K8V sata problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter John
  • Start date Start date
J

John

I just recieved my k8v, processor and hard drive. Decided to go with a sata
drive and try it. I downloaded the driver for the drive from the asus site.
I have enabled it in the bios, disabled the promise controller as I only
have 1 drive. I just wanted to run a single hard drive on sata. When I post
it shows the drive and I can take a western digital utility on floppy and
boot from it and it sees the drive, I actually partitoned the drive with
this utility. When I try to load windows xp though I do the f6 thing and let
it read the floppy. I can hear the floppy turning. When it says press enter
to install xp I press enter and then it tells me there is no drive there.
Windows is not getting the driver for this drive. I have tried differnt
floppy's, tried moving the cable to one of the other connections on the
motherboard and it makes no difference, I actuall took a regular IDE drive
and plugged into the primary ide controller and it worked great. Picked the
drive up and I formatted it. I cannot even get to the part where it allows
me to format the sata drive. Oh yea I even used the make disk file on the cd
that came with the motherboard and tried the sata drivers that way also, by
making a floppy from the cd. It still does the same thing, Windows does not
see the drive. I have worked on this thing about 10 hours today. Any help
would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
 
Try downloading the SATA file from www.viaarena.com, and then doing the F6
thing again. It ran like a charm for me. I've been seeing a lot of people
complaining about the same problem when trying to use asus's drivers.
 
Hi John,

I went through a very similar experience setting up SATA RAID-0 on my K8V.
As you will already know, the VIA RAID utility (press 'tab') needs to set
the drive up as a boot device. Although the manual does not mention it, the
VIA SATA controller can not do this in one go. Try this:

1. Delete the SATA array, exit utility
2. Reboot
3. Set up the one drive array but do not set it as a boot array yet, exit
utility
4. Reboot
5. Now go back into the SATA set-up menu and make it into a boot array, exit
utility
6. Reboot (again!)
7. Partition the drive and install XP.

This worked for me with a pair of drives set to RAID-0, so hopefully you
will have some luck.

It took me nearly five hours of swapping drives, cables, checking the
Promise controller would see the array then going back to the VIA
controller. What a waste of time! I was starting to think that the VIA
chip was a dud and then I started to think back to those halcyon days of
Win98, where a reboot was necessary even when you were specifically told it
was not. Suddenly, all of those 'RAID broken' messages went away. It is a
shame that the manual is not clear on this point.


Regards,

Kayf

Please respond to group - e-mail address invalid
 
thanks Kay, I do not want to set up raid just 1 sata drive, Do I still need
to do this?
 
Good question! I have looked through the friendly manual and there is no
mention of a different route with a single drive. Take a look at the boot
priority screen in BIOS (page 4-34) to see if the drive features in the list
of devices. It may show as a description like VIA-HDD1 or some such. If it
does not, then I assume the answer is that you will need to set up a
one-disk array.

I could not get the system to boot from the VIA SATA without making my RAID
into a 'boot' device in the RAID set-up screen (page 5-24). Ultimately, it
can do no harm to try the one-disk RAID route. If it does not work, delete
the array and we are back to step one again! As an aside, make sure the
disk is on the primary SATA controller, labelled SATA1. At least this will
give the RAID chip the best chance of providing the solution.

Best of luck.

Regards,

Kayf

Please respond to group - e-mail address invalid
 
I just recieved my k8v, processor and hard drive. Decided to go with a sata
drive and try it. I downloaded the driver for the drive from the asus site.
I have enabled it in the bios, disabled the promise controller as I only
have 1 drive. I just wanted to run a single hard drive on sata. When I post
it shows the drive and I can take a western digital utility on floppy and
boot from it and it sees the drive, I actually partitoned the drive with
this utility. When I try to load windows xp though I do the f6 thing and let
it read the floppy. I can hear the floppy turning. When it says press enter
to install xp I press enter and then it tells me there is no drive there.
Windows is not getting the driver for this drive. I have tried differnt
floppy's, tried moving the cable to one of the other connections on the
motherboard and it makes no difference, I actuall took a regular IDE drive
and plugged into the primary ide controller and it worked great. Picked the
drive up and I formatted it. I cannot even get to the part where it allows
me to format the sata drive. Oh yea I even used the make disk file on the cd
that came with the motherboard and tried the sata drivers that way also, by
making a floppy from the cd. It still does the same thing, Windows does not
see the drive. I have worked on this thing about 10 hours today. Any help
would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Click to expand...



## Installing Win XP -SATA drive on SATA1 port:

in motherboard Bios
ADVANCED
ONBOARD DEVICES
OnBoard Promise Controller [enabled]
Operating Mode [Onboard IDE Operat]

As of this week (Feb 16th-22nd 2004) there are three SATA/RAID related drivers on the downloads page:

http://usa.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=K8V Deluxe

There was only one that would allow my installation CD of Win XP Pro to see the SATA drive. This driver is necessary in order to format and install the OS to that drive. The ASUS download file was:


6420raid_210a.zip Version 2.10A Date 2003/10/22
Description VIA VT6420 (VT8237) SATA RAID Driver Package Version 2.10a WHQL.
OS Win2K / WinXP / Win2003


I used the create disk feature inside the zip here to build the driver disk, started my XP install, hit the F6 SCSI/RAID driver add,

(I know you're not making a RAID, neither was I)

and then followed the rest of the driver addition instructions.

In the end, the drive appeared in the available drives list for installing the OS onto.

After Windows XP was installed, in device manager I get "VIA Serial ATA RAID Controller" under the SCSI/RAID Controllers section.

I ALSO have a "RAID Controller" appearing under the "? Other Devices" section. I have disabled this item (right click - select disable) to prevent confusion for myself down the road. I am not running a RAID and shouldn't need it.

more information about RAIDs:
http://www.redundantarrayofindependentdisks.com/

I have since been told that other people have had success with at least one of the other drivers where I did not. I have tried ALL three. The one I listed is the only one that worked for me.

In the end, once I knew what to do, the final process was fairly straightforward but it would be simpler if the manual was more clear about how to do it from the start. There is a FAQ answer that outlines something similar for the A7V600:

http://www.asus.com/support/faq/qanda.aspx?KB_ID=84897

If you're not RAIDing multiple drives then I'd say this process should also work for two independent drives the same as it did for my one drive.

----------------------------------------------------

## Drive light with SATA drive

SATA drive use would not run the hard drive light on the front of the case when that light is hooked into the motherboard pins for it. HOWEVER...see my SCSI Card below...
============================================================


SCSI Card (Transplanted with 2 drives from old system)
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/pr...Technology/SCSI/SCSI+for+High-Performance+PCs

** If SATA takes over the world, I will miss this card. SCSI has served me well and QUICKLY for a long time (even if the $$$ of the drives has been crazy) I still have on it:

2 hard drives Seagate
1 dvd-rom Toshiba SD-M1401
1 cd burner (Hewlett Packard)

============================================================
## (Continued from motherboard squawks above)...the Adaptec 19160 SCSI controller has its own drive light LED pin output on it

take a guess...

the 19160 can detect activity on my SATA drive and the drive light works perfectly normally for both my SCSI drives AND my new SATA drive.

I love it.
go figure
============================================================
 
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