Problem with Promise PCI SATA controller

[Daniel Prince]

I bought a 2 tb SATA hard drive and a Promise FastTrack 376 (tm) PCI
controller card. The card detects the drive but the drive does not
show up in Windows XP's disk manager.

The card came with no printed instructions. I found a test file on
the CD with installation instructions but the files and directories
it mentions do not exist on the little CD that came with the card. I
tried running all the setup.exe files on the CD except for the ones
in the usb2.0 directories. They all said that I did not have the
correct hardware.

I installed all the *.inf files in the XP directories. The card now
shows up in device manager but the drive does not show up in device
manager or in the disk manager.

Does this controller card work with one drive or does it work only
as a raid? Does anyone know which *.inf files I should use?

This is the root directory of the CD:

Volume in drive S is Driver Serial number is 8E74:A98D
Directory of S:\*

9/16/2009 20:48 <DIR> Ess
9/16/2009 20:51 <DIR> pdc20319_S150_TX4_Drv_1.00.0.37
9/16/2009 20:50 <DIR> pdc20378
9/16/2009 20:48 <DIR> USB2.0 CARD
9/16/2009 20:48 <DIR> VT6410 VT6421_Driver_V550B

This is part of what it says in the file WinXP.txt:

10. Select "Have Disk". Browse the RAID mode path {CD-ROM
Drive}:\Drivers\Promise\378RAID\WinXP or IDE mode path {CD-ROM
Drive}:\Drivers\Promise\378ATA\WinXP to the driver and click OK.

The directories and files listed above do NOT exist on the CD.

Does anyone know how I can get this card to work? Thank you in
advance for all replies.

 

[TE Cheah]

| Does anyone know how I can get this card to work?

Pci slot / chipset pins may be dirty / shorted by carbon in dust.
Chk pci version ( via Sandra if necessary ) of mboard & card,
some cards need v2.3, but manufacturer does not reveal this,
to sell more.
Some card / driver can work only with certain mboard chipsets
, see inf files content ( many list the chipsets supported ).
If you live near manufacturer, phone its technician for advice.

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

I bought a 2 tb SATA hard drive and a Promise FastTrack 376 (tm) PCI
controller card. The card detects the drive but the drive does not
show up in Windows XP's disk manager.

The card came with no printed instructions. I found a test file on
the CD with installation instructions but the files and directories
it mentions do not exist on the little CD that came with the card. I
tried running all the setup.exe files on the CD except for the ones
in the usb2.0 directories. They all said that I did not have the
correct hardware.

I installed all the *.inf files in the XP directories. The card now
shows up in device manager but the drive does not show up in device
manager or in the disk manager.

Does this controller card work with one drive or does it work only
as a raid? Does anyone know which *.inf files I should use?

This is the root directory of the CD:

Volume in drive S is Driver Serial number is 8E74:A98D
Directory of S:\*

9/16/2009 20:48 <DIR> Ess
9/16/2009 20:51 <DIR> pdc20319_S150_TX4_Drv_1.00.0.37
9/16/2009 20:50 <DIR> pdc20378
9/16/2009 20:48 <DIR> USB2.0 CARD
9/16/2009 20:48 <DIR> VT6410 VT6421_Driver_V550B

This is part of what it says in the file WinXP.txt:

10. Select "Have Disk". Browse the RAID mode path {CD-ROM
Drive}:\Drivers\Promise\378RAID\WinXP or IDE mode path {CD-ROM
Drive}:\Drivers\Promise\378ATA\WinXP to the driver and click OK.

The directories and files listed above do NOT exist on the CD.

Have you tried:

right-click My Computer -> left-click Manage -> double left-click
Storage -> double left-click Disk Management (local) ?

You should then see two panes, an upper one mostly in white that shows
the disks and partitions that currently work normally, and a lower one
mostly in grey that shows disk that are inactive (empty DVD or CD
drives, unconnected external drives) or unpartitioned or unformatted.
Right-click on the drive to install it.

Software and documentation for the Promise FastTrak s150 TX2 Plus can
be found here, in the download section for legacy products:

http://tinyurl.com/y3st7ud

http://firstweb.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=107&category=all&os=0&go=GO

Your controller uses the Promise PDC20376 chip, but it's not a real
Promise card because it has an external SATA connector at the back
(probably not real eSATA -- it's not real eSATA if an internal SATA
cable fits it). The dealer's description is inaccurate because it
says this card is SATA 300, but this Promise chip supports only half
that speed and is even labeled SATA 150. Fortunately that doesn't
matter because hard disks can't sustain 300MB/s (solid state drives
are another matter), and the PCI bus is limited to 133MB/s. More
importantly, this SATA 150 chip recognizes SATA 300 drives, which some
other SATA 150 chips, like the VIA VT6421, can't do. Another odd
thing: the photographs provided by the dealer show a card that has no
BIOS chip, just an empty space where such a chip would normally go
(between the wide IDE connector and the SATA connector at top). It's
actually possible to boot drives connected to the controller even if
the controller lacks this chip, provided a copy of the card's BIOS is
put into the motherboard's BIOS chip, something that people have
actually done. A program called CBROM can do that.