Problem with cardbus

[dmdsoftware]

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.

I have my headless X60 running ubuntu now, just got the networking going. Now to install a few more tools, and then I can finally test cardbus esata

[dmdsoftware]

so far so good!

I'm able to mount my ntfs sata drive using a esata connection over my via cardbus card in ubuntu without the entire system freezing. In windows, I would get a complete system freeze just trying to query the drive to find out what partition is on it.

I'm able to mount a drive and query it. Will do transfer tests next.


root@u-x60:~# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/windows/ -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222
root@u-x60:~#
root@u-x60:~#
root@u-x60:~# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 110648144 824108 104203404 1% /
none 1020224 240 1019984 1% /dev
none 1025820 0 1025820 0% /dev/shm
none 1025820 36 1025784 1% /var/run
none 1025820 0 1025820 0% /var/lock
/dev/sdb1 19532796 443936 19088860 3% /mnt/windows
root@u-x60:~# cd
root@u-x60:~# cd /mnt/windows
root@u-x60:/mnt/windows# ls
Notes ols2002_proceedings.pdf.gz RAMDiskImage.img $RECYCLE.BIN

[dmdsoftware]

More findings:

[background information,
-my cardbus esata cards all have just 1 esata port and 1 sata port
-when copying desktop 3.5" HD to desktop 3.5 HD over expresscard esata using 2 esata ports, I can achieve a 130MB/s steady transfer rate on HP laptop with Windows 7 64bit using NTFS]

on the X60 using both cardbus cards on ubuntu 10.10
- I tried creating files on both a 2.5" SATA HD and 3.5" SATA HD (over esata) and both tests were successful
- I tried transferring large files from 3.5" SATA HD NTFS partition (over esata) to internal SATA EXT4 drive, transfer rate was constant 50MB/s, no freezes
- I tried transferring large files from 3.5" SATA HD NTFS partition (over esata) to 3.5" SATA HD NTFS partition (over sata), instant freeze, destination drive continually blinking
- I tried transferring large files from internal SATA EXT4 drive to 3.5" SATA HD NTFS partition (over esata), transfer rate was about 20-25MB/s, no freezes

I know NTFS is a closed filesystem that was reversed engineed for linux, and also that forums also suggest that speeds are somewhat slow/capped when writing to NTFS in linux, so the slow speeds writing to the desktop hard drive might be explained by this.

The write to internal SATA drive from external drive might be capped due to the speed of the internal drive (it's a 5400rpm laptop drive, so I expect slower speeds) and perhaps partially because of the NTFS as well.

I don't really expect to use NTFS file systems on this system, but they are the most handy ones I have that I can use for testing.

My next set of tests will be using linux file systems and FAT32 file systems, which is much closer to the intended purpose of using the cardbus esata card for.

The freeze using the esata to sata on the cardbus card might be a factor such as cable or poor support for that, so results might not be the comparable as performing an esata to esata copy that I did on an expresscard on the HP. My future tests will be using a 2-bay esata docking station that will use a single esata cable, and will use native linux filesystems.

[RealBlackStuff]

Your HP probably reads/writes HDs at SATA II speed.
The X60 can only do that at SATA I speed.
An X61 with Middleton BIOS can also do SATA II speed.

[dmdsoftware]

Your HP probably reads/writes HDs at SATA II speed.
The X60 can only do that at SATA I speed.
An X61 with Middleton BIOS can also do SATA II speed.

Yes, but SATA 1 speeds are 1.5Gb/s, so 130MB/s is definitely obtainable.

The copy to the internal drive at a constant 50MB/s is probably typical for a 5400rpm 2.5" SATA drive (of size 120GB).

A real test will be between two 2TB desktop drives, preferably 7200rpm drives. The HP tests were two 2TB 7200rpm desktop drives, and I looked up benchmarks for the drives used, and they report speeds of 130MB/s.

I have some EXT2/3 1.5TB 5400rpm desktop drives which I will try tonight, but given the specs of the drives, I'll probably get 90-100MB/s.

I think I've made leaps of progress, considering Windows XP/7 tests results in an instant freeze just plugging in drives.

[loyukfai]

Indeed, the fact that the setup works under Linux probably means that the problem lies within Windows, the drivers, the combination of both with the specific BIOS revision, or some fairies at work.

Still hoping the problem would be resolved somehow.

Cheers.

