A7N8X-Deluxe and SATA boot

[Guest]

I have the A7N8X deluxe running well under XP on a standard IDE drive.
Installed a SATA drive and it works fine as a slave, so the hardware is OK.

If I set the bios to boot from SCSI, and install XP on the SATA drive - it
takes around a minute to get past the "checking DMI pool " message (this may
not be the exact wording).

Is this mobo intended to be able to boot from SATA drives? It's not clear
whether the SATA port is intended for RAID use only ....

Anyone have any words of wisdom to offer ??

Ed

 

[Doug Ramage]

I have the A7N8X deluxe running well under XP on a standard IDE drive.
Installed a SATA drive and it works fine as a slave, so the hardware is OK.

If I set the bios to boot from SCSI, and install XP on the SATA drive - it
takes around a minute to get past the "checking DMI pool " message (this may
not be the exact wording).

Is this mobo intended to be able to boot from SATA drives? It's not clear
whether the SATA port is intended for RAID use only ....

Anyone have any words of wisdom to offer ??

Ed

Yes, you can boot from SATA without RAID.

 

[Ben Pope]

I have the A7N8X deluxe running well under XP on a standard IDE drive.
Installed a SATA drive and it works fine as a slave, so the hardware is
OK.

If I set the bios to boot from SCSI, and install XP on the SATA drive - it
takes around a minute to get past the "checking DMI pool " message (this
may not be the exact wording).

Hmm, strange.

Is this mobo intended to be able to boot from SATA drives? It's not clear
whether the SATA port is intended for RAID use only ....

Works fine for me with one SATA drive and one IDE drive... and booting from
either SATA or IDE.

You can use one or two drives normally, or 2 drives in RAID on the SATA
controller.

Not entirely sure why you get the pause... what BIOS you running? I
thoroughly recommend 1007 for a Rev2.0 board. And 1004 for a rev 1.0x if
trying to get a high FSB (180+) and struggling with 1007.

Ben

 

[Eyman]

Hi,

Ive got a similar configuration with a WD Raptor on the primary SATA, a
Seagate on the secondary SATA and a WD IDE on the Primary Slave IDE.

When I frist connected this the system it would hang similar to yours and I
found out thatthe WD IDE was the cause.

The solution to this was to put the WD IDE drive onto cable select instead
of using a jumper.

The system can use both SATA drives in a non RAID setup.

If your IDE drive is a Western Digital this may be the problem.

Hope this helps.

Eyman

 

[Cybrow]

I have the A7N8X deluxe running well under XP on a standard IDE drive.
Installed a SATA drive and it works fine as a slave, so the hardware is OK.

If I set the bios to boot from SCSI, and install XP on the SATA drive - it
takes around a minute to get past the "checking DMI pool " message (this may
not be the exact wording).

Is this mobo intended to be able to boot from SATA drives? It's not clear
whether the SATA port is intended for RAID use only ....

Anyone have any words of wisdom to offer ??

Ed

Yes the board will boot from a SATA drive and does not need to be in
RAID configuration. Try temporarily disabling the PATA drive in BIOS
and see if it will boot off the SATA. You may need to remove XP from
the PATA and do a fresh install of XP on the SATA drive. My system
boots off a SATA and has a couple of PATAs as well.

 

[Guest]

I've tried booting off the SATA drive with the PATA drives removed and it's
still taking a long time to get past the DMI pool message, even if I install
DOS or XP on the SATA drive from scratch. It's as if there is some timeout
that has to happen before the drive is booted.

I'll follow up on the suggestion about setting cable select instead of the
default - if only I can find the jumper settings for my Maxtor 7Y250M0 -
it's not obvious on the Maxtor site...

I'll also investigate the bios update route. I've a V2 board and the bios
label suggests it's a 1005 version.

Ed

 

[Glen McLean]

I have the A7N8X deluxe running well under XP on a standard IDE drive.
Installed a SATA drive and it works fine as a slave, so the hardware is OK.

If I set the bios to boot from SCSI, and install XP on the SATA drive - it
takes around a minute to get past the "checking DMI pool " message (this may
not be the exact wording).

Is this mobo intended to be able to boot from SATA drives? It's not clear
whether the SATA port is intended for RAID use only ....

Anyone have any words of wisdom to offer ??

I am running just one SATA drive (Maxtor 80G, non-Raid, obviously),
and NO IDE hard-drives (just CD/DVD).
Boot is NOT slower than old IDE days.

I installed WinXP "fresh" on the SATA drive, after installing the SATA
drivers (downloaded from Asus site). WinXP install went trouble-free,
as did 1st Boot. IDE drive had previously been removed from system.

So all I can say from all that is, "Yes, it does work as advertised".


-
Glen
Ottawa
(Remove the ".NIT.invalid" from the end of my address)

 

[Glen McLean]

I've tried booting off the SATA drive with the PATA drives removed and it's
still taking a long time to get past the DMI pool message, even if I install
DOS or XP on the SATA drive from scratch. It's as if there is some timeout
that has to happen before the drive is booted.

I'll follow up on the suggestion about setting cable select instead of the
default - if only I can find the jumper settings for my Maxtor 7Y250M0 -
it's not obvious on the Maxtor site...

I'll also investigate the bios update route. I've a V2 board and the bios
label suggests it's a 1005 version.

Ed

P.S. to my response to your previous post:

All works fine on a Rev 1.04 board, BIOS 1001G

-
Glen
Ottawa
(Remove the ".NIT.invalid" from the end of my address)

 

[Ben Pope]

I've tried booting off the SATA drive with the PATA drives removed and
it's still taking a long time to get past the DMI pool message, even if I
install DOS or XP on the SATA drive from scratch. It's as if there is
some timeout that has to happen before the drive is booted.

Well it won't matter what OS is installed, since this is before it attempts
to boot any device.

I'm having some vague notion that I've heard of this before... Of course, my
brain won't actually tell me what the problem, was. I'll continue to think
about...

Ben

 

[Guest]

Thanks to all for your suggestions.
Upgrading the bios on my V2 board from 1005 to 1007 appeared to solve the
problem.
I can now load the ghost image of my XP boot system from the PATA drive to
the SATA drive, and by changing the boot order to SCSI first, the SATA drive
boots without the lengthy wait after the DMI pool message.

I also note that the bios POST message has changed, reporting only the SATA
drive installed rather than what is in each of the two possible SATA slots.

Ed

 

[Ben Pope]

Thanks to all for your suggestions.
Upgrading the bios on my V2 board from 1005 to 1007 appeared to solve the
problem.

There are various significant improvements in 1007 over 1005, which is why I
recommended the update. Notably the updated SATA BIOS.

I can now load the ghost image of my XP boot system from the PATA drive to
the SATA drive, and by changing the boot order to SCSI first, the SATA
drive boots without the lengthy wait after the DMI pool message.

I also note that the bios POST message has changed, reporting only the
SATA drive installed rather than what is in each of the two possible SATA
slots.

That's not the POST, that's the SATA BIOS screen... and yes, that's a
specific change that has been noted before... it seems to take less time to
realise that a drive is not there.

You may also find that it now reports Dual or Single Channel mode for the
memory, which you may not have had before.

Ensure you are using the latest SATA drivers too... they're linked from my
FAQ below:

Glad you solved the problem.

Ben