Gigabyte's RAM drive card w/battery backup...

elec999 · Post by **elec999** » Fri May 19, 2006 9:02 pm

highlandsun wrote:RAID on a single controller only makes sense when the overall interface is much faster than the raw media. Since the RAM is much faster than the SATA bus there's nothing to gain there, your 112 vs 115MB/sec can be as much due to variance in measurement as anything else, that's less than a 3% difference.

On the other hand, if you were really going for all-out speed, you could try putting them on SATA-to-SCSI adapters and RAID them on an Ultra320 SCSI bus. That ought to get you close to 300MB/sec throughput. No idea how much overhead is lost in the adapters of course.

This is something I am curious about, will sata II be faster if used with two irams. Any word on iram2.
Thanks

elec999 · Post by **elec999** » Fri May 19, 2006 9:05 pm

Eunos wrote:Copper, did you use 'high density' or 'low density' RAM? I used the cheaper high density and 2 of them are recognised as 512mb. The RAM seller seems to have a trustworthy record, and thinks this could be the problem.

Yes. I had the same problem, I baught 1gig of high density ram, and my motherboard only saw it has 512meg. But it was actually 1gig, I test on a sis chipset board,and saw seen as 1gig.
Thanks

Edit Could someone teach me how to quate two people in the same post, so i dont have to post twice.

wim · Post by **wim** » Fri May 19, 2006 11:53 pm

this post was created by the BBcode shown below..

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this post was created by the BBcode shown below..
[quote="isaac newton"]If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.[/quote]
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clocker · Post by **clocker** » Sat May 20, 2006 2:58 am

Eunos wrote: That small size proved more than a little annoying when some sort of virtual memory file impolitely filled up about half the drive with a massive temp file. All attempts to remove it failed, including disabling the Windows page file altogether.

"Impolitely" indeed.
Using nLite I created a custom install of x64 XP Pro which ended up taking only 1.1GB of the iRam's space- "Great!" I think...plenty of space for some apps with room to spare.
I moved the swap file to a second disk and all was well till, upon reboot, I saw the iRAM was filled to the brim with a 2GB virtual memory file.
Several attemps to tame this problem finally resulted in this approach...

Immediately after install set the page file size on the iRAM (C: drive) to 16MB/16MB- this is the smallest allowable size. You can set the real page file to whatever size you like on a separate drive.
Disable System Restore (it never works properly for me anyway and nLite has this option available).
Finally, in the Startup and Recovery tab (Control Panel>System>Advanced>Startup and Recovery>Settings) uncheck the three option boxes for "System Failure" and set the "write debugging information" to "none".

A few other observations-
-During install (or when first initializing the iRAM if it's added later as a second drive) DO NOT do a "full format", use the "quick format" option.
I don't know why but trying a full format always resulted in a hard lockup and system freeze for me.
-I tried running Bootvis just to see what effect it would have and that resulted in a system freeze as well because the trace files were huge and overfilled the iRAM's capacity. Installing the program to a separate drive should work but I haven't retried that experiment yet.
-Under Properties for your CD/DVD drive go to the "Recording" tab and change the location where the burning software will save the image of what it's working on...default is C: and that too can quickly overfill the capacity of the iRAM.
Basically, any program that creates temp file whilst running or saves a history (a major offender here is Internet Explorer which defaults to a ridiculous size for it's saved temp/history file) must be carefully pruned or installed to a directory off the iRAM or the puny 4GB of your C: drive will quickly be overwhelmed.

Although I bought the iRAM for the speed ( and it is snappy- but not earthshaking compared to a Raptor RAID0 array) I've come to appreciate the silence even more.
It's eerie really and I'll definitely upgrade to the SATA2 version when it comes out.

elec999 · Post by **elec999** » Sun May 21, 2006 6:36 pm

So from what I am reading, the Iram is not that fast. Two raptors in raid0 may outperform the iram. The biggest advantage of the iram is doesnt make any noise. But what makes me wonder, is that the iram is got a <0.5ms access time, while the raptor is >4.5ms.
Thanks

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Mon May 22, 2006 1:33 am

clocker wrote:"Impolitely" indeed.

