Sandy Bridge NIC vs. Solaris 10 & 11

Posted on 2012/04/01 by The Geez

I’ve been working with a new multiboot build: Intel DH67CL motherboard and i3-2120.  It needs to boot Solaris 10 and 11 (among several other OSen) for PCI board and driver testing.

Networking isn’t absolutely necessary, but sure would be handy.  I was prepared to do without, since this is new-ish hardware that may not have Solaris driver support, but was pleasantly surprised – mostly.

The i3 graphics are fine on both S10 & 11, and run my monitor at full resolution out of the box.  Networking worked out of the box for Solaris 11 using the e1000g driver (included in the Solaris distro), but not for ’10.

The chipset NIC is an Intel 82579V, PCI ID 8086,1503.  The usual trick of just adding the PCI ID to the existing driver didn’t help:

update_drv -a -i '"pci8086,1503"' e1000g
Driver (e1000g) successfully added to system but failed to attach ..

Tried every other trick I could think of including copying the Solaris 11 driver. (It still seems like that should have worked using the process below, but maybe I missed something).

Finally out of desperation I installed Solaris 10 U10.  (update 10).  Had been working with U9.  Continuing in this optimistic mode I tried the driver update again:

update_drv -a -i '"pci8086,1503"' e1000g
(no error message - yay!)

Since the networking wasn’t auto-configured during install, I had to manually set up the NIC and configure for DHCP.  Per Rich Teer’s Solaris DHCP guide http://www.rite-group.com/rich/solaris_dhcp.html:

ifconfig e1000g0 plumb  (that's a ZERO on the end)
touch /etc/hostname.e1000g0
touch /etc/dhcp.e1000g0 (which will use defaults)
(verify /etc/nodename is already configured to the desired
hostname if not - edit accordingly)
reboot...

And I had an operating network connection.

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Freeze Your Hard Drive

Posted on 2012/03/31 by The Geez

(Full disclosure: Bob at Bainbridge Computer Services showed me this trick a few years back.)

Sometimes a dead or dying hard drive can be resurrected long enough to rescue important files, or even pull a full clone.

Drives sometimes fail in a heat-related way.  Freezing and then quickly pulling off important data works in a surprisingly high percentage of cases.

I wrap a drive in plastic to prevent condensation (an anti-stat bag is preferred) and freeze it for 2 or 3 hours.  Then pull it out of the freezer and quickly attach to a computer.  If necessary, re-install it in the original host machine, but it’s better to connect via an external USB to IDE/SATA adapter so it can be kept cold longer.  Another approach is to connect to a desktop machine with the case open so the cables can be brought outside the machine.

If using an external adapter or cables to the outside, with the drive still wrapped in plastic, sandwich it between two freezer gel-packs (or bags of frozen peas) and wrap the whole mess in a towel.

If you are lucky, the drive will return to life long enough to copy the important stuff.   In the best case, you may be able to clone the drive and avoid a long re-install process.

Here’s an example of an external USB to  IDE/SATA adapter.  Most of them are USB 2.0 just now.  Since speed is of the essence, USB 3 or a direct IDE or SATA/eSATA connection would be better.

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Bainbridge Computer Services

Posted on 2012/01/30 by The Geez

Looking for computer support in the Bainbridge Island, WA, USA area?  Check this out.  The dude has skills.

Bainbridge Computer Services

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Notes About Laptop Drive Noise and Performance

Posted on 2011/09/14 by The Geez

After experimenting with three 500GB 7200RPM laptop drives for the ThinkPad T400, I’ve finally settled on one.  For now…

The StinkPad had a perfectly good 320GB 7200RPM Hitachi drive installed, but it was rapidly filling up with virtual machines.  Time for a 500GB drive.  Simple clone job using Acronis: Cloning Hard Drives With Acronis

I specifically wanted an old-style 512-bytes per sector drive to avoid possible problems with Advanced Format drives.  That didn’t actually go that well: Windows Update Broken After Cloning Hard drive, but back to the story…

Drive number 1: Western Digital WD5000BEKT.  Performance seemed excellent but it made a maddening intermittent noise: Strange Laptop Drive Noise: “Whoosh”

Drive number 2: Hitachi 0S02858.  This had been shipping as a 7K500 drive with 512-byte sectors.  Mine had the 0S02858 model number on the box but it contained a 7K750 Advanced Format drive (see “Windows Update Broken…” above).  Hitachi support says that 0S02858 model number is only guaranteed to be a 500GB 7200RPM drive, but could be either “7K” model, or even some other drive.

I got past the AF issues, but performance didn’t seem as snappy as the WD drive.  Purely subjective observation.

