Re-detect PM-HDD

[PC User]

My system was working perfectly, but I disconnected and removed my
HDDs to clean them and then re-installed them. I have an ASUS P5W DH
Deluxe motherboard. The last time I installed Windows Vista on my
system it went to my new SATA HDD installed through the SATA1_RAID
socket on the motherboard and not to my primary IDE harddrive. After
I re-installed all my HDDs, the system boots correctly, but my primary
harddrive doen't appear in Windows Explorer, nor in the Computer
Manager's Disk Management window. The primary harddrive does,
however; show up in the BIOS, just not in Windows. I would like to
access this HDD and my data stored on it. Why did I loose the
connection to it and what's the solution? I reconnected the same
harddrives as I had connected before.

I've posted this in the ASUS Tech Support Forum and I haven't gotten
an answer; so I think this might be a Windows Vista problem.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...=1&model=P5W+DH+Deluxe&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

Thanks,

PC

 

[Dave Warren]

In message
<[email protected]> PC

My system was working perfectly, but I disconnected and removed my
HDDs to clean them and then re-installed them. I have an ASUS P5W DH
Deluxe motherboard. The last time I installed Windows Vista on my
system it went to my new SATA HDD installed through the SATA1_RAID
socket on the motherboard and not to my primary IDE harddrive. After
I re-installed all my HDDs, the system boots correctly, but my primary
harddrive doen't appear in Windows Explorer, nor in the Computer
Manager's Disk Management window. The primary harddrive does,
however; show up in the BIOS, just not in Windows. I would like to
access this HDD and my data stored on it. Why did I loose the
connection to it and what's the solution? I reconnected the same
harddrives as I had connected before.

I've posted this in the ASUS Tech Support Forum and I haven't gotten
an answer; so I think this might be a Windows Vista problem.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...=1&model=P5W+DH+Deluxe&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

With this particular motherboard there are as many as three possible
SATA controllers/configurations, mostly identified by colour but it's
not 100% reliable, make sure that your primary drive is connected to
exactly the same port as you started out.

Most drives can roam from port to port and/or controller to controller
easily enough unless you're using RAID (in which case you need to stay
on the right controller), but if you're using the "zero-configuration
RAID" ports at the far edge of the board, these drives must be kept
consistent, even swapping the two disks could cause corruption.

In addition, despite these two "zero-configuration" ports being RAID-1
(mirror) capable, you're not actually warned if a drive fails, nor is
there any documented way to resolve a failed drive situation, so in
short, I'd highly recommend not relying on this particular RAID mode at
all, use the Si RAID chipset instead.

I like a lot about that particular board, but if you're one of the
unlucky ones that gets lockups during the BIOS phase of the bootup, pull
the wifi card off the motherboard (there is a little horizontal screw
that is accessible if you remove any PCIe cards) and throw it in the
garbage, plus unhook any iPods during bootup and your system should
start rebooting more gracefully.

 

[PC User]

I admire your knowledge of this motherboard. Thanks for your reply.
I eventually did not use a direct approach to the problem, but instead
an indirect solution by using the system restore to a point before the
time I tampered with the harddrives. This worked and I recovered my
lost connection to the IDE primary harddrive.

Your reply is very informative about the three possible SATA
controllers/configurations. I use two SATA HDs configured as a raid
in the SATA1 & SATA3 ports and one SATA HD by itself as a non-raid HD
in the SATA_RAID1 port. I just purchased a 1Tb HD which plan to use
as a non-raid HD in the (EZ_RAID1 port). From your reply, this seems
to be a correct use of the EZ_RAID1 port; in that I can use it
directly without having to do any configurations. If I understand you
correctly, all I have to do is "plug & play." Is this correct? Also
should I use the SATA4 port or the EZ_RAID1 port?

Thanks very much,

PC

 

[Dave Warren]

In message
<54a338e5-41ba-46ca-a05e-846a58dea345@i28g2000prd.googlegroups.com> PC

I admire your knowledge of this motherboard. Thanks for your reply.
I eventually did not use a direct approach to the problem, but instead
an indirect solution by using the system restore to a point before the
time I tampered with the harddrives. This worked and I recovered my
lost connection to the IDE primary harddrive.

