Intel® Matrix Storage Manager
Production Version 5.0.0.1032
Release Notes

March 23, 2005
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Supported Operating Systems

Microsoft* Windows* XP Home Edition
Microsoft* Windows* XP Professional
Microsoft* Windows* XP 64-bit Edition for 64-bit Extended System
Microsoft* Windows* 2000 Professional
Microsoft* Windows* 2000 Advanced Server**
Microsoft* Windows* Server 2003
Microsoft* Windows* Server 2003 64-bit
Microsoft* Windows* Media Center Edition

** Not available for ICH5R or ICH6M

Revision History

Date | Driver Revision | Build Number
March 23, 2005 | Production Version 5.0.0.1032 | 1032
March 18, 2005 | Production Candidate 5.0.0.1032 | 1032
February 25, 2005 | Beta 2 5.0.0.1026 | 1026
January 14, 2005 | Beta 5.0.0.1018 | 1018
December 02, 2004 | Alpha 5.0.0.1011 | 1011
October 14, 2004 | Pre-Alpha 5.0.0.1003 | 1003

New Features

New Features in Baseline 5.0.0.1003
Feature | Description
Multi-Disk RAID 0 | Create a RAID 0 volume containing a minimum of two hard drives and maximum of four hard drives.
RAID 5 | Stripe data and parity across three or four hard drives.
RAID 10 | A fault-tolerant RAID level that requires 4 hard drives. Two, two-drive RAID 0 arrays are mirrored together for performance and fault tolerance.
RAID Spare | Mark one or more hard drives as the destination for automatic rebuilds.
RAID Level Migration | Migrate from RAID 0, 1, and 10 to RAID 5.
Write-Back Cache and Coalescer | A RAID 5 feature designed to enhance read and write latency of an array. Multiple I/O requests from the host are grouped into fewer requests and written from the cache to the volumes at defined intervals.
64-bit Operating System Support | Supports 64bit Extended System operating systems.

Limitations

1. Degraded RAID 5 volume changes to Failed state after a dirty shutdown is Expected behavior
For bootable volumes, this expected behavior is a problem, since the OS won't boot after exiting the Option ROM. However, a second attempt to reboot
will successfully boot.
For non-bootable RAID5 volumes, this is no problem, since the user can use the storage utility to recover the volume.

2. Complete parity re-initialization after a dirty shutdown when dirty stripe journaling disabled
Description:
If the source and destination RAID stripes are not equal in size and dirty stripe journaling is disabled. If a dirty shutdown occurs while journaling is disabled, a complete parity re-initialization will be started after the system is powered again.
If the stripe sizes are the same and if the dirty stripe journaling is enabled, there will not be parity re-initialization.
The stripe size is the number of data disks in the RAID volume * the strip size.
What is Dirty Shutdown?
An abnormal shutdown of the system (for example pulling the power cord while the system is running) during a write operation in progress.
When is dirty stripe journaling disabled?
If either disk write cache is enabled, or if a RAID level migration is in progress where the source and destination stripe sizes are different.
For example: For 4 disks scenarios:
RAID0 with 128K strip = 512K stripe
RAID1 with 128K strip = 128K stripe (Only 2 disks)
RAID10 with 128K strip = 256K stripe
RAID5 with 128K strip = 384K stripe
RAID0 with 64K strip = 256Kstripe
3. How do you enable Dirty Strip Journaling?
Currently the Dirty Strip Journaling is enabled only when the Hard Drive Write Cache is disabled. Intel Matrix Storage Console provides options to enable or disable Hard Drive Write Cache. There will no feature change seen in future releases.
4. Hot-plug Failure (Issue # 1592388)
Description of the problem:
In a RAID Configuration with two or more Serial ATA drives powered by a daisy chain power cable, a loss of power due to voltage drop is seen to the connected drives when attempting to plug a drive in could result in a degraded volume going to Failed volume state.
A sample configuration:
Create a 3 disk RAID5 volume on ports 0, 1 and 2.
Unplug power to disk on port 2. Volume goes Degraded.
Reconnect power to disk on port 2.
Failures occur on ports 0 or 1 causing volume to go failed due to loss of power to disk 0 or 1.
Workaround
Use a separate power cable from the power supply to individual Serial ATA drives. While exercising hot-plug feature, the remaining Serial ATA drives will not suffer from no power state.

