All the ICH controllers or at least ICH5 thru 9 with an R,use the Matrix
storage
software from intel.. See if laptops are included.If the drive(s) seem to be
failing,download the hd test utility from the hd mfg,get the MS-DOS utility.
Also,if testing is where youre at,download the xp add-on test software from
microsoft, get them at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en
And yes they work with xp.

"sullivang" wrote:

System:
Dell Latitude E6500 laptop, P8600 Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, internal Intel ICH9M-E
SATA storage interface, Windows XP SP3, Samsung HM251JJ 250GB SATA HDD, NTFS
file system.
Drive power down is disabled in power management profiles.

Problem:
Using the IOMeter disk excerciser utility, I am observing rather slow io
response times (~360ms), if the drive has been idle for more than
approximately 5 seconds. If the drive is accessed more frequently than every
5 seconds, every io completes rapidly. (response time in same ballpark as
drive access time specification)

Similar behaviour can be reproduced on an external USB drive (HP SimpleStore
1TB), however the idle timeout with this drive is 8 seconds, and the initial
response time from idle is over 400ms.

On a third drive, being a very old IDE drive in an USB enclosure, the
problem does not occur at all. I've gone as high as 20 seconds between io's,
and the response time is always rapid.

The above behaviour is observed when using the "Always On" power management
profile. I have been using this profile because it disables processor speed
throttling. If I switch profiles to either "Minimal Power Management", or
"Maximum Performance (Dell)", the response time from idle is greatly
improved. For the internal drive, the typical response time is reduced to
40ms, and for the external HP drive, 60ms. (I haven’t tried the old IDE drive
with these profiles yet)

I thought I had found the solution, and all I would have to do now is
disable processor speed throttling. Unfortunately, when I do this (using
POWERCFG.EXE), the slow response times return! I am very puzzled by this.

The reason I am doing this testing is that a real-time audio application
that streams from disk is failing, and I believe this issue is the root
cause.
The application works if I generate tiny bit of background disk activity. It
also works fine from the very old IDE drive, although with limited
performance.
I have not yet verified that the specific problem I am having is fixed by
using “Minimal Power Management”, or “Maximum Performance (Dell)”). From
past experience, though, processor throttling doesn’t work very well in
general for this kind of application, and I should not have to use it.

Any insight much appreciated.

Regards,
Greg.