A8V Deluxe and SATA Drive

M

Marcus

Is it possible to run 1 SATA drive on this board as the primary drive? It
appears that evenything related to SATA drives are Raid and have to run in
pairs. Am I misunderstanding? There is a Promise Raid Controller and a VIA
Controller that runs raid as well. I just want to setup a 1 SATA drive
system. Can this MB do this?
I have another system with the A7N8X Deluxe and I run it with 1 SATA Drive.

Thanks,

Marcus
 
J

John Hollingsworth

Is it possible to run 1 SATA drive on this board as the primary drive?
It appears that evenything related to SATA drives are Raid and have to
run in pairs. Am I misunderstanding? There is a Promise Raid Controller
and a VIA Controller that runs raid as well. I just want to setup a 1
SATA drive system. Can this MB do this?
I have another system with the A7N8X Deluxe and I run it with 1 SATA
Drive.

Thanks,

Marcus
You can run 1, (or 2), SATA drive(s), off the Promise controller with the
BIOS set to "IDE". Some people run 1 SATA drive off the Via controller.
Note: look for BIOS screen "advanced", "Onboard devices...", "onboard
Promise...", "operating mode" = IDE.

The problem comes with running XP64 beta with 2 x SATA drives in IDE mode
as separate disks, as there are no drivers for this option at present.

John

Please remove "NO-SPAM" if sending email.
 
M

Marcus

John,

Thanks for your help. I'll take a look at it today. I have installed the
promise driver during XP install but XP states there are no drives attached
to the system. I will try to load the VIA driver today I guess. I'm
connecting the SATA drive to the VIA SATA1 connector. There is the VIA SATA2
connector. Then, there are the SATA Raid1 and SATA Raid 2. But, it appears
the SATA1 and SATA2 can be used as Raid as well. A little confusing the me.

Thanks again,

Marcus
 
M

m.marien

John Hollingsworth said:
You can run 1, (or 2), SATA drive(s), off the Promise controller with the
BIOS set to "IDE". Some people run 1 SATA drive off the Via controller.
Note: look for BIOS screen "advanced", "Onboard devices...", "onboard
Promise...", "operating mode" = IDE.

The problem comes with running XP64 beta with 2 x SATA drives in IDE mode
as separate disks, as there are no drivers for this option at present.

The XP64 driver doesn't work with a single SATA in IDE mode either. Can you
run the Promise controller in RAID with a single drive ? will XP64 load then
? and do you have to reformat if you change from IDE mode ?
 
J

John Hollingsworth

mm AT RiverCityCanada DOT said:
The XP64 driver doesn't work with a single SATA in IDE mode either.

I know
Can
you run the Promise controller in RAID with a single drive ?

Haven't tried and not sure, but think not.

But you can run a single drive with the Via controller. Drivers on Planet
AMD64. Set up an array with 1 drive.


John

Please remove "NO-SPAM" if sending email.
 
M

Marcus

John,

What do you mean by " Drivers on Planet AMD64. Set up an array with 1
drive."?

Thanks,
Marcus
 
M

m.marien

[snip]
Haven't tried and not sure, but think not.

But you can run a single drive with the Via controller. Drivers on Planet
AMD64. Set up an array with 1 drive.

Thanks. I suspect the drive needs to be repartitioned and formated when I
switch controllers so I'll give that a try the next time I need to
reinstall.
 
J

John Hollingsworth

mm AT RiverCityCanada DOT said:
[snip]
Haven't tried and not sure, but think not.

But you can run a single drive with the Via controller. Drivers on
Planet
AMD64. Set up an array with 1 drive.

Thanks. I suspect the drive needs to be repartitioned and formated when
I switch controllers so I'll give that a try the next time I need to
reinstall.
Right. Good luck :)

John

Please remove "NO-SPAM" if sending email.
 
J

John Hollingsworth

John,

What do you mean by " Drivers on Planet AMD64. Set up an array with 1
drive."?

Thanks,
Marcus

Sorry - I was thinking of the drivers and set up for X64, which you don't
need, forget it.

I suggest you set up your single SATA drive on the Promise controller with
the BIOS set to IDE.


John

Please remove "NO-SPAM" if sending email.
 
C

Colin Wilson

Marcus said:
Is it possible to run 1 SATA drive on this board as the primary drive? It
appears that evenything related to SATA drives are Raid and have to run in
pairs. Am I misunderstanding? There is a Promise Raid Controller and a VIA
Controller that runs raid as well. I just want to setup a 1 SATA drive
system. Can this MB do this?
I have another system with the A7N8X Deluxe and I run it with 1 SATA Drive.

You've probably already got this working - but in case anyone else
needs to know...

You can install your single SATA drive on either the VIA primary SATA
port, or the Promise one. If you install it on the VIA port, disable
the Promise in the Bios (the DEL one, not the TAB one), and vice
versa. I suggest you use the VIA port - no reason except it worked
for me!

Next, make a floppy disk containing the Promise or VIA Raid driver.
Obviously you'll need access to another computer to do this! Run the
makedisk utility in the appropriate directory under 'Drivers' on the
ASUS CD. It tells you to insert a blank floppy, and does a sector
copy so you can't get it wrong by copying the wrong files.

Turn on your (new) computer and press DEL to go into the BIOS. Select
the boot options, and make sure the CD rom is first in the boot order
(you can change it back later once XP's installed.)

Boot from the XP CD. Almost immediately there's a message at the top
of the screen sayig press 'F6 to load additional drivers'. Press it.
It doesn't do anything straight away, but a litle later it will prompt
you to press 'S' to load the additional drivers from the floppy.

When you press 'S', you get a list of VIA SATA drivers. Obviously
select the 'XP' ones.

If you get a message complaining about an error in a particular line
of 'C' code, it's most likely because there's a physical error on the
floppy disk. That happened to me. I went back to the other PC and
made another driver floppy and all was well.

Once XP was installed I immediately loaded the ASUS drivers &
utilities.

There's one other 'gotcha'. If your hard disk is over 137Gb, your XP
boot CD will only format the first 137Gb of it. This is fixed in
SP1/SP2, but that may not be on your XP CD. Two solutions to this...

1. You could live with 137Gb to start with, then reclaim the lost
space with Partition Magic later, after you've installed SP2

2. You could create a bootable XP install disk, complete with SP2
fixes. Google for 'XP slipstreaming', or look at
http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm

I did the second one!
 

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