Booting from SSD via PCI SATA controller?

[Fokke Nauta]

Hi all,

In the near future I will install W7 on my PC, overwriting the old XP
installation. To speed up things, I will install it on a SSD. This SSD is 6
GB/s, whereas all SATA ports on my motherboard are 3 GB/s. OK, I can insert
a 6 GB/s SATA controller in one of the PCI slots, but can I boot from my
drive when it is connected to this controller?

Many thanks in advance.

With best regards,
Fokke Nauta

 

[Andy Burns]

OK, I can insert a 6 GB/s SATA controller in one of the PCI slots,
but can I boot from my drive when it is connected to this
controller?

Only if the SATA card has its own option ROM.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Hi all,

In the near future I will install W7 on my PC, overwriting the old XP
installation. To speed up things, I will install it on a SSD. This SSD is 6
GB/s, whereas all SATA ports on my motherboard are 3 GB/s. OK, I can insert
a 6 GB/s SATA controller in one of the PCI slots, but can I boot from my
drive when it is connected to this controller?

Many thanks in advance.

I have a Jmicron JMB36X-based controller that has its own RAID BIOS, so
it gets seen as an added disk controller and its disks are seen by the
main BIOS during boot.

However, you'll find an SSD is more than adequate on a 3 Gbps SATA. I
have mine which is also rated for 6 Gbps SATA, on a 3 Gbps, and my boot
times and various other tasks are now between 3 and 10 times faster than
the old hard disk! And the Windows Experience Index for the disk is 7.5
out of 7.9! Going from SATA II to SATA III would only result in an
improvement of WEI score to 7.8 or 7.9, which is imperceptible to
humans. It's better to just eventually upgrade to a new motherboard with
built-in SATA 6 Gbps, than to waste a PCI-e slot on an adapter, which
you may not need in the future.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Fokke Nauta]

Only if the SATA card has its own option ROM.

I guess it hasn't.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Accessories/U3S6/

Fokke

 

[Fokke Nauta]

I have a Jmicron JMB36X-based controller that has its own RAID BIOS, so it
gets seen as an added disk controller and its disks are seen by the main
BIOS during boot.

However, you'll find an SSD is more than adequate on a 3 Gbps SATA. I have
mine which is also rated for 6 Gbps SATA, on a 3 Gbps, and my boot times
and various other tasks are now between 3 and 10 times faster than the old
hard disk! And the Windows Experience Index for the disk is 7.5 out of
7.9! Going from SATA II to SATA III would only result in an improvement of
WEI score to 7.8 or 7.9, which is imperceptible to humans. It's better to
just eventually upgrade to a new motherboard with built-in SATA 6 Gbps,
than to waste a PCI-e slot on an adapter, which you may not need in the
future.

Yousuf Khan

Thanks.
This makes sense. I'm not quite there to build a new PC (again) so I'm stuck
with the 3 Gb/s ASA ports for the time being. But reading your answer I'll
get a 6 Gb/s SSD and look forward to a faster boot time and faster starting
various app's. Likely I may be able to use this SSD as well in time I build
a new PC in a few years.

Fokke

 

[Paul]

I guess it hasn't.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Accessories/U3S6/

Fokke

There is a report here, that someone booted from the U3S6.
It required disabling another controller using up too
much low memory ROM space, and then it worked.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx..._id=1&model=P6T+Deluxe&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

*******

During the boot process, the memory area below 640KB becomes
important. There is something like 128KB of RAM memory space,
to hold copies of the option ROMs from each peripheral. Storage
devices have Extended INT 0x13 support code to load into RAM.

When a motherboard is a bit too fancy, and already has three storage
controllers of its own, and you add a plugin card, sometimes the last
device to be detected, has no room to load its option ROM into
that RAM area. Disabling the loading of one or more of the
other storage controller ROMs can fix that.

Note that, the VESA ROM on the video card, is a major contributor
to usage of that RAM area. If video cards didn't have ROMs, this
would never be an issue. The video card typically takes half of
the available space, which is a poor starting point to work from.
And as far as I know, there aren't alternatives for the video card.

When the ROM code loads, it takes an initial size, and apparently
after running for a moment, the ROM code "discards" some of the code
and can "shrink down". The ROM that apparently doesn't do this
("shrink down") is the video card code.

The video card code, isn't part of supporting storage for booting,
but is still necessary to the whole process. Using a standard VESA
display mode, is how the system supports video output during initial boot.