Your reply is very informative about the three possible SATA
controllers/configurations. I use two SATA HDs configured as a raid
in the SATA1 & SATA3 ports and one SATA HD by itself as a non-raid HD
in the SATA_RAID1 port. I just purchased a 1Tb HD which plan to use
as a non-raid HD in the (EZ_RAID1 port). From your reply, this seems
to be a correct use of the EZ_RAID1 port; in that I can use it
directly without having to do any configurations. If I understand you
correctly, all I have to do is "plug & play." Is this correct? Also
should I use the SATA4 port or the EZ_RAID1 port?

To be honest, I'd stay as far away from the EZ_RAID ports as possible
unless you have no other choice.

<rant>
In RAID-0 mode (which should give you performance) they don't really
perform all that well, although they do let you combine space from two
disks). In RAID-1 mode (which should give you redundancy) there is no
monitoring, so at some point both drives will fail and you'll still lose
your data. Based on this rather poor implementation, I flat out don't
trust them.
</rant>

I'm honestly not sure if you can use just a single drive on the EZ_RAID
ports or not, I'd guess that "probably yes" is the answer, although
you'll definitely lose SMART capabilities.

If you have another SATA port available, I'd just use that instead and
not worry about it. Myself, I bought a PCI-E 8-port SATA RAID
controller use that for everything but boot, but going that route is
most likely overkill for your needs.

 

[PC User]

Since I use two SATA HDs configured as a raid in the SATA1 & SATA3
ports and the SATA4 port is right next to them, is the SATA4 port one
that I can use? It's not clear how the SATA1, SATA3 and SATA4 ports
are related. It's confusing that this motherboard doesn't have a
SATA2 for some reason.

 

[POP account Harry Henning]

This situation prompts me to remind all PC users to make very sure before
disconnecting anything from the motherboard to make a map, real or mental of
where all items were plugged in. I have violated this rule to my
discomfort, more than once, and lived to regret it. We all know we should
do this but we all neglect it at times.

 

[PC User]

You are quite correct on that. I documented my harddrives (HD) by
their model number and serial number then matching them to their
assigned drive letter. That's how I identified the HD that failed to
appear in Windows Vista. The HD clearly showed up in the BIOS when I
was booting up, so I figured that the issue must be with Vista. Going
though a diagnosis was such a headache that I decided to try a system
recovery. In fact, I decided to include a few digits of the HD's
serial number in the HD's name and the partition's name when it shows
up next to the drive letter in Windows explorer. This way when I have
multiple HDs in my system, I can identify where my data has be stored.

Now my issue is how I can have two SATA HDs in a RAID configuration
and two other SATA HDs in a non-raid configuration. This starts with
finding out which ports to plug them into. If someone can answer this
or give me a link to instructions on how to do this, I would
appreciate it.

Thank for your participation,

PC

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, PC.

Always assign a name, or label, to each volume (primary partition or logical
drive) on your HDDs. Disk Management lets us do this in the Properties
screen.

Like you, I have a 2-disk RAID 1 mirror plus 2 non-RAID drives, one Maxtor
and 3 Seagates, all SATA II. The RAID mirror is for my data volumes - sort
of an automatic backup, although my really important data is on a separate
backup outside the computer. This is my first RAID, so I don't know much
about them. Mine lets me know when the two mirrors don't match, a boot-up
message in RED tells me that the RAID is "degraded". At first I panicked at
this and replaced the brand-new "bad" second drive, but then I learned that
the error message disappears on its own after the RAID has had time to
rebuild and resynchronize the mirror.

Since I do some beta testing, several volumes hold different versions or
builds of WinXP, Vista and Win7, and I often delete a volume and reformat it
for a new OS. (My nice orderly first C:, then D:, then E:... pattern got
hopelessly scrambled years ago.) But "Win7x64" always has the same name,
even if I one OS sees it as Drive F: and another as Drive X:, or if those
letters change tomorrow. I don't know if it matters which SATA port is used
for which HDD.

My 2-year-old mobo is an EPoX MF570sli, and has 6 onboard SATA II ports,
plus a couple of so-far-unused eSATA. EPoX has since gone out of business,
but this is my 3rd EPoX mobo and it is still performing very well. Its
onboard NVIDIA nForce RAID controller is what I'm using.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100