[loyukfai]

Tried this...?

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... pe=Drivers

via

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=100062

Cheers.

[dmdsoftware]

Tried this...?

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... pe=Drivers

via

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=100062

Cheers.

I will try this on the Windows side.

Update on the linux front (ubuntu 10.10), I've probably transferred about 3TB-4TB of data over the cardbus esata among various FS (ex2,ex3,ex4,ntfs,fat32) with files up to size 34GB, various drive types (2.5", 3.5") and experienced no slowdowns or freezeups. I think the one single freeze up that I had mentioned earlier (copying between two ntfs drives over esata and sata connections on the card) was due to a permissions issue (loading the destination drive in non-write mode, since I encountered that in a different scenario as well over usb. I'm using a esata dual dock now, where I just plop 1 or 2 drives (2.5" and/or 3.5") into the dock over a single esata connection.

[dmdsoftware]

Tested, made no difference. Still instant freeze on hard drive power on, AFT and nonAFT

[loyukfai]

Sigh... That probably means the Linux developers had found the culprit and somehow fixed it in the kernel...?

BTW, did you force install it somehow...? Cause the installer said that my box doesn't meet the minimum requirements...

Cheers.

[dmdsoftware]

Sigh... That probably means the Linux developers had found the culprit and somehow fixed it in the kernel...?

BTW, did you force install it somehow...? Cause the installer said that my box doesn't meet the minimum requirements...

Cheers.

No, it just installed and rebooted afterwards. I tried it on the X60 only (Windows 7 32bit).

[loyukfai]

Umm... Mine is an X61T with Win7 x64, what's the name of the AHCI controller after installing the driver...?

Cheers.

[dmdsoftware]

Umm... Mine is an X61T with Win7 x64, what's the name of the AHCI controller after installing the driver...?

Cheers.

Intel ICH7M/MDH SATA AHCI Controller

[loyukfai]

Interesting... The INF have 7M and 9M, but no 8M listed...

Code: Select all

DiskName                                    = "Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver"
*PNP0600.DeviceDesc                         = "Intel AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C1&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) ICH7R/DH SATA AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C5&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) ICH7M/MDH SATA AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2922&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) ICH9R/DO/DH SATA AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2929&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) ICH9M-E/M SATA AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3A02&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) ICH10D/DO SATA AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3A22&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) ICH10R SATA AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B29&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) 5 Series 4 Port SATA AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B2F&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) 5 Series 6 Port SATA AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3B22&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) 5 Series/3400 Series SATA AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C02&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C03&CC_0106.DeviceDesc    = "Intel(R) Mobile Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller"

[dmdsoftware]

I want to put some closure to this thread.

By March of 2012, I had all my laptops converted to Linux. I just found it was the way to go in general -- Linux is far superior to Windows, and I got tired of rebuilding my systems early with a new build of Windows or to reinstall to eliminate fragmentation or windows-bloat etc.

Anyways, I want to report that esata over cardbus on these systems is a lost-cause. It'll never work properly. So if I have large data transfers, I either use the HP or the T420.

What I found that even in linux, there would be issues encountered with esata over cardbus on these machines. In Windows, it would cause the system to "freeze-up" until I unplugged the device; in linux, it would appear more innocent, letting me mount and write/read the disk. But even simply reading the disk for a prolonged time, I would eventually run into a kernel panic that would cause the laptop to reboot (essentially a BSOD or freeze). So it's definitely hardware deficiency. Sometimes it would happen right away, sometimes 20 mins, 60 mins, etc. It was random. But it's no way to treat your hard drive, because it'd come back up in a state requiring a filesystem repair.

What I also noticed, as long as I only write to the esata cardbus device, I would NEVER reboot/freeze/crash. I normally do a lot of archiving to DVD and bluray on esata optical devices (multiple) and I've never had a failed burn. I'll burn disks for hours on end and never encounter an issue. But if I go and query a disk and start searching it (reading it) for data, or transfer data from it (read it), I'd be susceptible for a kernel panic.

I regularly use kernels 3.2-3.4 and the symptoms occur equally across all kernel releases. Therefore, I'm satisfied in concluding it's a hardware issue that cannot be corrected by software and that I should stop looking for a fix and move on with using other machines for file transfers. I still use my X6* hardware daily, and I have no plan to retire the machines, but I'll keep the HP system handy for file transfers between sata devices.