, and it fixed up all the disk errors due to the copy.

Microsoft really botches up transferring large amounts of data on their proprietary NTFS filesystem.

I'm so glad I rely on safe keeping of my data on linux file systems on NAS units that are rsynced through a daisy chain. The NAS units are slow in comparison, but at least I know the data is more safe on an open-source speced filesystem

[dmdsoftware]

Don't know why this is only dawning on me right now, and not earlier, but I can use VMware to test the situation with this card in WindowsXP and Ubuntu/Red Hat.

Will try that today.

[dmdsoftware]

I just discovered that the cardbus is not something that can be loaded in vmware. Still investigating, but there goes that idea.

I also ran into this thread that is talking precisely about the problems we are facing: 1) doesn't work at all or 2) stability issues when transferring big files. Appears both issues are based on which bios you have.

Thread indicates all cards/chipsets have the problem.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-Th ... td-p/49610

nm, saw your post on the end of the thread.

[loyukfai]

Looks like "Delayed write failure" all over again...

Sigh.

Edit: Tested with a 2A USB adapter and write caching disabled. Still freezes...

Options besides getting a new machine: 1) Try another SATA controller. But we don't know if it's the chip's inherent issue or if it's an implementation issue. But it would be a good idea to try something other than VIA and SIL first. Is there any?

There are only 74 results for "cardbus sata" on eBay. Anyone got time to ask the sellers which chip is used...?

2) Try another cable. Based on the other information mentioned above. It seems unlikely.

3) Push Lenovo to look into it.

Edit 2: Found this (http://www.petri.co.il/xperf-windows-st ... rmance.htm) via this (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... 65d1aa0a2/)

Anyone got time to check it out...? : )

[automobus]

But it would be a good idea to try something other than VIA and SIL first. Is there any?

Yes, the Initio controller is used in StarTech CBESATA2. For me in USA, the lowest price I can find is from Amazon USA ($29 shipped).

I learned of it from 2XOD.com, a really good Web site.

[dmdsoftware]

The lenovo support thread has that user who tried all three with same results. Digging around the internet, seems hardly any cardbus card works on these thinkpads properly -- video, movie captures, firewire, esata, etc.

The issue is definitely not the cables. I tried several cables, all of which work on other thinkpads. I even tried a SATA-SATA cable, as my VIA card also has a SATA connector.

The next thing I am considering is using the SATA from the ultrabay. There was a blog where someone transformed the SATA ultrabay unit into an eSATA plug -- basically need a SATA gender changer and a ultrabay hd unit. They reported some success, but noted some deficiencies, but as a commenter pointed out, there was a bios update since his hack that fixed his problems with the ultrabay port.

Need to find that post...

[dmdsoftware]

Found the link -> http://skub-neutral.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... how-i.html

[loyukfai]

Good idea, but I'm on an X61T......

Is there any way to write to Lenovo about this...? Not much hope but at least we can try...

Cheers.

[dmdsoftware]

Good idea, but I'm on an X61T......

Is there any way to write to Lenovo about this...? Not much hope but at least we can try...

Cheers.

I had doing this on the X60 in mind. It should work on any X60+.

[loyukfai]

But there's no Ultrabay on the X-series, unless one has the dock, which I haven't...

[dmdsoftware]

But there's no Ultrabay on the X-series, unless one has the dock, which I haven't...

Yes, I was assuming you had the dock.

I can't seem to find any stores that carry it, all would order for me. As may as well order the sata gender changer from newegg.

[loyukfai]

FWIW, flashed Middleton's SATA II-modded BIOS and tried again...

Still the same.

Cheers.

Edit: Just found out, according to HWiNFO32 the external drive is running at 3Gbps SATA.

Edit 2: After downgrading the VIA controller's driver from 6.xx to 5.xx, HWiNFO32 showed the drive is running at ATA-100 instead.

It still froze though.

Writing to Lenovo and if they don't respond, maybe I will write to the local consumer advocate agency, since they sold something that doesn't work as advertised.

[dmdsoftware]

I tried the ubuntu live cd route this morning. It didn't go very well, my linux skills are not the best.

I could see the card, but not the hd attached. I did some searches and found that I needed to install some scsi tools, but don't think you could do that while running off a live cd, so I needed to abort this until I could find a second hard drive to install ubuntu to and then try again.

One of the weird issues that arose from this test is that I almost lost my primary HD. Ubuntu didn't mount it etc, but after I had powered off the system and powered it back up to boot off the HD, the machine would get stuck at the Thinkpad startup screen. I assume it might be having hd problems. I tried powering off and repowering on 3 times, no change. Eventually I tried to get into the Bios, which after a long delay, was able to do. When I did the hard drive test, it returned back with read error #0000. I powered off and took out the hd and swapped it. Booted up with the alternative hd. Then I swapped back in the original hd and it booted up with that as well.

I'm not sure what happened? did something overheat? like i said, I never even mounted the NTFS primary drive when I used ubuntu live. I did see the primary hd when I checked for hard drives.

I'm going to backup the hd before I do anymore ubuntu tests, and i'll have it completely detached next time around.

My goal with the ubuntu test is to determine if this cardbus issue is software or hardware/bios related. If ubuntu freezes up or doesn't detect the hd, I'm going to give up on cardbus, declaring it a lenovo hardware/bios issue that will never get resolved.

If the ubuntu tests work, I'll have to conclude it is a Windows driver conflict issue, and then I'll need to consider whether to proceed with using ubuntu to sync hard drives over cardbus, proceed with testing the ultrbay2esata idea, or give up entirely and just use a non-lenovo computer to do the job.

[loyukfai]

That's good. Please keep us (or just me) posted.

Unfortunately I'm travelling and couldn't do a lot of tests. The fact that I'm without a backup of my HDD doesn't sit well with me.

FWIW, I did test backup once before setting off, but the problem only showed up during the trip, possibly because lots more files (mainly photos) generated.

Cheers.

[loyukfai]

Image for Linux (http://terabyteunlimited.com/) ran through the backup process without any hiccup, but then the backup file's size is 0-byte upon verification.

Cool.

[dmdsoftware]

Another road block today with this topic. I got a spare HD and got ready to install ubuntu on it on my headless X60, but I can't get the X60 to display to an external monitor. The system is powering up, but nothing on the external display (fn+f7 doesn't do anything). I can't install ubuntu on the spare X60 without anyway of navigating through the install.

I've posted another thread asking if anyone knows if there is a trick to the external monitor VGA.

[RealBlackStuff]

You can set which screen is your primary LCD in the BIOS.

[loyukfai]

Hoorah! Image for Linux (IFL) managed to create a backup image which I could at least "see" under Windows, that I could use the image view utility to view the content.

However, writing to the drive still freezes the system and requires a reboot. The last time it froze less than 10GB has been transferred.

Cheers.

[dmdsoftware]

Hoorah! Image for Linux (IFL) managed to create a backup image which I could at least "see" under Windows, that I could use the image view utility to view the content.

However, writing to the drive still freezes the system and requires a reboot. The last time it froze less than 10GB has been transferred.

Cheers.

You are using the latest custom bios right?

[loyukfai]

Yes, 1.25 by Middleton.

I forgot to state that the freezing occurred under Windows, but I guess you made out of it already.

Cheers.