Drive number 3: I found a good deal on a SAMSUNG Spinpoint MP4 HM500JJ.  $50 at NewEgg.  That’s a 512-byte per sector drive.  I was hoping for better performance.  No joy there.  Subjective performance was the same as the Hitachi.  In addition, the Samsung introduced a very noticeable vibration in the StinkPad palmrest.  Some folks, with some laptops, might not find it objecionable.  I’m waaaay to picky for my own good.

As of now, I’m back to the Hitachi drive.  Its vibration level is almost imperceptible.  Performance is OK.  Advanced Format issues are solved.  And it runs a little cooler than the Samsung.

Below are the HD Tune reports for all three.

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Windows Update Broken After Cloning Hard drive

Posted on 2011/09/01 by The Geez

You just migrated your system to a new hard drive by cloning or restoring a backup.  Things seem to be working, but Windows Update fails.  The error popup says that the service isn’t running but task manager says that it is.  You’ve just been bitten by the new Advanced Format (4k-byte sector) hard drives.

I recently upgraded my ThinkPad T400 (Windows 7 Pro 64) from a 320GB 7200RPM drive to a 500GB 7200RPM drive.  It was a simple process using Acronis: Cloning Hard Drives With Acronis.  I specifically shopped for an older style drive that used 512-byte sectors.

The industry is rapidly going to “Advanced Format” drives that have 4k-type sectors: Advanced Format (wikipedia).  The AF drives can cause problems with performance if their partitions aren’t correctly aligned, especially when running Windows XP.  Unfortunately, the on-line drive documentation I consulted when selecting a drive was incorrect, and I ended up with an AF drive.  I’m running W7 – which supposedly supports AF drives.  It wasn’t that simple…

First, a note about how I ended up with an AF drive.  I was aware of possible issues with 4k-byte sectors, so I specifically looked for a non-AF drive.  My first choice was a Western Digital WD5000BEKT from Amazon.  It worked OK, but was too noisy: Strange Laptop Drive Noise: “Whoosh” Next choice was a Hitachi 0S02858.  All the comments on Amazon indicate that it’s a 7K500-500 drive with 512-byte sectors.  The one I received was actually a 7K750-500 Advanced Format drive.  So was its replacement.  A Hitachi tech told me that the 0S02858 part number indicated a 7K500 drive, and that I should have Amazon replace it.  He later said that Hitachi might ship either model under that part number.  Grrrr!

Back to the Windows Update problem.  Windows 7 is supposed to understand AF drives, and correctly aligns partitions.  Sort of.  Without the updates in a hotfix (or SP1 ??) , Windows can’t detect the drive’s physical sector size, and Update (and some other features) fail.  I was already running SP1, so it should have been OK.  Microsoft explanation and hotfix link: An update that improves the compatibility of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with Advanced Format Disks is available  On my ThinkPad T400, the hotfix just errored out with no additional information.

To cut to the chase, SP1 and the hotfix weren’t correctly updating the storage driver, so it couldn’t report sector size to Windows.  The clue here was that fsutil (see that Microsoft link, above) was reporting “bytes per physical sector” as “<Not Supported>”.

My fix was to manually install the latest Intel driver: Intel® Rapid Storage Technology  (link may be stale – see update below) That installs a lot more than necessary – AFAICS – but was an easy fix.  fsutil now reports the 4096-byte sector size, and Windows Update works.  I’ve also heard that installing the AHCI driver from the Lenovo driver matrix for one of the Huron River ThinkPads (T420/T520/X220/etc) would also do the job w/a smaller install (and less Intel crapware) but I have not tested that.   After updating the storage driver the hotfix happily announced that it (the hotfix) was already installed.

Update 2012.12.12 The Intel driver download is a moving target.  Try this search link if the one above doesn’t work: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Software+Products&ProductLine=Chipset+Software&ProductProduct=Intel%C2%AE+Rapid+Storage+Technology+%28Intel%C2%AE+RST%29

Update 2011.10.04 Have a look at the readme that comes with the Intel driver.  There are some command line options that allow installing the driver only without all the other unnecessary stuff.

Update 2012.10.15 That Intel link target keeps changing.  Try going to Intel.com and searching on “rapid storage technology”.  Pick the latest result that matches your operating system.  Then download the iata_enu.exe and readme files.

Update 2015.03.28 For some Lenovo machines ThinkVantage System Update may install an old or buggy Intel Matrix Storage Manager that can cause the same problem.  Some discussion here:   ThinkVantage System Update 5.05 causes Windows 7 Windows Update to fail and inhibits IE downloads

For XP users, the story is more painful.  Here are a couple of links to drive manufacturer’s tools – that should help:

Western Digital documentation and tools: Advanced Format Software

Hitachi whitepaper:  Advanced Format Drives   Hitachi Alignment tool:  Hitachi Align tool

Those alignment tools are the private-labeled Acronis alignment tool.

Sorry about the long post.  Hope it helps someone.

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