Hpt 366 sux Need help!!

Peripherals, parts, data storage...
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InactiveX
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Post by InactiveX »

For the love of god, please don't use the HPT3666 interface. It causes data loss, and eventually your hard disk will fail. It sounds like it already is.

Back up all your data onto CD or whatever, replace the hard disk, and buy yourself a Promise PCI IDE controller card. Either that, or plug it into the standard IDE ports on the motherboard (IDE1 or IDE2).

You and your BP6 will be a lot happier for it.
BCN
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Post by BCN »

I do not think his HDD is dying. I am using mine still and I sis not had to replace (luckily) - I got away with low level format from maxtor after few tries for tearing away those BAD sectors on my HDD - since then it is OK and no problems with any bad sectors or whatever, since I use promise :)

besides, I got lucky I did not have to replace, if that low level would not help, I would have got gone RMA...
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kuun
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Post by kuun »

hmm

for some odd and peculiar reason my controller will not allow 2K to boot... period...

i want them for CDROM usage only... i have enough HDD's on the main controllers as i need and 3 SCSI as backup

so how do i get it to work with 2K so i can use more cdroms/burners/dvd roms

Kuun
BCN
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Post by BCN »

I do not use them even for cdroms, cause you get lower performance and possibly read/write errors if you use them... at least i got really strange behaviour of my cd burners under HPT666 - will never use it for anything!!!!
Dual C366@550MHz 1.90V :) (History)
yet single PIII-S 512Kb L2 cache at 1400MHz@700MHz
BP6 (not modded yet)
256MB PC133 C2
GF4Ti4200-8x
Maxtor 2x60Gb - all on promise ATA133
Lite-On LTR 40125S@48125W!!!
Plus P4 system
hyperspace
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HPT 366 Controller

Post by hyperspace »

The BP6 manuals states that the HPT366 controller is only designed for mass-storage devices, not CDROM's. I have been running a hard drive on my BP6 since August 1999, but I boot from a SCSI drive. :)
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MiRV
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Post by MiRV »

Hi,

at least Plextor drives are not fully usable when connected under HPT366.
I can not tweak some properties (idle time, speed and so on...) with PlexTools also I can when pluged to vanilla UDMA33.
Plus compared to Promise (at least Fasttrack, don't know about the Ultra 66), HPT can't report you smart status.

And now a little fairytale:
With Win NT4, I had no particular problem with harddisks, no speed issue, no data corruption, I could boot from whichever controler I want (all 4), nothing to complain. I had 4*40 gb Maxtor on a Promise Fasttrack 66, 2*40 gb Maxtor + 14 gb IBM on the HPT366, 2*plex 12x + 1xplex 24 on regular IDE, 2940UW with 4.3 gb, plex40, teac32, plex8x, teac8x. Later, I had 6 WD 80 gb in replacement of the 6 Maxtor 40 gb.
Later I add another BP6, a Promise Ultra 66 (non raid version) and some Tekram SCSI card (non bootable but a BP6 tweaked bios allowed me to), and I split a little the monster described above, and run these under NT4 and Linux (in a very beta stage concerning HPT366 and Promise controllers, which gave heart attacks, DMA problems and some nasty kernel tweaks).
I had several BIOS and drivers versions, all worked the way they should. Only linux was a little picky.

Do you feel I'm lucky ? One of my two BP6 died, half of my harddisks died too :(, some on the HPT366, some others on the Promise. I keep thinking of a faulty power supply (add 2 nic, 3DFX3 and 2 CPU 366@500).

Nowadays, under Win2000, I can't get even the HPT and the Promise working, not even alone :( Will try a little harder.

So I can't say HPT366 can destroy HD, but it doesn't help when reporting errors and something is clearly wrong with Plextor drives.

MiRV
johnli
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Post by johnli »

I've never had a big problem with the HPT366 controllers. The only trick I've found is for ACPI on win2k/xp is installing the drivers right at the start of the install from CD (press F6 to install drivers bit). Odd that some people have such trouble and some not.
Interestingly the primary UDMA33 channel will only work CD drives on it, when I plug the hard disks in the bootup freezes before trying to load the OS, and the screen display corrupts slightly (odd I know, not trying to hijack thread or anything as I'm not too bothered - I used the HPT366 channels and put the CD drives on that IDE channel :P).
Regards,
John
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Post by loophole »

I have an IBM DTLA-305040 (40GB, 5400 rpm) ATA-100 hard disk and it ran on the HPT366 controller and I found that I got the same problems as other people in Windows - when you go to reboot the hard disk makes a scary "drive-heads crashing into platters" noise. BUT, under Linux I never had any of that - no critical noises and overall a very fast and stable controller.

So it occurs to me that it's just the bad Windows drivers that plague the HPT366 controller for most people instead of actual bad hardware design of the highpoint chipset.

Just my two cents. Whadya think?
Still kicking along with the Abit BP6 :-)
hyperspace
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Post by hyperspace »

That makes a lot of sense, based on the number of posts about the HPT3666 controller. :twisted:
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