A7N8X deluxe boot from RAID

[Kiriakos Georgiou]

I have two drives mirrored with the onboard RAID and Windows lives on
them. All was well until I installed another SATA RAID controller
(3ware).

The 3ware bios comes up first during boot (before the onboard bios),
the system sees there is no OS on the 3ware RAID and refuses to boot.

I couldn't see in the Award BIOS any setting to force booting from the
onboard SATA RAID. I think the main problem is that I have two SATA
controllers, and the one that doesn't have the OS always comes up
first.

Any ideas?

Kiriakos

 

[Paul]

I have two drives mirrored with the onboard RAID and Windows lives on
them. All was well until I installed another SATA RAID controller
(3ware).

The 3ware bios comes up first during boot (before the onboard bios),
the system sees there is no OS on the 3ware RAID and refuses to boot.

I couldn't see in the Award BIOS any setting to force booting from the
onboard SATA RAID. I think the main problem is that I have two SATA
controllers, and the one that doesn't have the OS always comes up
first.

Any ideas?

Kiriakos

Ideally, you want the ability to disable one of the two RAID BIOS.
I don't see an option for either product, to do that. (Disabling
the RAID BIOS, should prevent that chip from becoming a boot
option. The chip can still be used for data arrays, after Windows
boots. Disabling the RAID BIOS is not the same as disabling the
chip entirely - that is the only option for the SIL3112 on the
motherboard.)

PCI slot number establishes a priority, with PCI Slot 1 having a
higher priority (boots first) than PCI Slot 5. If you had two
controllers in PCI slots, you can move them around, to change
the boot order. But, there is no guarantee how the motherboard
designer has set up the onboard chips, with respect to the PCI
slots. And, I don't think the address decode of the slots is
documented in the manual. (Perhaps a utility of some sort can
tell you, or a more verbose OS like Linux or Unix will have
this info available.) Even without a utility, you can try the
3Ware in Slot 1 and Slot 5, to see if the motherboard SATA is
mapped somewhere between those two slots.

Maybe you could install the 3ware drivers on your system disk(s),
break the array, and move it to the 3ware ? Do a backup first.

Paul

 

[Mark]

I have two drives mirrored with the onboard RAID and Windows lives on
them. All was well until I installed another SATA RAID controller
(3ware).

The 3ware bios comes up first during boot (before the onboard bios),
the system sees there is no OS on the 3ware RAID and refuses to boot.

I couldn't see in the Award BIOS any setting to force booting from the
onboard SATA RAID. I think the main problem is that I have two SATA
controllers, and the one that doesn't have the OS always comes up
first.

Any ideas?

Kiriakos

DO you have "boot other devices" enabled?

 

[Scopacetic]

Why not use Norton Ghost 2003 and just transfer over to the drive(s) on the
2ware RAID?

DAW

 

[Kiriakos Georgiou]

DO you have "boot other devices" enabled?

If I enable that, it fires up 'NVIDIA boot agent', but it sits there
for 15-20 seconds and then fails. Does anybody know about this agent?
can it be configured?

Kiriakos

 

[Kiriakos Georgiou]

alt-r during boot does not install the 3ware bios, so I am not totally
screwed, but I am not happy with the award BIOS that does not let you
control the order. 3ware also told me to play around with the PCI
slot placement, but the ideal scenario is to have a better motherboard
BIOS.

I am also not happy with the crappy Silicon Image RAID utility - I
made the mistake of updating the device driver via the device manager
and now the GUI does not look like before and doesn't let me manage
raid sets. I reverted back to the old driver with no luck. I did a
re-install from the ASUS CD, no luck. One of the drives was dropped
for some reason (before I even installed the 3ware card - so it's
unrelated) and I have no way of fixing the problem.

ASUS boards are great when they work - I wish I could find the Lexus
of motherboards. US or Japanese made, 2x or 3x the price but with the
very best of everything plus good support.

K

 

[Doug Ramage]

Ideally, you want the ability to disable one of the two RAID BIOS.
I don't see an option for either product, to do that. (Disabling
the RAID BIOS, should prevent that chip from becoming a boot
option. The chip can still be used for data arrays, after Windows
boots. Disabling the RAID BIOS is not the same as disabling the
chip entirely - that is the only option for the SIL3112 on the
motherboard.)

PCI slot number establishes a priority, with PCI Slot 1 having a
higher priority (boots first) than PCI Slot 5. If you had two
controllers in PCI slots, you can move them around, to change
the boot order. But, there is no guarantee how the motherboard
designer has set up the onboard chips, with respect to the PCI
slots. And, I don't think the address decode of the slots is
documented in the manual. (Perhaps a utility of some sort can
tell you, or a more verbose OS like Linux or Unix will have
this info available.) Even without a utility, you can try the
3Ware in Slot 1 and Slot 5, to see if the motherboard SATA is
mapped somewhere between those two slots.

Maybe you could install the 3ware drivers on your system disk(s),
break the array, and move it to the 3ware ? Do a backup first.

Paul

The latest BIOS 1008 allows a choice between SATA and SCSI which may solve
your problem?