Help with RAID drives - P4C800-E Deluxe, dual WD 250Gb SATA

  • Thread starter Thread starter BobMarley
  • Start date Start date
B

BobMarley

I've got 2 80gb WD drives on my Primary IDE controller, and a Cd
burner on the secondary.

i bought 2 WD 250GB sata drives, but can't get the OS to see them.. i
also don't see them recognized in the BIOS.
what am i missing?

i went into chipset, and enabled the onboard Promise card, set it to
RAID mode

went into IDE setup, enabled Enhanced on PATA and SATA, and set SATA
to RAID.

drives are connected, 1 to SATA RAID1 and the other to SATA RAID2
connector.

what am i missing?
 
You didn't say what OS. If it's XP you must go into Disk Management and
partition and format them before Explorer will see them.
 
OS is windows XP
i can't even see the controller
should i see the controller in the POST? i don't.
 
If you want to use the Promise SATA ports you first have to load the drivers
for it. On the ASUS WEB site there are two sets of drivers for the P4C800E
MB. One set of drivers is for RAID configuration and the other is for
NON-RAID configuration. Download and run the one you want to use.

You have another option to use the SATA ports on the Intel ICH5R chipset for
a RAID config. To activate the Intel ports you have to config BIOS. IDE
Config -> RAID to YES -> ROMBOOT to Yes. Then you can run either RAID 0 or 1
on the Intel chipset.

Rich
 
Bob--first--do you really want to use the Promise controller since it is
PCI-based and the Intel controller is part of the South Bridge controller.
Also, I wonder if they are connected to the right SATA connectors since
there are four on that motherboard--two controlled by the Intel South Bridge
and two controlled by the Promise controller. FWIW, I would recommend
disabling the Promise controller in the BIOS and using the Intel controller.
Since you are setting up a RAID configuration, I assume that you plan to
load WinXP in the partition--if not and I misunderstood, kindly ignore the
following. IF you are wanting to RAID these two drives, you will need to go
into the BIOS at bootup and make sure that these things are enabled:
OnBoard IDE Operate Mode to [Enhanced Mode]
Enhanced Mode Support ON to [S-ATA]
Configure S-ATA as RAID to [Yes]
Serial ATA Bootrom to [Enabled]

Prior to the above, you should have either downloaded the latest or used the
copy that was on the support CD that came with your motherboard and create a
floppy diskette of the Intel Application Accelerator RAID edition--it is
located on that CD in a folder labeled "IAA" or download the file called
"iaa35r.zip" from the Asus Web site. It is a self extracting zip file that
will place these four files on the floppy disk: iastor.inf, iastor.sys,
iastor.cat and txtsetup.oem

Before attempting to load XP onto the RAID partition, get into the RAID BIOS
by doing a CTRL-I (eye) during the POST and make the following changes:
--Create RAID Volume (in main menu)
--Set the stripe size in Create Array menu (64KB is all purpose)
--Set the RAID level to 0 or 1 in the Create Array menu, whichever you
intend to use
--Highlight Create Volume and press enter and press "Y" to confirm when
asked to do so.

When booting to the XP CD to set up XP, it will briefly at the very bottom
of the screen ask you to press "S" to install additional device or SCSI
driver (forget exact wording) and you will need to do that quickly and have
the floppy diskette inserted. Later XP will ask about which SCSI adaptor
and in that list will probably only be "Intel 82801ER Serial RAID
controller" which should be selected and press enter. The next screen
should confirm that the Intel RAID controller was selected and press Enter
again to continue.

When finished, you will need to go back into the BIOS and make sure in the
boot order that the RAID volume is selected as the boot drive that you
loaded XP on.

Hope this helps--good luck

MikeSp
------------------------------
 
Got it working, just before reading your message.
I couldn't get the Promise working at all... which is good b/c from
what I read the Promise works at 133 but the Intel works at 150.

Once I went into Bios and disabled the Promise, and hooked the SATA
drives up to the SATA1/SATA2 controllers (I did this just to see what
would happen)... it worked...

I now have 2 80Gb on the Primary IDE, and mirrored 250Gb for my
storage...
thanks for the help!
 
thanks for the reply. i got it working....
i did have the drives connected to the Promise card, but it never
would be recognized or load....

once i connected to the Intel, it came right up....
using the 250gb's mirrored for my games, shn's and unmentionables.


Bob--first--do you really want to use the Promise controller since it is
PCI-based and the Intel controller is part of the South Bridge controller.
Also, I wonder if they are connected to the right SATA connectors since
there are four on that motherboard--two controlled by the Intel South Bridge
and two controlled by the Promise controller. FWIW, I would recommend
disabling the Promise controller in the BIOS and using the Intel controller.
Since you are setting up a RAID configuration, I assume that you plan to
load WinXP in the partition--if not and I misunderstood, kindly ignore the
following. IF you are wanting to RAID these two drives, you will need to go
into the BIOS at bootup and make sure that these things are enabled:
OnBoard IDE Operate Mode to [Enhanced Mode]
Enhanced Mode Support ON to [S-ATA]
Configure S-ATA as RAID to [Yes]
Serial ATA Bootrom to [Enabled]

Prior to the above, you should have either downloaded the latest or used the
copy that was on the support CD that came with your motherboard and create a
floppy diskette of the Intel Application Accelerator RAID edition--it is
located on that CD in a folder labeled "IAA" or download the file called
"iaa35r.zip" from the Asus Web site. It is a self extracting zip file that
will place these four files on the floppy disk: iastor.inf, iastor.sys,
iastor.cat and txtsetup.oem

Before attempting to load XP onto the RAID partition, get into the RAID BIOS
by doing a CTRL-I (eye) during the POST and make the following changes:
--Create RAID Volume (in main menu)
--Set the stripe size in Create Array menu (64KB is all purpose)
--Set the RAID level to 0 or 1 in the Create Array menu, whichever you
intend to use
--Highlight Create Volume and press enter and press "Y" to confirm when
asked to do so.

When booting to the XP CD to set up XP, it will briefly at the very bottom
of the screen ask you to press "S" to install additional device or SCSI
driver (forget exact wording) and you will need to do that quickly and have
the floppy diskette inserted. Later XP will ask about which SCSI adaptor
and in that list will probably only be "Intel 82801ER Serial RAID
controller" which should be selected and press enter. The next screen
should confirm that the Intel RAID controller was selected and press Enter
again to continue.

When finished, you will need to go back into the BIOS and make sure in the
boot order that the RAID volume is selected as the boot drive that you
loaded XP on.

Hope this helps--good luck

MikeSp
------------------------------

BobMarley said:
I've got 2 80gb WD drives on my Primary IDE controller, and a Cd
burner on the secondary.

i bought 2 WD 250GB sata drives, but can't get the OS to see them.. i
also don't see them recognized in the BIOS.
what am i missing?

i went into chipset, and enabled the onboard Promise card, set it to
RAID mode

went into IDE setup, enabled Enhanced on PATA and SATA, and set SATA
to RAID.

drives are connected, 1 to SATA RAID1 and the other to SATA RAID2
connector.

what am i missing?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I suspected that was the problem. I did the same thing myself and worked on
it for hours before I realized what I did.
 
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