This will be handled in subsequent release.
5. Online Help file - Default strip size for RAID Levels not specified.
Online Help file does not specify the default Strip size for Raid levels 0, 1, 5, 10. This will be handled in subsequent release.

Known Issues

Known Issues
Reference No: | Description | Build
1596018 | RAID1 migration causes Windows Event Viewer EventID 12: "The device disappeared without first being prepared for removal". | -
1592388 | Hot-Plug glitch failure. | -
1591559 | Migrating to RAID5 from RAID0 takes too long. | -
1584505 | Cannot recover from single HDD failure on Matrix RAID if no OS on RAID 1 volume. | -

Issues Resolved

Issues Resolved in Production Candidate 5.0.0.1032

Reference No: | Description | Components | Affected OS's

1612476 | When Dirty Stripe Journaling and Hard Drive Cache enabled, if dirty shutdown encountered, then rebuild parity. | Driver | All Supported
1602670 | RaidCfg32 removes metadata from all drives when only one drive is selected | Driver | All Supported
1602689 | Intel Matrix Storage Manager Blue Screens on Death, the system on a RAID 5 volume as soon as a disk is removed with IO running. | Driver | All Supported
1601764 | Migration from RAID 0 to 5 need to indicate the migration hours approximately to the actual migration period. | Storage Console | All Supported
1606306 | Intel Matrix Storage Console doesn't update when switched from Advance to Basic while having a Wizard open | Storage Console | All Supported
1606050 | Degraded RAID 10 volumes will fail on the first I/O. | Option ROM | All Supported
1602697 | Raidcfg32 /Spare option uses the drive number maintained internally and not the actual physical port number. | Raid Configuration | All Supported

Issues Resolved in Beta 2 5.0.0.1026

Reference No: | Description | Components | Affected OS's

1599151 | S3 Resume Time taking longer. | Driver | All Supported
1600589 | With caching enabled on RAID 5 Volume spin down commands never reach the disk. | Driver | All Supported
1599537 | Windows* XP Blue Screens after completing a RAID 1 rebuild. | Driver | All Supported
1569495 | Functional Failure ATAPI device under Intel Matrix Storage Manager control unable to perform writes. | Driver | All Supported
1594737 | RAID Migration in Storage Console should Warn user about the migration time (appropriate) before the migration. | Storage Console | All Supported
1594765 | Option ROM defaults RAID 10 strip size =128K, and Intel Matrix Storage Console defaults RAID 10 strip size = 64K. | Storage Console | All Supported
1598817 | System non-bootable when two of the drives are removed in a booting RAID 10 configuration. | Option ROM | All Supported
1599267 | When rebuilding a RAID10 the Option ROM resets the status to degraded. | Option ROM | All Supported
1597866 | System locks-up when RAID 5 volume is created with RaidCfg.exe. | Raid Configuration | All Supported

Issues Resolved in Beta 5.0.0.1018

Reference No: | Description | Affected OS's

1440113 | Monitor not displaying all tray icon messages during a sequence of SMART events. | All Supported
1570794 | No error checking on synchronous commands in AHCI code base (e.g. PollOnCommandIssued) | All Supported
1566866 | Hang on resume from S4 during HCT12.0 driver verifier | All Supported
1581877 | WMI interface based Diagnostic software application conflicts with Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver | All Supported
1583308 | Driver doesn't rebuild to a spare after the destination disk of a rebuilding RAID 1 volume goes failed | All Supported

Issues Resolved in Alpha 5.0.0.1011

Reference No: | Description | Affected OS's

1435546 | The hiber-driver uses too much memory. | All Supported
1542554 | BSOD during HCT Driver Verification Filter test with 4 disk RAID 5. | All Supported
1544348 | BSOD when the destination disk is removed in the middle of a RAID 1 Create Volume From Disk operation. | All Supported
1562338 | Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IAA) will occupy huge CPU resource periodically. | All Supported
1555192 | BSOD during suspend on RAID 0 array Windows* XP with SP2, IAA4.5 driver | All Supported

Issues Resolved in Baseline 5.0.0.1003

Reference No: | Description | Affected OS's

None | Baseline Build | N/A