P5AD2 Premium : problem installing OS on sata boot drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Roland
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Roland

My friends

I just installed my MB P5AD2-Premium with following devices : 2 sata 160GB
on sata1 and 2 connectors ( no raid and as masters ) and 1 dvd-player on
Pri -IDE .( later , I have to add the PATA 250 GB ( on connector
Pri-IDE-RAID ? ) and the dvdrw on Pri-Ide ( as slave ) from my actual ,
still running , PC ).

The setup is done " from the booklet " in the Bios :shows as Prim IDE master
is the dvd , the third and the fourth IDE as masters are the 2 sata 160GB .
The IDE configuration is default as in the booklet : Sata as " standard IDE
" . And I want to keep the 3 Maxtors as independent drives - no raids .

After installing XP-Pro bootable in the DVD , the following occours ( in
Explorer ) : DVD is the C: , the D and E are the both Satas 160 GB ( in NTFS
with max 137 GB ! ) and the system is installed in the E: ! ( and after
rebooting several times , no problem for starting a good windows
XP-Pro .. ).

Whats wrong and how to change or correct a " well installed " XP-Pro ( no
sp1 or 2 installed for the moment ) on drive C: ???.

When I let Maxblast3 look at the configuration , it shows Pr Master : DVD ,
Sec Master the Sata E: ( as red C: !!! ) and no Sata D visible ( must be as
a Third or Fourth Master ? ) . Also , the program does not allow to change
the size or properties of the Sec master ( E: or so called C: ).Does that
give a hint ?

Both drives can be considered as to be installed from scratch ( no OS , no
data ) .If so , what should be the correct settings and procedure ?




Thanks for all Your help.
 
It sounds to me like you have the Boot Priority order screwed up. It
determines what order the IDE devices are seen at boot time. Adjust
these settings, and it should all fall into place. I have built two
systems in the past 2 weeks using the P5AD2-E Premium board (a really
nice board!!). System 1 uses 4 SATA drives in a dual-mirrored RAID
configuration. System 2 currently has a 250GB SATA drive as boot, and
a 160 PATA drive as secondary. Both systems have DVD drives on the
Primary IDE connector.

HTH
Norm
 
Thanks to Norm and James

I will try it out .
Can You Norm give me the settings ?
Is the boot sata 250 connected to the Sata 1 ( no raid ) and did you load
some drivers ( as well for the >137 GB as for the sata device as for the
asus raid )?
Windows xp sp1 and/or sp2 ?
Is the 160 Pata connected to .... connector ?
Much appreciated

Roland
 
Roland:

On my system, the Boot SATA 250 is installed on the Raid 1 connector
(managed by the Silicon controller). The PATA 160 is installed on the
Raid parallel connector, so it's managed by the ITEC controller. On
the Primary IDE connector (the one beside the floppy connector), I
have a dual-layer DVD burner.

OK, in the BIOS, you need to set the two Raid controllers to Raid
mode. Then you need to "Exit and save settings", and reboot. On the
way up, hit Del again to re-enter the BIOS settings. This is the part
that people tend to miss, because reconfiguring the IDE/Raid
controllers resets a bunch of stuff in the BIOS, and it needs a reboot
to set everything in place.

Once you are back in the BIOS, go to the Boot menu, and check the
"Boot Devices priority" settings. In this list, you can set the order
in which the system will attempt to boot. However, you can only have
one device of each type in the list. For example, you can only have
one Silicon-controlled device, one ITEC-controlled device, one floppy
device, one IDE-controlled device. There are separate lists to set the
order of each device type. SO if you have multiple CD/DVD drives, you
can pick which is first. If you have two Silicon mirror arrays (as I
do on one system), then you can select which array is number 1.
Finally, in the Boot priority menu, you get to say which device type
is looked at for booting.

Once you have set that, save all settings and reboot, and you should
be in the order you want.

For a final trick, you can also hit F8 instead of "Del" once you hear
the POST beep. After scanning all devices, the BIOS will put up a
pop-up menu of all device types found, and you can then select the
specific device to boot from. This is useful if you want to do a
diagnostic boot. For example, say you normally don't allow booting
from a floppy, so it is set way down the priority order. If you want
to do something like flash the BIOS, you can insert a boot floppy, hit
F8, and pick "Floppy Drive" from the menu. This will not alter the
BIOS settings, it overrides for only this one time -- on the next
boot, the system will come up exactly the way it used to.

Hope this clears it up for you.

Cheers
Norm
 
Hello

here i am again .
The system begins to work the way i intend it to do ( with 2 - separate on
sata1 and sata2 - 160 GB sata drives and two dvd on prim ide ).
One final question :
On the prim ide raid , i connected the Pata 250 GB Maxtor . ( as master and
only to be used as backup and data ( avi-files to cut movies )).
I have splitted it to 2 times 120GB partitions to avoid other failures or
drivers .
The bios sees the 250 maxtor on every step , sees even that the raid ite8212
sees " only " one drive ( umda = 6 ) BUT I dont see the 250 ( in two
partitions ) in the windows xp explorer , and so , I cant use that drive .
Whats my failure ??

Thanks for helping me

Roland
 
Have you installed the ITE8212 driver? Without it, you'll get the
symptoms you report (BIOS can see devices, but Windows can't). You
don't need to reinstall Windows -- just add the driver via the device
manager.

Norm
 
Norman

As usual , You have gived me the good solution ( stupid me ! )
Thanks for all

Roland
 
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