(The original reference on this subject, took the form of an email
from Tyan Tech Support, to a customer. And the body of the email was
posted in the following thread.)

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=29994&highlight=loading+scsi+bios

Paul

 

[Andy Burns]

I guess it hasn't.
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Accessories/U3S6/

I'd guess not too, if you download the manual you could tell for sure,
if there's no mention of press <SOMEKEY> during boot to get into
configuration options for the card, it won't.

Supermicro do some cheap(ish) SAS/SATA controllers with option ROM, I
have one of the 8 channel PCIx ones, their we site seems to be
ultra-slow at the moment, so I can't post you a link.

But as some else has already said, live with 3Gb SATA for now, and make
sure you get 6Gb on-board next time, you'll still see a big boost in
boot time.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Thanks.
This makes sense. I'm not quite there to build a new PC (again) so I'm stuck
with the 3 Gb/s ASA ports for the time being. But reading your answer I'll
get a 6 Gb/s SSD and look forward to a faster boot time and faster starting
various app's. Likely I may be able to use this SSD as well in time I build
a new PC in a few years.

Yeah, exactly, that's the advantage of building your own PC, instead of
buying one off the shelf, you get to improve it at whatever pace you
like. I tend to have an upgrade cycle every 3-5 years, depending on device.

Within the last year, I've upgraded piece-by-piece: the CPU (after 4
years), the video card (after 5 years), the power supply (after 4
years), and now the boot drive (the SSD, after 3 years with previous
boot drive). I tend to add or replace hard drives every two years (but I
still have some hard drives in here from 2007, they're still working and
have no bad sectors). I also upgraded the case, to a Cooler Master Haf X
case, which has a lot of hard drive bays, and I've got them all stuffed.

I suppose the next upgrade should be a new motherboard so I can get one
with a 6 Gbps SATA-3 connection on it, but since I just got this CPU
just this year, I'd likely have to get another motherboard that supports
this same processor. I have had this same motherboard over two processor
upgrades already. I'll probably swap out both the CPU, motherboard, and
RAM all at once with the next upgrade. Now that I've put this SSD in,
I'm finally feeling that I'm finally putting the capabilities of this 3
Gbps SATA-2 to its full potential. The hard drives definitely didn't
challenge the speed of SATA-2, and they still don't. But the SSD fully
utilizes the entire bandwidth of it. I haven't felt that the SATA-2 is
holding me back yet.

In fact, I think back to the very first upgrade I've ever done to one my
systems, and one of the very first ones was that I upgraded my old PC-XT
with an original-generation 8088 processor, and swapped the heart of it
out all of the way up to a 386DX processor. That was one of the biggest
kicks in the pant I've ever felt from an upgrade, I felt like I had
strapped rockets to my system, it almost felt like it was doing things
too fast. Every subsequent upgrade since then has felt somewhat less
exciting by comparison, the speed differentials were never as great.
That is until now, and this upgrade to an SSD now rivals that first
upgrade for being the biggest kicks in the pants ever.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Fokke Nauta]

There is a report here, that someone booted from the U3S6.
It required disabling another controller using up too
much low memory ROM space, and then it worked.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx..._id=1&model=P6T+Deluxe&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

*******

During the boot process, the memory area below 640KB becomes
important. There is something like 128KB of RAM memory space,
to hold copies of the option ROMs from each peripheral. Storage
devices have Extended INT 0x13 support code to load into RAM.

When a motherboard is a bit too fancy, and already has three storage
controllers of its own, and you add a plugin card, sometimes the last
device to be detected, has no room to load its option ROM into
that RAM area. Disabling the loading of one or more of the
other storage controller ROMs can fix that.

Note that, the VESA ROM on the video card, is a major contributor
to usage of that RAM area. If video cards didn't have ROMs, this
would never be an issue. The video card typically takes half of
the available space, which is a poor starting point to work from.
And as far as I know, there aren't alternatives for the video card.

When the ROM code loads, it takes an initial size, and apparently
after running for a moment, the ROM code "discards" some of the code
and can "shrink down". The ROM that apparently doesn't do this
("shrink down") is the video card code.

The video card code, isn't part of supporting storage for booting,
but is still necessary to the whole process. Using a standard VESA
display mode, is how the system supports video output during initial boot.

