Got through to Seagate level 2 support. They recommended I connect the drives without going through a RAID controller for testing purposes. Note, I am using the X38 chipset on an ASUS motherboard. I was using the SATA RAID setting in the BIOS (which uses the ICH9R embedded controller.) With that, SeaTools for Windows cannot successfully run an inquiry on the drives.
So, I switched the SATA BIOS setting to IDE. Same physical ports on the motherboard, but different interface, didn't have to do an F6 WinXP install nor supply any drivers to install windows.
With this configuration, I am able to run SeaTools for Windows and successfully query the drives.
* Problem is, SeaTools does not report on the cache (I don't see any indication of cache after running an inquiry.) That was the point of this reinstall (to be able to run SeaTools, according to Level 2 support, to get an indicator of the reported cache.
* SIW still reports 0 KBytes for Controller Buffer Size on Drive
* However, here is the fascinating part: HDTune benchmarking one drive using the IDE setting in the BIOS rather than RAID now shows:
Transfer Rate MB/s (Min, Max, Avg, Burst) ... 51, 108, 84.5, 197.3
It strongly appears that in this configuration, the on disk cache is working, as the burst rate is nearly 200 MB/s and about 2.5x the average transfer rate.
I still want a utility which will accurately read back the amount of cache on the disk so we know what is being reported to the OS. On the other hand, this seems to suggest that the issue is with the ICH9R controller from Intel or perhaps just in the firmware for that controller and maybe it's something the motherboard manufacturers need to resolve. I hope Seagate will work with them on it! I'll be glad to help, but I need to get this new system up soon, so I won't be able to keep reinstalling windows or reconfiguring drives for more than a couple days.
