NEED HELP: Abit BP6 & Promise RAID cards boot issue

[MPG]

Hey, maybe someone here can help me out... I haven't been able to find
anything anywhere on this. Basically, what I want to be able to do is have
two Promise RAID cards in my system, and still be able to boot off one of
them. Here is details on my setup...

I am running on an Abit BP6 mobo with the latest BIOS (RU). I have a
FastTrak100 in PCI slot 1 that has my bootable OS array. My boot sequence
is set to "EXT, A, C" in the BIOS, with EXT meaning SCSI. With this setup,
I have absolutely no problems booting.

Now, I add a FastTrak SX4000 lite, and throw that in PCI slot 5. When I
turn on my machine, it POSTs, goes through the FT100 BIOS screen, goes
through the SX4000 BIOS screen, then the system goes to "Verifying DMI Pool
Data .." and hangs there.

Any ideas on how I can get this to work??? Promise says they don't support
running two of their controllers at once, but maybe there's a way to get it
to work?

Thanks a lot!!!

 

[David Maynard]

Hey, maybe someone here can help me out... I haven't been able to find
anything anywhere on this. Basically, what I want to be able to do is have
two Promise RAID cards in my system, and still be able to boot off one of
them. Here is details on my setup...

I am running on an Abit BP6 mobo with the latest BIOS (RU). I have a
FastTrak100 in PCI slot 1 that has my bootable OS array. My boot sequence
is set to "EXT, A, C" in the BIOS, with EXT meaning SCSI. With this setup,
I have absolutely no problems booting.

Now, I add a FastTrak SX4000 lite, and throw that in PCI slot 5. When I
turn on my machine, it POSTs, goes through the FT100 BIOS screen, goes
through the SX4000 BIOS screen, then the system goes to "Verifying DMI Pool
Data .." and hangs there.

Any ideas on how I can get this to work??? Promise says they don't support
running two of their controllers at once, but maybe there's a way to get it
to work?

Thanks a lot!!!

If I told you to "remove the Promise controller," which one would you pull
out? (no, I didn't mean that one) Second question: when the BIOS says "boot
from EXT," which one does that mean? The problem is the BIOS has no way to
know which one 'EXT" is and is likely trying to boot both. Not going to
work that way.

Its possible that by juggling the cards in various PCI slots you'd find a
combination that causes one to 'grab it' and assert itself as 'the' EXT
device, but I doubt it.

A possible workaround, however, is to set up a small boot partition on an
IDE drive (since the BIOS can figure out which is which), just to kick
start it, and then have it finish booting from one of the Promise cards
(I.E. boot.ini specifies which device to boot the O.S. from).

 

[MPG]

Wow, I never really thought of that (doing the boot.ini thing), although
that might be a pretty good idea (as long as the boot.ini can tell which
controller holds the OS array). I am still gonna try to make this work, but
if I can't, that might be a neat trick to do. Thanks!

 

[Ed Medlin]

If I told you to "remove the Promise controller," which one would you pull

out? (no, I didn't mean that one) Second question: when the BIOS says
"boot from EXT," which one does that mean? The problem is the BIOS has no
way to know which one 'EXT" is and is likely trying to boot both. Not
going to work that way.

Its possible that by juggling the cards in various PCI slots you'd find a
combination that causes one to 'grab it' and assert itself as 'the' EXT
device, but I doubt it.

A possible workaround, however, is to set up a small boot partition on an
IDE drive (since the BIOS can figure out which is which), just to kick
start it, and then have it finish booting from one of the Promise cards
(I.E. boot.ini specifies which device to boot the O.S. from).

How do you set that up David? I have a P4PE that has that 'funky' raid built
in that you have to have one SATA and one IDE drive to have a raid array. I
have a Promise SATA 150 PCI card with two 120 drives on an array and seeing
that both are Promise chips there is no way to disable the on-board raid
without disabling the PCI one too, so it always does it's search for any
drives connected to it on boot and doesn't find anything of course. It isn't
a really big deal, but does delay the bootup a good bit. I am kinda picky
about wanting things to work the way I want them to, so if I can disable
that damn on-board raid I would have a bit more piece of mind.......

Thanks IA,
Ed

 

[David Maynard]

How do you set that up David?

The setup I described wouldn't solve your problem. It's to let both cards
work, not 'disable' one of them.

I have a P4PE that has that 'funky' raid built
in that you have to have one SATA and one IDE drive to have a raid array.

I haven't used that board but the Asus specs say you can do it with two
SATA alone. http://www.asus.com/mb/socket478/p4pe/specification.htm

"RAID 0 supported by... or dual Serial ATA connections alone."

I
have a Promise SATA 150 PCI card with two 120 drives on an array and seeing
that both are Promise chips there is no way to disable the on-board raid
without disabling the PCI one too,

I don't know why disabling the on-board controller would have anything to
do with the plug-in but why don't you use the two SATA drives on the
on-board one since it says it'll do two SATA RAID?

 

[Ed Medlin]

The setup I described wouldn't solve your problem. It's to let both cards
work, not 'disable' one of them.


I haven't used that board but the Asus specs say you can do it with two
SATA alone. http://www.asus.com/mb/socket478/p4pe/specification.htm

"RAID 0 supported by... or dual Serial ATA connections alone."

Well, bust my britches David!..............I even read manuals too. My
memory is just not very good. ........ Thanks for that info.

Ed