Vista issue?? Or not??

[Dave]

Hi,

I am running Vista Home Premium. I had been running 2 Western Digital
500GB drives in RAID 0 mode. The external enclosure was a Fantom
enclosure.

The controller was going bad, so I bought a Xtrastor 3.5 x2 HDD
enclosure which supports RAID 1.

Anyhow, when I hook it up via USB, it only detects an 8GB drive. Once
I got it to detect it as a 75GB drive. If I hook it up as an eSATA,
Vista does not see it at all......

It should detect close to 500GB since the other 500GB is for the RAID
1.

I have a PB5 motherboard. I have tried a lot of things via the cables
and re-booting and such, no luck. Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!!!

John

If you are using an external enclosure, your mainboard bios is not
involved in recognizing the size of the drive. And your OS will see
whatever the external enclosure sees, so you'd have the same problem
with XP or linux, for that matter. This is a hardware (or firmware)
problem with the external enclosure. -Dave

 

[Dave]

Dave,

Are you saying the enclosure is bad? Or defective? Or is there
something else I am missing or not doing?

John.

Is the enclosure defective? IMHO, yes it is. Based on what you wrote
here. -Dave

 

[Mtek]

Hi,

I am running Vista Home Premium. I had been running 2 Western Digital
500GB drives in RAID 0 mode. The external enclosure was a Fantom
enclosure.

The controller was going bad, so I bought a Xtrastor 3.5 x2 HDD
enclosure which supports RAID 1.

Anyhow, when I hook it up via USB, it only detects an 8GB drive. Once
I got it to detect it as a 75GB drive. If I hook it up as an eSATA,
Vista does not see it at all......

It should detect close to 500GB since the other 500GB is for the RAID
1.

I have a PB5 motherboard. I have tried a lot of things via the cables
and re-booting and such, no luck. Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!!!

John

 

[Mtek]

If you are using an external enclosure, your mainboard bios is not
involved in recognizing the size of the drive.  And your OS will see
whatever the external enclosure sees, so you'd have the same problem
with XP or linux, for that matter.  This is a hardware (or firmware)
problem with the external enclosure.  -Dave  - Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Dave,

Are you saying the enclosure is bad? Or defective? Or is there
something else I am missing or not doing?

John.

 

[Paul]

Dave,

Are you saying the enclosure is bad? Or defective? Or is there
something else I am missing or not doing?

John.

Could you try connecting the hard drive, directly to your motherboard ?
That may make it easier to verify the drive is functional. The
P5B motherboard should have some SATA ports on it.

In terms of drive size, a drive can be artificially "clipped" in
size, by means of HPA (host protected area). I'm not saying that
is what has happened to your drive, but it is a theoretical
possibility. (Since the drive has reported two different sizes,
then this likely isn't the problem.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area

The ESATA port on the P5B, connects to a Jmicron JMB363. You may
need to configure the BIOS for it to work, and as I don't know
anything about Vista and driver detection, maybe a driver is needed
that isn't there. I'd try a non-RAID setting on the Jmicron
in the BIOS, for example.

It is possible the drive enclosure doesn't have enough DC power,
in which case you could try connecting just one hard drive
and see if that works and is detected. During spinup, some
drives draw 2.5 amps from the 12V rail.

Paul

 

[Mtek]

Could you try connecting the hard drive, directly to your motherboard ?
That may make it easier to verify the drive is functional. The
P5B motherboard should have some SATA ports on it.

In terms of drive size, a drive can be artificially "clipped" in
size, by means of HPA (host protected area). I'm not saying that
is what has happened to your drive, but it is a theoretical
possibility. (Since the drive has reported two different sizes,
then this likely isn't the problem.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area

The ESATA port on the P5B, connects to a Jmicron JMB363. You may
need to configure the BIOS for it to work, and as I don't know
anything about Vista and driver detection, maybe a driver is needed
that isn't there. I'd try a non-RAID setting on the Jmicron
in the BIOS, for example.

It is possible the drive enclosure doesn't have enough DC power,
in which case you could try connecting just one hard drive
and see if that works and is detected. During spinup, some
drives draw 2.5 amps from the 12V rail.

    Paul- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hi Paul,

I know the drives work. If I hook them to the old enclosure the
detect at 1TB.....but I want RAID1 so I bought the new enclosure and
it only picks up 8GB, and in the drive manager there is a small 'x' on
the drive description.......

