Dude !
It's NOT the cache and it's NOT the drives. It's Windoze. When windows shuts down on a warm boot it doesn't clear the memory. Period!
You have to shut the computer "OFF" for 15 second then back on to clear the memory (drive cache in your case). This is an inhereint problem with Microsoft O/S's which includes NT4, 2000 workstation and Server.
Unix / Linux (as stated in a previous message), shutdown diffrently, which is why a warm boot works. Keeps from dimmin' the lights each time too !
I'm sorry no one in those other forums etc. told you this.
-Randall
Dave wrote:
>
> All:
>
> I have a number of IDE drives with 2 meg cache. Here's the
> problem I've had:
>
> Under Win2K/Win9X - using these drives would cause boot
> problems. I found on the MS web site there was a utility I
> could install on the 9X boxes that added a 2 second delay to
> allow the drive to flush the cache before a shut down. Win2K
> didn't have (at least I couldn't find it) the same utility.
> The problem was described as when using drives with large
> caches on systems with slower speed processors, during a shut
> down/reboot, the cache wouldn't have the opportunity to fully
> flush to disk before the actual power down. What was still
> in cache is lost and if the drive was in the middle of
> writing the final files to disk those files would be
> corrupt. I wound up putting the drives in a WinNT server
> because that OS doesn't power the box down automatically when
> shut down is initiated, it puts up a screen saying 'it's safe
> to power down now' and that allows the drives to empty the
> cache before an actual power down.
>
> Here's the question:
> Does anyone have any experience with this kind of issue under
> SME? I would think the problem would recur since it's the
> same processor, same motherboard, same controller and same
> drives. I haven't tried it yet but I'd like to move my main
> domain server to SME but only if I don't have to buy new
> drives.
>
> The drives are Maxtor, 2 20's and a 30. This problem
> occurred under Win2K Pro (workstation), Win2K Server and
> Advanced Server. Under these OS's the startup files would be
> corrupt and would render the system unbootable (I tried all
> the possible options to recover but nothing worked, the OS
> was useless with these drives) Also the problem existed
> under Win98 but with Win98 it would automatically go into the
> scan disk and would usually be able to repair itself,
> sometimes it wouldnt be able to and again became unreliable -
> after installing the utility that added a 2 second pause
> during shutdown, this problem went away but I needed a PDC.
> I've tried it on various motherboards and processors,
> gigabyte, asus, dell with various processor speeds PII 233
> and 333, PIII 550 and 600, Celeron 533. Currently they're in
> a gigabyte BX2000, 512meg RAM, PIII 550 processor running
> WinNT 4.0 SP6a - it works here only because a shut down
> doesn't actually power the box down under NT.
>
> I didn't mean to write a book here but this appears to be an
> obscure problem that doesn't happen often. I want to move
> away from MS on my servers at least (I already have on my
> gateway, working like a champ) but I don't want to spend an
> entire weekend loading and reloading SME only to ultimately
> find it wont work with these drives.
>
> Any thoughts or input would be appreciated.
>
> Dave
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