I've got a K8V newbie question

[Matt]

This is my first attempt at installing a SATA drive. The manual has all
sorts of info concerning RAID setups but I just want to install a single
36 gig WD Raptor as my primary drive, so...

I hooked up the drive to the SATA1 port, loaded the VIA RAID drivers
from a floppy (as it says on page 5-33) during the initial WinXP load.
It loads all the drivers and then reboots and then I get a warning
saying that no mass drive has been detected. Am I missing a step? Or
should I be using SATA RAID port 1 and the Promise drivers for a single
drive?

 

[Paul]

This is my first attempt at installing a SATA drive. The manual has all
sorts of info concerning RAID setups but I just want to install a single
36 gig WD Raptor as my primary drive, so...

I hooked up the drive to the SATA1 port, loaded the VIA RAID drivers
from a floppy (as it says on page 5-33) during the initial WinXP load.
It loads all the drivers and then reboots and then I get a warning
saying that no mass drive has been detected. Am I missing a step? Or
should I be using SATA RAID port 1 and the Promise drivers for a single
drive?

I'm not a RAID or a SATA user, but I'd start by entering the VIA RAID
BIOS during POST. Usually, there will be an option for "Auto Setup",
and with your single drive, the BIOS should just do the right thing.
Sometimes, there is an option to mark the drive as bootable, and
once this is done, you'll see an "*" next to the drive entry on
the BIOS screen. That at least indicates to the RAID BIOS on the
next boot, that you have a single drive array and it is a potential
boot candidate. (Obviously, at some point, your boot choice has to
be reflected in the BIOS as well. Any time a drive is added to recent
Asus BIOS, you need to enter the BIOS and edit the boot order to make
it work properly.)

Sounds like you've already done the F6 thing during the install
of WinXP. Try it again, only this time with the drive set up in
the RAID BIOS first.

AFAIK the RAID BIOS is only needed if you plan to boot from the
drive. I think if you have another device to boot from, devices
on one of these interfaces can be used for data only, and all
it should take is installing a driver onto the boot drive, so
the new drive can be accessed. Usually, there will be a drive
management or control program, that has the same functionality
as the RAID BIOS, and in there, if you needed to set up an array,
or do stuff to it, you can do that while in Windows.

Via actually provides two BIOS code files, one is for RAID operation
and one makes the SATA interface look like an ordinary drive. But
the problem is, there is no way for an end user to install this snippet
of code into the BIOS flash chip. There are tools floating around on
the Internet to do it, but Asus likes to make subtle changes to the
BIOS file format, that makes editing a BIOS file a bit more work
(and risky, as flashing a bad BIOS image into the flash chip can
prevent the board from POSTing).

It is too bad Asus doesn't provide two BIOS file versions, one with
the SATA RAID and the other just vanilla SATA, but the potential for
confusion would be too great to make that practical.

Also, when installing Windows, I would suggest that only the hard
drive that you want to install on, be present and connected to an
interface. If you have multiple hard drives present, it just
increases the odds that a critical part of Windows ends up on the
wrong drive.

Report back any progress you make. Just curious.

Paul

 

[John Blaustein]

Matt,

I had the same issue this past week with a new P4P800-E Deluxe system I
built. (My first time building my own PC... a real adventure.)

Look at BIOS setup>Boot. In the Boot Device Priority, set the SATA drive as
the 1st boot device -- I gather you did this. ALSO, in the Hard Disk
Drives, set the SATA drive as the 1st Drive. If you make both of these
setting point to the SATA drive, I would think it should work.

Once you boot to XP from the SATA drive, you can format the second drive to
NTFS (if you like) using Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk
Management.

Hope this helps.

John

 

[John Blaustein]

One more thing...

I disabled the Promise RAID controller in BIOS setup. Since I'm not using
RAID, that seemed like the right thing to do and I've had no problems since.

John

 

[Milleron]

Thanks for the detailed help!!

I finally got it. For some strange reason if I used the quick format during
the windows install it wouldn't work, but if I did the regular format it
worked just fine(makes me wonder about this OEM drive I purchased).

You can't do a "quick format" unless the drive was previously
formatted. Under the common definition of a "quick" format, you're
just erasing the FAT and leaving the data on the previously-formatted
drive. If your SATA drive had never been formatted -- you didn't say
-- then a "quick" format, would leave it totally unformatted. Would
that explain the situation? I don't think the problem was with the
OEM drive.


Ron

 

[Matt]

One more thing...

I disabled the Promise RAID controller in BIOS setup. Since I'm not using
RAID, that seemed like the right thing to do and I've had no problems since.

That was the last thing I did last night as well... I got tired of
waiting for it to search for drives that weren't there. I did set the
Boot Device Priority to the SATA drive but didn't see the SATA in the
Hard Disk Drives. Of course it was a long one last night and I probably
just over looked it. I'll try it again tonight. Thanks for all the
help!!

 

[Matt]

You can't do a "quick format" unless the drive was previously
formatted. Under the common definition of a "quick" format, you're
just erasing the FAT and leaving the data on the previously-formatted
drive. If your SATA drive had never been formatted -- you didn't say
-- then a "quick" format, would leave it totally unformatted. Would
that explain the situation? I don't think the problem was with the
OEM drive.

Well I wasn't aware that you couldn't do the quick format on a new
drive. In fact when one of our Dell's at work lost it's system drive
they sent a tech out to replace it and I am almost positive he did the
quick format on the new drive he brought as a replacement. My SATA
drive was a brand new OEM drive that should have been unformatted. I
guess it was my fault then, because as soon as I did the normal format
everything worked.

 

[Milleron]

Well I wasn't aware that you couldn't do the quick format on a new
drive. In fact when one of our Dell's at work lost it's system drive
they sent a tech out to replace it and I am almost positive he did the
quick format on the new drive he brought as a replacement. My SATA
drive was a brand new OEM drive that should have been unformatted. I
guess it was my fault then, because as soon as I did the normal format
everything worked.

I could be confused about the definition of "quick format" used by
installation programs. Under Windows, I'm sure that the "quick"
format of a floppy or HD means that it's just going to erase the FAT,
which is very fast. The disk then appears both empty and formatted on
its next access.
I believe that there's also a formatting method that's done on the fly
-- i.e., format as you go, so to speak. If that's what's meant by the
XP setup program, then it would not explain your problem. I've
installed XP a few times, and I simply don't recall being given that
"quick format" option. If I had been, I think that I'd have chosen it
like you did, though. ;-)


Ron

 

[Matt]

Report back any progress you make. Just curious.

Paul

Thanks for the detailed help!!

I finally got it. For some strange reason if I used the quick format during
the windows install it wouldn't work, but if I did the regular format it
worked just fine(makes me wonder about this OEM drive I purchased). I also
find it strange that the user's manual focuses almost completely on SATA
RAID and doesn't seem to worry about the single drive user. I realize that
the overall config isn't that much different, but the average joe might need
that explained a little.

Of course now I have another problem. If I hook up my backup data drive
from my old Win 98 system (no OS installed on the drive) the system wants to
boot from it first. I tried reconfiguring the boot device priority in the
BIOS so that the SATA drive was first in line but this only locked the
system up. I guess I'm just not meant to run a SATA drive as the primary
drive for this system.