John

 

[Paul]

Hi Paul,

I know the drives work. If I hook them to the old enclosure the
detect at 1TB.....but I want RAID1 so I bought the new enclosure and
it only picks up 8GB, and in the drive manager there is a small 'x' on
the drive description.......

John

Is the enclosure known to work with large drives ? Could you
post the exact model number of the enclosure ?

So what does a small "x" mean ? Is there anything in Event Viewer,
like an error message ?

Also, the metadata used when the drives were in the first
enclosure, would still be present on the drive. What you
could try, is wiping the drive, before putting it in the
second enclosure. I'm just guessing here - that "x" you
mention, could be significant. You need some way to
expand on the information offered by Windows. And I
don't know of a utility that can tell you everything
there is to know about a drive.

Paul

 

[Ed Medlin]

Could you try connecting the hard drive, directly to your motherboard ?
That may make it easier to verify the drive is functional. The
P5B motherboard should have some SATA ports on it.

In terms of drive size, a drive can be artificially "clipped" in
size, by means of HPA (host protected area). I'm not saying that
is what has happened to your drive, but it is a theoretical
possibility. (Since the drive has reported two different sizes,
then this likely isn't the problem.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area

The ESATA port on the P5B, connects to a Jmicron JMB363. You may
need to configure the BIOS for it to work, and as I don't know
anything about Vista and driver detection, maybe a driver is needed
that isn't there. I'd try a non-RAID setting on the Jmicron
in the BIOS, for example.

It is possible the drive enclosure doesn't have enough DC power,
in which case you could try connecting just one hard drive
and see if that works and is detected. During spinup, some
drives draw 2.5 amps from the 12V rail.

Paul- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hi Paul,

I know the drives work. If I hook them to the old enclosure the
detect at 1TB.....but I want RAID1 so I bought the new enclosure and
it only picks up 8GB, and in the drive manager there is a small 'x' on
the drive description.......

John

Did you format the raid1 partition after setting it up?


Ed

 

[Mtek]

Hi Paul,

I know the drives work.  If I hook them to the oldenclosurethe
detect at 1TB.....but I want RAID1 so I bought the newenclosureand
it only picks up 8GB, and in the drive manager there is a small 'x' on
the drive description.......

John

Did you format the raid1 partition after setting it up?

Ed- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hi Ed,

Actually after really thinking about it, I am not sure this is a
'Vista' problem.

The external enclosure supposedly has RAID built in. It has a switch
on the back for RAID 0 & RAID 1.

I guess the issue is when I plug the drive in, it is not always
detected, and when it is, it appears as an 8GB drive. There are 2
500GB drives in the enclosure. If I plug them into the old enclosure,
which does not support RAID, it works fine, appearing as 1TB.

So, could it be a defective enclosure???

John.

 

[Paul]

Hi Ed,

Actually after really thinking about it, I am not sure this is a
'Vista' problem.

The external enclosure supposedly has RAID built in. It has a switch
on the back for RAID 0 & RAID 1.

I guess the issue is when I plug the drive in, it is not always
detected, and when it is, it appears as an 8GB drive. There are 2
500GB drives in the enclosure. If I plug them into the old enclosure,
which does not support RAID, it works fine, appearing as 1TB.

So, could it be a defective enclosure???

John.

Is there a button you press, to apply the "RAID 0" or "RAID 1" configuration
change ? I would have thought, to support RAID 0 at least, metadata has to be
stored on the hard drive, to keep track of which drive has the odd or even
stripe of data. Otherwise, if the enclosure is ever opened, and the two
drives swapped with respect to the internal connectors, a RAID 0 array would
not work.

Xtrastor has a bunch of different models. What is the exact model number ?

In looking at some enclosures on Newegg, some reviewers have problems
getting them to work, implying perhaps a bad enclosure.

Paul

 

[Stephen]

Hi,

I am running Vista Home Premium. I had been running 2 Western Digital
500GB drives in RAID 0 mode. The external enclosure was a Fantom
enclosure.

The controller was going bad, so I bought a Xtrastor 3.5 x2 HDD
enclosure which supports RAID 1.

Anyhow, when I hook it up via USB, it only detects an 8GB drive. Once
I got it to detect it as a 75GB drive. If I hook it up as an eSATA,
Vista does not see it at all......

It should detect close to 500GB since the other 500GB is for the RAID
1.

I have a PB5 motherboard. I have tried a lot of things via the cables
and re-booting and such, no luck. Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!!!

John

Sounds like the new enclosure doesn't support 500GB drives or it's
defective.

Stephen
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