Videoguys' SCSI Tips
The following troubleshooting tips are provided FREE as a service to our customers. If you purchased your equipment from someone else, you are welcome to use these tips. The Electronic Mailbox offers the best customer service and tech support in the industry. We hope you will remember this the next time you need to purchase Desk Top Video products.
The key to getting the best performance from your video card is to have a top notch AV SCSI storage solution like our Medea VideoRAID SCSI drives. Here are some useful tips for installing and optimizing your new SCSI drive.
Install The SCSI Adapter first
If you just got a video capture card and SCSI storage system. Install and test the SCSI drive first, before you install the capture card. Copy a large file or image to the new drive, then open it. Once you have installed and tested the SCSI system, reboot windows and test it again. This "cycling" through of Win95 makes sure it remembers your new configuration and installs the video capture card for best results.
Never add two (2) new PCI Plug & Play cards into your system at the same time!!
I installed the new SCSI drive, but I can't find it. Windows won't give it a letter.
Win95 automatically gives the last drive letter to your CD ROM drive.
Unfortunately, it will not move the CD ROM over to make room for the new drive.
Go into >Control Panel>System>Device Manger>select your CD ROM drive>Properties>Settings
You will see that you can't change your CD ROM drives letter, but you can assign it a new range. Enter a higher starting drive letter then reboot. Your CD ROM and SCSI drive will now have new letters. Note: Any shortcuts and programs will need to be redirected to the new drive letter for the CD ROM.
If moving the CD ROM drive doesn't work, then you may need to trick Win95 into seeing it.
This is done by making the drive removable. This has no impact on performance.
Go into >Control Panel>System>Device Manager>Disk Drives>select SCSI drive>Properties>Settings>
Enable Removable>Enter drive letter range>reboot
Be very careful with SCSI termination
SCSI performance can be very poor if you do not correctly configure and terminate your SCSI chain. Read ALL of the instructions for each SCSI device. Make sure you understand what drives need to be terminated and which do not. This is extra important if you are using internal and external SCSI components. ZIP and JAZ drives have different settings when used with external devices vs internal. You also need to use high quality cables and remember, you have a finite distance that your entire SCSI chain can go. Always use the shortest cable possible.
Get the latest SCSI controller drivers
Just like your video capture card, the SCSI cards performance is being constantly improved with newer, better drivers. Always try to use the most current driver. Note: The SCSI driver that comes with Win95 is rarely the most current.
Turn on Write Cache
Some SCSI drives come with read and write cache disabled. We recommend enabling these cache settings for best results. The EZ SCSI utility that ships with Adaptec 2940UW controllers lets you do this with a few mouse clicks from the SCSI Explorer utility. If you don't have EZ SCSI and own a Seagate Barracuda or Cheetah drive we have a link to the Seagate WCE (Write Cache Enable) utilty on our ftp page.
Medea VideoRAID SCSI Tips
Follow these directions instead of the directions in the Medea manual for Win9x installation.
- Boot into Windows 95, 98
- Go to Start > Programs > Command Prompt (or MSDos Prompt)
- In DOS, type fdisk
- Type 'Y' to enable large disk support and 'Y' to NTFS partitions
- Select the "Change current fixed disk drive" option by typing '5' and hitting Enter.
- Now, you need to select the proper fixed disk that corresponds to the VideoRAID drive. In most cases this will be fixed disk #2. If you have more than 2 fixed disks listed, look at the Mbyte column and select the fixed disk that is closest to the capacity of the VideoRAID you ordered.
- Choose option '4' to display the partition information.
- If you see a 'Non-Dos' or 'NTFS' partition go on to step 9, if not skip to step 12.
Non-DOS partition
- Select Option '3' to delete a partition.
- In option '3' select the option to delete a 'Non-Dos' partition.
- Select the partition you wish to delete (there should only be 1) and hit enter.
- Go back to the main menu and select option 1.
- Choose the "Create Primary DOS Partition" option by typing '1' and press enter. Fdisk will start to verify the integrity of the VideoRAID drive.
- se the maximum available size for the Primary DOS Partition by typing 'Y' and enter. Fdisk will again verify the integrity of the VideoRAID.
- Press to go back to the main menu
- Press two more times to get back to the DOS prompt.
- At the DOS prompt, type 'exit'. Then Restart your machine by going to Start > Shutdown > Reboot
- Follow the instructions in the Medea manual on formatting the drive in Windows9x and you're all done!
If you have any problems please contact our Tech Support at 516-759-1943.
You can also contact Medea Support at 888-296-3332.
Formatting VideoRAIDs over 67GB with Win98se
With the second edition of win98 you can create a partition larger
then 67GB. The problem is that DOS Fdisk can only work with 67GB at a time.
So under FDISK it might look a little weird with videoraids larger then
67GB. What I mean by this is if the VideoRaid is for instance 100GB, DOS
fdisk will only report 32GB under FDisk, this is fine go ahead and create a
partition for the full capacity and once you re-boot and go back to windows
the whole capacity of the 100GB unit will be reported, so just format and
you are ready to go.
What FDISK does on VideoRaids larger then 67GB is it reads the first 67GB
then zero's out and starts counting again if it sees more then 67GB again it
will zero that out and continue counting tell it hits the end and reports
only that little bit (the remainder). So in the case of the 100GB unit it
zeroed out the first 67GB and counted till the end of the disk which left
32GB. So on a 150GB it will only report 16GB because it zero's out the
first 67GB counts again to 67GB and then zero's that out and counts more to
the end of the disk which left 16GB.
Domex/Advansys SCSI tech notes:
The Win 2K drivers for our Domex SCSI Controller Card with the Advansys Chipset get loaded with the Windows 2K operating system. There is no need to manually load drivers. Just follow these steps:
Insert SCSI card in available PCI slot (No need to worry about IRQ's with Win 2K)
Start Computer, As system is booting you will see Advansys SCSI Host Adapter Bios Screen ,the Second Line will say:ID#7 Advansys SCSI PCI Host Controller(Do Nothing Let Windows Load)
Now Lets Check the Installation> Start>Setting>Control Panel>System>Hardware> Device Manager>SCSI & Raid Controllers>Click On + Sign> It will say Advansys 3550 Ultra Wide SCSI Host Adapter
Congratulations! You Are Done installing Your Domex SCSI Controller Card, Refer to your SCSI harddrive installation guide for Win 2K.
More SCSI notes
Your SCSI drive gives different performance over the entire drive. The outer rings will have better performance then the inner rings. As a result, you should always throttle a little back from the top benchmark settings you get. If your capture card says you can handle 5.4 megs per second, use 4.7-5.0. This will insure that you maintain great looking, jitter free playback at all times.
Not all SCSI drives are equal, and not all SCSI controllers give the same performance. Your total SCSI performance is the result of both your drive and controller. Cutting corners on either end can severley limit you overall performance. We strongly recommend the Initio IO/SPEEDWAY 9100UW or Adaptec 2940UW of controllers. They are super easy to install, work great with all our capture cards and come with very useful SCSI utilities. For drives, we recommend Seagate Barracuda/Cheetah or Quantum or IBM Ultra SCSI drives.
We like external Ultra SCSI drives. Ultra SCSI drives give off a lot of heat and require loads of power. If your tower lacks airflow and cooling, or has a less then heavy duty powersupply, the reliability of your drive AND SYSTEM can be effected. Make sure your external drive has its own heavy duty power supply, ample cooling and rugged construction. A simple external shell is not a good solution.
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