A8V Deluxe can't see SATA RAID 1 drives

[Joe Bedford]

Hi

Trying to convert my working SATA system into RAID 1. Two identical WD SATA
drives work fine with Windows XPPro installed on one connected to the VIA
SATA controller. Used the tools to create a RAID 1 array with copy. Copy
function siad it completed OK. Windows still working fine.

Upon next reboot, BIOS doesn't see the drives / drive array. I have SATA
Boot Rom On. In the VIA RAID Bios, drives are designated "BOOT".

Is there something else I have to turn ON? I know the A8V-E Deluxe has a
"SATA / RAID ON" setting, but I can't find anything like that in the A8V
Deluxe BIOS.

HELP!

Joe

 

[Mercury]

I dont have an A8V manual in front of me..

Look for some thing that allows you to specify what the HDD boot devide is.
Generally, in one place you can set boot order as
Floppy
CD/DVD
HDD

Elsewhere you indicate what the HDD boot device is and a menu might look
sort of like this:

IDE
SATA1
SATA2
Add In Controller

Try the "Add in controller" - type entry which should be more meaningful in
your BIOS.

If you have USB drives / memory sticks installed / any other uneeded device
attached I would remove it to make sure it does not fowl up drive
assignments and boot order.

Failing that check for a BIOS update.

 

[Rila]

Hi

Trying to convert my working SATA system into RAID 1. Two identical WD
SATA drives work fine with Windows XPPro installed on one connected to the
VIA SATA controller. Used the tools to create a RAID 1 array with copy.
Copy function siad it completed OK. Windows still working fine.

Upon next reboot, BIOS doesn't see the drives / drive array. I have SATA
Boot Rom On. In the VIA RAID Bios, drives are designated "BOOT".

Is there something else I have to turn ON? I know the A8V-E Deluxe has a
"SATA / RAID ON" setting, but I can't find anything like that in the A8V
Deluxe BIOS.

HELP!

Joe

Joe, all that is necessary to boot from a RAID configuration on the VIA
controller is to enable in the BIOS, "On Chip SATA Boot ROM". I am not
running RAID 1, but I am running RAID 0 and have no problems booting from
the drives. Make sure you have the driver loaded in Windows. Since you say
it works fine with just one drive not in RAID configuration, I doubt this is
the problem, but my WD drives would not spin up on the VIA controller until
I installed a jumper on pins 5 & 6 on the drives. This is the third set of
jumper pairs to the left of the power connector.

 

[Joe Bedford]

Joe, all that is necessary to boot from a RAID configuration on the VIA
controller is to enable in the BIOS, "On Chip SATA Boot ROM". I am not
running RAID 1, but I am running RAID 0 and have no problems booting from
the drives. Make sure you have the driver loaded in Windows. Since you
say it works fine with just one drive not in RAID configuration, I doubt
this is the problem, but my WD drives would not spin up on the VIA
controller until I installed a jumper on pins 5 & 6 on the drives. This
is the third set of jumper pairs to the left of the power connector.

Thanks for the input Rila. As it turns out, you are 100% on the mark. What I
needed to do was to POWER OFF the PC and power back on. BIOS didn't see the
RAID 1 array until I did a cold start. Now everything is working just fine.

Cheers, Joe

 

[Rila]

Thanks for the input Rila. As it turns out, you are 100% on the mark. What
I needed to do was to POWER OFF the PC and power back on. BIOS didn't see
the RAID 1 array until I did a cold start. Now everything is working just
fine.

Cheers, Joe

Great! Glad you got it working. I've seen that happen many times with plug
and play hardware. You have to do a complete power off before it will
detect it. A soft reboot doesn't get the job done.