Sata Drive + EIDE Mainboard

[RFR]

About 18 months ago I bought a Seagate SATA HD and
started using in external enclosure. After about a
year (programmed by warranty I supose) it stopped
working and I brought it into the computer case
and attached to PCI card via SATA cable. The Intel
board has no Sata connection. It worked for few
months and then stopped. The drive itself is
running and the case warm. PCI card appears in
hardware list - has no brand name but when in the
3rd slot from video card Device Mgr says its a
Intel ICH4/ICH4-M SMBus Control..... The few
instructions included were useless.

Two half size CDs came with that order - one was
deep blue color with Software Driver Ver: 3.8
printed on. It contains lots of drivers. The other
CD is black and has two rows of drivers printed on
it. The main title on that CD was USB Series
Driver 2007-3. It has USB, IDE, SATA drivers for
Audio, Data Transfer, Card readers etc. One choice
offered was Via Raid and I tried that too. It
installed but has a yellow blob.

I tried to reinstall on Win2000 and it found what
it claimed was a good driver match but again there
was a yellow blob.

This was error ms:

System Information report written at: 06/05/2009 01:32:13 PM
[Problem Devices]

Device PNP Device ID Error Code
VIA RAID Controller - 3249 PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249&SUBSYS_32491106&REV_50\4&29817089&0&10F0 10

Thx for help.

 

[Paul]

About 18 months ago I bought a Seagate SATA HD and started using in
external enclosure. After about a year (programmed by warranty I supose)
it stopped working and I brought it into the computer case and attached
to PCI card via SATA cable. The Intel board has no Sata connection. It
worked for few months and then stopped. The drive itself is running and
the case warm. PCI card appears in hardware list - has no brand name but
when in the 3rd slot from video card Device Mgr says its a Intel
ICH4/ICH4-M SMBus Control..... The few instructions included were useless.

Two half size CDs came with that order - one was deep blue color with
Software Driver Ver: 3.8 printed on. It contains lots of drivers. The
other CD is black and has two rows of drivers printed on it. The main
title on that CD was USB Series Driver 2007-3. It has USB, IDE, SATA
drivers for Audio, Data Transfer, Card readers etc. One choice offered
was Via Raid and I tried that too. It installed but has a yellow blob.

I tried to reinstall on Win2000 and it found what it claimed was a good
driver match but again there was a yellow blob.

This was error ms:

System Information report written at: 06/05/2009 01:32:13 PM
[Problem Devices]

Device PNP Device ID Error Code
VIA RAID Controller - 3249
PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249&SUBSYS_32491106&REV_50\4&29817089&0&10F0 10

Thx for help.

http://pciids.sourceforge.net/pci.ids

1106 VIA Technologies, Inc.
3249 VT6421 IDE RAID Controller

It is indeed a VIA chip.

What you need to do, is check the jumper on the Seagate drive. There is
probably room for two jumpers. One jumper controls "spread spectrum" and
you don't need to play with that one. The second jumper is called
"Force 150", and it is used to set the communications rate on the
cable. When mixing VIA chipsets, with SATA2 drives, you need to
install the Force 150 jumper, so that the cable operates at
150MB/sec. Once you do that, the drive may be detected.

You should also be able to look at the PCI card itself, and check
the writing on the main big chip. You should see "VT6421" on there
somewhere.

Look on the CD for a VIA storage driver of some sort.

Paul

 

[Andrew Smallshaw]

About 18 months ago I bought a Seagate SATA HD and
started using in external enclosure. After about a
year (programmed by warranty I supose) it stopped
working and I brought it into the computer case
and attached to PCI card via SATA cable. The Intel
board has no Sata connection. It worked for few
months and then stopped. The drive itself is
running and the case warm. PCI card appears in
hardware list - has no brand name but when in the
3rd slot from video card Device Mgr says its a
Intel ICH4/ICH4-M SMBus Control..... The few
instructions included were useless.

