SATA RAID required?

[bradinski]

I have the following drives installed in my system:

DVD-ROM - Secondary Master
DVD-RW - Primary Master
Maxtor SATA HD - SATA

For some reason, I cannot boot to my hard drive unless I have the SATA
controller set in RAID mode in the BIOS. This doesn't seem right to me.
Am I missing something? My motherboard is a Foxconn 655A01.

 

[Jan Alter]

Try connecting the hdd's data cable to the first SATA controller. I've read
that one cannot boot from the SATA 2 controller, and it's obviously easy to
misconnect to the wrong one.

 

[John Weiss]

I have the following drives installed in my system:

DVD-ROM - Secondary Master
DVD-RW - Primary Master
Maxtor SATA HD - SATA

For some reason, I cannot boot to my hard drive unless I have the SATA
controller set in RAID mode in the BIOS. This doesn't seem right to me.
Am I missing something? My motherboard is a Foxconn 655A01.

The Promise controller in my MoBo uses the RAID BIOS even for a single HD.
IIRC, it has you set it up as a single-disk "stripe" (RAID 0).

Remember to copy the RAID drivers to floppy for Win XP installation.

 

[bradinski]

I did a clean install of XP Pro SP2 when I finished building the system
with no problems. I didn't use any RAID drivers. Could that be a
problem? If you haven't noticed, I am new to the world of SATA and RAID.

 

[John Weiss]

I did a clean install of XP Pro SP2 when I finished building the system
with no problems. I didn't use any RAID drivers. Could that be a
problem? If you haven't noticed, I am new to the world of SATA and RAID.

In general, if a driver is required and not available, XP won't install (I found
that out when I failed to put the Promise RAID drivers on floppy before
attempting to install XP). Some drivers may be available on the XP install CD.

 

[johns]

Your problem is those 2 cd drives. You don't need 2
of them. You only need the dvd-rw, so toss the other.
Then, move that "primary" master to the secondary
ide slot. If you put ANYTHING in the primary ide slot
on the mobo, THAT will become your boot drive,
and the SATA will probably not be seen at all ...
except as RAID. So, create the "drivers" floppy
for the SATA, and move the dvd drive, and also
go in to your BIOS and see if RAID can be disabled.
You can tell if you need to do that by observing the
initial POST, and seeing if the SATA drive is detected
at all on that DOS startup screen. If it is detected,
you don't need to disable RAID. Otherwise you do,
and then the drive should show up at POST.
As for creating that floppy ... you may need to call
the manufacturer of your mobo to get them to
tell you exactly how to do that. It can be a little
tricky, because you do have to use the RAID
drivers ( sometimes 2 of them at the F6 hit S thing
during WinXP install ). Also the guy warning about
connecting to SATA 1 on the mobo is right. Look
closely at the mobo and get SATA 0.

johns

 

[John Weiss]

Your problem is those 2 cd drives. You don't need 2
of them. You only need the dvd-rw, so toss the other.

Not necessarily true. Some people use 2 of them for direct copies.

Then, move that "primary" master to the secondary
ide slot. If you put ANYTHING in the primary ide slot
on the mobo, THAT will become your boot drive,
and the SATA will probably not be seen at all ...

Not necessarily true. If the HD does not have a Primary partition, it will not
be seen as a bootable drive. Further, many MoBo BIOSes allow you to set the
boot priority among the various busses/interfaces.

 

[johns]

I'm absolutely right about that. You cannot have a SATA
boot drive if you have an IDE device of any kind on the
primary IDE port. It may set up initially, but it will eventually
bring the house down. It will certainly generate software
conflicts with hardware oriented programs like PowerDVD.
It will totally sack a Hauppauge 350 install. SATA was
inititally designed for RAID backup of IDE primary boot.
Its conversion to primary boot has come about because
people kept ordering only the SATA drive, and something
had to be done. The BIOSes were originally not designed
to allow that, and they were kludged. Also, most builders
.... even the techs ... don't know how to create the floppy,
and they just go and copy what they think are the correct
drivers ... and wind up with a system running off a combo
of the Windows default drivers and the mobo chipset
drivers. That will eventually become a real mess with a
system running at the speed of a hot 386. Go and call
a mobo manufacturer tech support ( not the vendor ),
and get a talk through on the proper way to install that
stuff. It will be a real eye-opener.

johns

 

[bradinski]

Actually I DO need the two CD drives since I use them for direct
backups. I hate waiting for all that stuff to copy to the hard drive
and then to the CD or DVD. I'll move them both to the secondary IDE and
post back.

 

[John Weiss]

I'm absolutely right about that. You cannot have a SATA
boot drive if you have an IDE device of any kind on the
primary IDE port. It may set up initially, but it will eventually
bring the house down. It will certainly generate software
conflicts with hardware oriented programs like PowerDVD.

Dunno where you get your info, but I have been running a machine for well over a
year with a SATA boot drive (Promise PDC 20378 controller) and the primary IDE
bus filled. I even had another HD on the secondary IDE bus for a while, with no
ill effects at all. The DVD+/-R/W works fine, even in DLA mode, including with
PowerDVD.

It will totally sack a Hauppauge 350 install. SATA was
inititally designed for RAID backup of IDE primary boot.
Its conversion to primary boot has come about because
people kept ordering only the SATA drive, and something
had to be done. The BIOSes were originally not designed
to allow that, and they were kludged.

It doesn't appear that the Phoenix BIOS in this machine was kludged. If it was,
it has yielded no ill effects!

 

[Tweek]

Dude, you are absolutely wrong on that. In the bios you set which hard drive
you want to be the boot drive and that takes care of it. If you want to boot
from a SATA drive you put that first priority. This is separate from the
'floppy, cdrom, hard driveIf you want the IDE drive to boot first you put
that first priority. The PC I am posting from has a 160GB Raid 0 array with
a 300GB IDE drive connected to the primary IDE and a DVDRW and CDRW
connected to the secondary IDE. Nforce 4 Ultra chipset using the Nvidia RAID
controller. No problems, none. Before I set up the raid, I had one of the
SATA drives by itself as the boot drive with the same IDE configuration.
There are also computers out there that only have SATA and one IDE channel
(primary) with IDE devices (optical drives) on them with no problems. One
more thing, SATA was not 'originally designed for RAID backup of IDE primary
boot' it was designed to replace IDE altogether which is what it will
eventually do. Your other mention of the 'combination of windows default
drivers and mobo chipset drivers' doesn't make sense either. The SATA
drivers are installed from a floppy by pressing F6 during windows install.
Either they work or they don't. There are no chipset drivers installed at
this time, nor does windows have default drivers for any SATA controllers. I
am not sure what you are trying to get at here.

 

[Thomas Wendell]

johns, could you get lost or something?


--
Tumppi
=================================
Most learned on these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
=================================

 

[johns]

No I'm not either. Call Gigabyte and get a talk through. They
are getting tired of it, but they will set you straight. As for
your system. Bench it, and re-install properly, and bench it
again. You are in for a real surprise.

johns