(The original reference on this subject, took the form of an email
from Tyan Tech Support, to a customer. And the body of the email was
posted in the following thread.)

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=29994&highlight=loading+scsi+bios

Paul

Hi Paul,

Thanks, this is interesting stuff.
But as Yousuf Khan already pointed out, I will connect my SSD to one of the
3 GB/s ports of the motherboard. So no bother with booting from a SATA
controller.

Fokke

 

[Fokke Nauta]

I'd guess not too, if you download the manual you could tell for sure, if
there's no mention of press <SOMEKEY> during boot to get into
configuration options for the card, it won't.

Supermicro do some cheap(ish) SAS/SATA controllers with option ROM, I have
one of the 8 channel PCIx ones, their we site seems to be ultra-slow at
the moment, so I can't post you a link.

But as some else has already said, live with 3Gb SATA for now, and make
sure you get 6Gb on-board next time, you'll still see a big boost in boot
time.

Thanks. I will connect the SSD to one of the 3 GB/s ports indeed.

Fokke

 

[charlie]

Thanks. I will connect the SSD to one of the 3 GB/s ports indeed.

Fokke

From the Asus web site, the card does have firmware, and an update in
2010 might make it boot-able? On the other hand, the card is stated to
support hard drives only.

 

[Fokke Nauta]

Yeah, exactly, that's the advantage of building your own PC, instead of
buying one off the shelf, you get to improve it at whatever pace you like.
I tend to have an upgrade cycle every 3-5 years, depending on device.

Within the last year, I've upgraded piece-by-piece: the CPU (after 4
years), the video card (after 5 years), the power supply (after 4 years),
and now the boot drive (the SSD, after 3 years with previous boot drive).
I tend to add or replace hard drives every two years (but I still have
some hard drives in here from 2007, they're still working and have no bad
sectors). I also upgraded the case, to a Cooler Master Haf X case, which
has a lot of hard drive bays, and I've got them all stuffed.

I suppose the next upgrade should be a new motherboard so I can get one
with a 6 Gbps SATA-3 connection on it, but since I just got this CPU just
this year, I'd likely have to get another motherboard that supports this
same processor. I have had this same motherboard over two processor
upgrades already. I'll probably swap out both the CPU, motherboard, and
RAM all at once with the next upgrade. Now that I've put this SSD in, I'm
finally feeling that I'm finally putting the capabilities of this 3 Gbps
SATA-2 to its full potential. The hard drives definitely didn't challenge
the speed of SATA-2, and they still don't. But the SSD fully utilizes the
entire bandwidth of it. I haven't felt that the SATA-2 is holding me back
yet.

In fact, I think back to the very first upgrade I've ever done to one my
systems, and one of the very first ones was that I upgraded my old PC-XT
with an original-generation 8088 processor, and swapped the heart of it
out all of the way up to a 386DX processor. That was one of the biggest
kicks in the pant I've ever felt from an upgrade, I felt like I had
strapped rockets to my system, it almost felt like it was doing things too
fast. Every subsequent upgrade since then has felt somewhat less exciting
by comparison, the speed differentials were never as great. That is until
now, and this upgrade to an SSD now rivals that first upgrade for being
the biggest kicks in the pants ever.

Yousuf Khan

Hi Yousuf,

It's been for many years now that I build my own PC's. They are always
dedicated for some use, and building your own creates tailor made PC's.
In the beginning it was different, though. I can remember buying my first
PC, a XT. In those days I did not have any useful knowledge of PC's, but I
can remember that one could upgrade the old 8088 by a NEC V20 processor.
That was my first upgrade ever. In my next PC, an Amstrad with a colour CGA
screen (wonderful in those days) I managed to install more memory. Later I
purchased an AT, first a 268, later a 368. Still not building my own PC's in
those days. But I can remember that I was always working on improving the
autoexec.bat and the config.sys, and using the famous himem.sys.

It was somewhere in the 90's I started to build my own PC. Soon there was a
second PC, dedicated for working with music. Ever since I have build PC's
for special purposes. My current PC was built in 2010, then state of the
art, but now somewhat lagging behind. So I will replace XP-32 by W7-64,
adding more memory (8 or 12 G in total) and installing the OS on a SSD
drive. That'll make quite a change, I guess. And in a few years a new mobo
with a new processor.

Fokke

 

[Ken Blake]

It's been for many years now that I build my own PC's. They are always
dedicated for some use, and building your own creates tailor made PC's.

