SATA PCI Card Problem

[anon]

Am now confused, or missreading origonal post;
I understood you to say PCI raid card only detected a single drive, not the
second.
The latest post states ' detects any drives ...on each controller'
'Problem being primary HDD'
So exactly which HDD are you refering to as primary, presumably this being
yr boot drive?

 

[Anthony]

Am now confused, or missreading origonal post;
I understood you to say PCI raid card only detected a single drive, not the
second.
The latest post states ' detects any drives ...on each controller'
'Problem being primary HDD'
So exactly which HDD are you refering to as primary, presumably this being
yr boot drive?

My mistake, what I meant is that the card is **supposed** to detect
any drives connected to the primary and/or secondary controllers.

I've attached an image of what the Windows RAID software shows,
hopefully this will explain.

There is a HDD physically connected to both controllers, and they have
power. On boot up, during POST the SATA controller shows two lines
(Primary and Secondary) with the drive model connected and the
capacity. Only the secondary shows any information as the screen shot
shows from the Windows config utility.

Sorry for the confusion.

Anthony

 

[Anthony]

Am now confused, or missreading origonal post;
I understood you to say PCI raid card only detected a single drive, not the
second.
The latest post states ' detects any drives ...on each controller'
'Problem being primary HDD'
So exactly which HDD are you refering to as primary, presumably this being
yr boot drive?

My mistake, what I meant is that the card is **supposed** to detect
any drives connected to the primary and/or secondary controllers.

I've attached an image of what the Windows RAID software shows,
hopefully this will explain.

There is a HDD physically connected to both controllers, and they have
power. On boot up, during POST the SATA controller shows two lines
(Primary and Secondary) with the drive model connected and the
capacity. Only the secondary shows any information as the screen shot
shows from the Windows config utility.

Sorry for the confusion.

Anthony

 

[anon]

No image/attachment contained in post

My mistake, what I meant is that the card is **supposed** to detect
any drives connected to the primary and/or secondary controllers.

I've attached an image of what the Windows RAID software shows,
hopefully this will explain.

There is a HDD physically connected to both controllers, and they have
power. On boot up, during POST the SATA controller shows two lines
(Primary and Secondary) with the drive model connected and the
capacity. Only the secondary shows any information as the screen shot
shows from the Windows config utility.

Sorry for the confusion.

Anthony

 

[Anthony]

Am now confused, or missreading origonal post;
I understood you to say PCI raid card only detected a single drive, not the
second.
The latest post states ' detects any drives ...on each controller'
'Problem being primary HDD'
So exactly which HDD are you refering to as primary, presumably this being
yr boot drive?

My mistake, what I meant is that the card is **supposed** to detect
any drives connected to the primary and/or secondary controllers.

I've attached an image of what the Windows RAID software shows,
hopefully this will explain.

There is a HDD physically connected to both controllers, and they have
power. On boot up, during POST the SATA controller shows two lines
(Primary and Secondary) with the drive model connected and the
capacity. Only the secondary shows any information as the screen shot
shows from the Windows config utility.

Sorry for the confusion.

Anthony

 

[Anthony]

My mistake, what I meant is that the card is **supposed** to detect
any drives connected to the primary and/or secondary controllers.

I've attached an image of what the Windows RAID software shows,
hopefully this will explain.

I am such a prat - sorry, no image, this NG doesn't accept them - well
that's what my newsreader is reporting anyway.

Apologies for triple posting that previous message too!

 

[Tim]

DL,

Not quite.

There are two parts to the driver "package":

For bootable discs, there is the BIOS extension. This is the bit you see
during 'DOS' screen boot time straight after post usually that invites you
to press Control Something or other if it is raid. This only serves 2
functions a) to provide a boot capability and b) if a raid card then the
ability to configure the card / recover from failures etc. (It does also
provide other functionality but that is irrelevant).

If the device doesn't have a bios extension you can't boot off the device as
the Mobo bios will not know anything about the add in card otherwise. Some
cheapo devices (EG the cheapest Adaptec SCSI adapters) do not have a BIOS so
can't be booted off. For many mobo bios (EG with the Intel 875P chipset /
ICH5R) the raid / sata controller bios is part and parcel of the mobo bios.

The second part is the windows device driver. For disc drivers (raid or
not), they are started early during windows boot - the drivers are
invariable marked with a start setting in the windows registry of 'boot'.
What this means to windows is that this is a critical OS driver and that if
it fails to start then the system, windows can't continue and is to BSOD -
you get one of the famous stop screens if the driver doesn't start, is
corrupt (STOP 2E), or is missing... So, how can windows read a disc if it
needs a driver to read the disc? For say SCSI a file called NTBootDD.sys
exists in c:\ ( it is hidden and sytem file normally). This file is a copy
of the driver file needed. The disc controller device bios has enough
intelligence to be able to a) boot and then b) locate this file, so it
starts it and then proceeds with windows boot. Oddly enough My mirrored
ICH5R SATA boot disc does not have an NTBootDD.sys file...

There is often a third part such as IAA or some type of GUI. This plays not
direct critical part in disc IO - usually it is there to monitor health,
config, with the some to set alerts and so on.

- Tim