Neat tips there! However the impolite file turned out to be the 'Hibernation' file (hiber.sys or similar, in the root directory). Windows creates a file the size of the PC's memory (1.5 gb in my case) for when the system hibernates. Needless to say I use 'suspend' mode instead these days.

highlandsun · Post by **highlandsun** » Tue May 23, 2006 2:31 am

elec999 wrote: This is something I am curious about, will sata II be faster if used with two irams. Any word on iram2.
Thanks

I doubt it, since each iRAM's interface can still only transfer data at 150MB/sec, the remaining bandwidth will be wasted. (and come to think of it, that would make my UltraSCSI suggestion pointless too, unless the adapter cards can buffer the data at full bus speed.)

elec999 · Post by **elec999** » Tue Jun 06, 2006 4:28 pm

I saw a picture of the iram for the 5.25bay.Doesnt say anything else.
http://www.ocworkbench.com/2006/compute ... te/p12.htm
Thanks

highlandsun · Post by **highlandsun** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 1:50 am

Good find. Looks like it still has only 4 DIMMs. Too bad.

jjr · Post by **jjr** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:08 am

A news about the new version :
http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/29270 ... 8-Go-2.htm

Sorry ... it is french

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 10:59 am

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2733

8GB max, DDR2, SATA II.

elec999 · Post by **elec999** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 6:01 pm

This is amazing. But I hope it is affordable.
Thanks

Engine · Post by **Engine** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 3:46 am

I'll take two. And a RAID controller - not for speed, but for capacity. And I hope it has a big battery. And I hope I have a spare US$x00 to drop, because such an option - like the existing one - won't be cheap. Still, a move in the right direction!

FERCSA · Post by **FERCSA** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 5:24 am

Copper wrote:If I could just get them to actually RAID on the ICH5R they'd have the combined bus width of both independant SATA bus channels - 300MB/s. But the damn things wont work in RAID on the ICH5R.

I can never win.

check my post:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... 9&start=60

hmsrolst · Post by **hmsrolst** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 3:00 pm

I just installed XP on an IRAM and tried to create an image on a second SATA drive. Neither Dirve Image or Ghost would do it. The former balked while still in Windows and the latter locked up just after booting into DOS (and won't allow me back into Windows). Both are a few years old. Has anybody else had this problem? Any ideas what to do? Thanks.

EDIT: Solved this problem with Drive Image 7.

elec999 · Post by **elec999** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 8:43 pm

Any news when the Iram 2 will be released.
Thanks

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:54 am

Copper wrote:It has happened to me two times. Once while overclocking. I've read that SATA controllers are very sensitive to bus speed. Overclocking a system without a bus lock can mess up the controller pretty quick. Why this should cause the data to be lost is beyond me, but I overclocked and the i-RAM got wiped.

I couldn't find any better place to ask it, but does anyone know which bus the SATA controller runs off? For example, if my mobo (Asus A8N-SLI Premium) offers the ability to lock the PCI bus at 33.33Mhz and PCI-Express bus at 100Mhz, does that mean I can overclock the FSB without causing problems on the SATA bus, or does SATA run off something tied to the FSB?

I have a 4-drive SATA RAID 0+1 array so in theory I could do overlock testing with two drives disconnected and if it wipes the drives, I could disconnect the two that were wiped, reconnect the other two drives and boot up then somehow figure out how to bring the two trashed drives back online and mirror the data back to them. Since I've never actually tested that however, I'm a bit leery to try it.

PizPump · Post by **PizPump** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:56 pm

Time for an i-Ram bump

Any word on the updated version?

Wtf is Gigabyte dragging their heels on?

hmsrolst · Post by **hmsrolst** » Wed Jan 03, 2007 5:03 pm

Since this has been brought back to life, I'll look for some assistance. I've never been able to get my IRAM to work properly. When I install it, it's recognized and I have no problem installing and updating XP on it. However, if I turn it off, it won't start Windows again. Sometimes it begins to start XP and blue screens; other times it says no OS. I can see the partition is there using a Partition Magic boot disk or if I try to re-install XP. But although I can re-boot indefinitely, once I turn the power off, it's toast. I've also tried restoring from an image, and sometimes that works, but other times it doesn't. Somehow Windows seems to get corrupted, but in different ways.

Things I've tried.

Leaving the PC on overnight to make sure the battery is charged. Plus I can see the partition.
A different motherboard.
Testing each stick of RAM separately with memtest.

I'm about to contact Gigabyte assuming there's something defective with the IRAM. If anybody has any experience like this or any other thoughts, I'd appreciate hearing them.

BTW, before I turn it off, it works great--really responsive!