Two comments on that:

1. Although you can get a tailor-made computer by choosing your
components and building it yourself, it's not necessary to build it
yourself to get such a computer. There are almost always several local
people or companies who will do the building for you at a modest
price, after you select the components.

2. Building a computer isn't difficult, but trouble-shooting it if it
doesn't work can be difficult. Although I too prefer tailor-made
components and avoid buying computers from OEM manufacturers, it's
primarily for that reason that I prefer to have someone else do the
building for me; it costs me a little more, but I don't have to worry
about problems.

 

[Fokke Nauta]

Two comments on that:

1. Although you can get a tailor-made computer by choosing your
components and building it yourself, it's not necessary to build it
yourself to get such a computer. There are almost always several local
people or companies who will do the building for you at a modest
price, after you select the components.

2. Building a computer isn't difficult, but trouble-shooting it if it
doesn't work can be difficult. Although I too prefer tailor-made
components and avoid buying computers from OEM manufacturers, it's
primarily for that reason that I prefer to have someone else do the
building for me; it costs me a little more, but I don't have to worry
about problems.

Well, this is simply a matter of responsibility. You want another person to
build your PC so you can blame them if something goes wrong.
I guess this is a fair point if you don't have the knowledge to find out
what is wrong and take the defect part back to your supplier.
Happily I never had any problem with troubleshooting. And never had any
problems with returning failing parts to my supplier.

Fokke

 

[Ken Blake]

Well, this is simply a matter of responsibility. You want another person to
build your PC so you can blame them if something goes wrong.

No, it's not a matter of blame at all. I want someone else to build
it, so that if something goes wrong, he is the one who has to make the
effort to troubleshoot and fix it, not me. Although I could probably
fix most problems myself, sometimes finding out what's wrong is easy
and sometimes it's not.

I guess this is a fair point if you don't have the knowledge to find out
what is wrong and take the defect part back to your supplier.
Happily I never had any problem with troubleshooting. And never had any
problems with returning failing parts to my supplier.

Although it may be a matter of knowledge for some people, it generally
is not for me. It's a matter of the time and trouble to do it. I'd
much rather that it was someone else's problem than mine.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Two comments on that:

1. Although you can get a tailor-made computer by choosing your
components and building it yourself, it's not necessary to build it
yourself to get such a computer. There are almost always several local
people or companies who will do the building for you at a modest
price, after you select the components.

There are also the boutique houses which build high-performance rigs,
which are basically just white-boxes with a lot of high-end components.
You can then take those boutique machines and start upgrading them
yourself later.

2. Building a computer isn't difficult, but trouble-shooting it if it
doesn't work can be difficult. Although I too prefer tailor-made
components and avoid buying computers from OEM manufacturers, it's
primarily for that reason that I prefer to have someone else do the
building for me; it costs me a little more, but I don't have to worry
about problems.

That is the gist of it. You either get something already debugged for
you, but without everything you were looking for; or you get all of the
stuff you were looking for, but have to debug it yourself.

Yousuf Khan

 

[charlie]

There are also the boutique houses which build high-performance rigs,
which are basically just white-boxes with a lot of high-end components.
You can then take those boutique machines and start upgrading them
yourself later.


That is the gist of it. You either get something already debugged for
you, but without everything you were looking for; or you get all of the
stuff you were looking for, but have to debug it yourself.

Yousuf Khan

The only pre built computers I buy are laptops.
The most time consuming detail is software.
Bad components have been few and far between.

 

[Ken Blake]

The only pre built computers I buy are laptops.

Same here. But please note that my comments above were not meant to
suggest that pre-built computers were the thing to buy. My point was
simply that I prefer to get a custom-built computer, but paying
someone else to build it, rather than building it myself.

 

[Char Jackson]

Same here. But please note that my comments above were not meant to
suggest that pre-built computers were the thing to buy. My point was
simply that I prefer to get a custom-built computer, but paying
someone else to build it, rather than building it myself.

Those of us who build computer systems for others appreciate your
patronage. ;-)

 

[Ken Blake]

Those of us who build computer systems for others appreciate your
patronage. ;-)

LOL! You probably have much more hardware skills than I do. Once
again, although I *can* do the building myself (and have done so in
the past), I prefer to pay someone else to do it, so they can do any
needed troubleshooting (I'm admittedly not good at hardware
troubleshooting) instead of me.