I agree with Kony - you are not looking at your SATA controller
here. The ICH4 is a motherboard southbridge - the last Intel one
without a built in SATA controller. The SMBus is the way old "ISA"
peripherals are implemented on modern mobos - it isn't really ISA
but appears that way to software. You will find your serial and
parallel ports and floppy drive controller connected to the SMBus,
but the bus itself never leaves the motherboard - it does not have
an add-on connector.

 

[vall-healey]

Thanks Kony for that quick response.

Are you stating that if the card is in another slot, you no
longer see the Intel ICH4 SMBus control listed in Device
Manager? If so, do you see it again if the card is totally
removed from the system? I ask because the Intel SMBus
Control is a different part of the computer not related to
the PCI SATA card.

My idea that "Intel ICH4/ICH4-M ....." was associated with the PCI card
was nonsense. However, the third PCI slot was associated with that name
and that's where the SATA card was located at the time. I moved the card
to another slot and that Intel ICH4... name stayed put on the third
slot. I should have known better.

If the card does not have a heatsink permanently attached to
the RAID controller chip on it, you can do a web search for
that part number to identify it, or post them here if a web
search isn't finding it. However from the info you posted
below this may not be necessary.

The card has no heat sink. It's small and slim - little energy required.

This was error ms:

System Information report written at: 06/05/2009 01:32:13 PM
[Problem Devices]

Device PNP Device ID Error Code
VIA RAID Controller - 3249 PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249&SUBSYS_32491106&REV_50\4&29817089&0&10F0 10

Thx for help.

It appears to be a Via VT6420/6421 based RAID card, try the
following driver with the card in the slot it originally
worked in (you might also inspect the card electrical
contacts and the contacts in the slot) but if it just
suddenly refused to work one day without any massive changes
to windows (like installing a service pack) and you didn't
change the motherboard or RAID card bios (flash a different
one to the EEPROM) then I would suspect the card itself has
died.

You were pretty close. The card was so close to another one that I had
to dig it out to see VT6421A on the chip - no other company markings.
The mother board was the same one as before and the third slot was where
the card was when it previously worked. It did not work there when I
installed it this time. It turned out that I did not need to flash. More
below.

However, you should power off and unplug the drive seeing
if the card will install ok with nothing connected to it
yet. When you turn the system on, see if you can enter the
RAID bios menu from the card, if you cannot even do that
then there seems no hope of it being just a windows driver
problem. That is, if you are sure it is supposed to be a
RAID capable card, if it did previosly display a message
when booting that you could press a certain key to set up
the RAID arrangement at the end of the BIOS POST and
enumeration screens.

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OSID=3&CatID=1240&SubCatID=117

When adding and removing cords and components, almost always I shut
down. I moved the card to the PCI 1 slot and to my surprise it worked.
I then installed the RAID prog and it and all the hard disks are now
working ok, except one drive. The problem with it is that I encrypted a
folder on it over a year ago and the hassle of the past month has fuzzed
up my frazzled brain. The properties of the files indicate read only
but even that means nothing - all pages are blank. The encryption was
from Win2K. Looks like I'll now have to start on that task.

One thing I learned was that if an encrypted file is copied to an
external drive it maintains the encryption there.

Thanks again Kony for your help and have a great weekend.

 

[vall-healey]

About 18 months ago I bought a Seagate SATA HD and started using in
external enclosure. After about a year (programmed by warranty I
supose) it stopped working and I brought it into the computer case and
attached to PCI card via SATA cable. The Intel board has no Sata
connection. It worked for few months and then stopped. The drive
itself is running and the case warm. PCI card appears in hardware list
- has no brand name but when in the 3rd slot from video card Device
Mgr says its a Intel ICH4/ICH4-M SMBus Control..... The few
instructions included were useless.

Two half size CDs came with that order - one was deep blue color with
Software Driver Ver: 3.8 printed on. It contains lots of drivers. The
other CD is black and has two rows of drivers printed on it. The main
title on that CD was USB Series Driver 2007-3. It has USB, IDE, SATA
drivers for Audio, Data Transfer, Card readers etc. One choice offered
was Via Raid and I tried that too. It installed but has a yellow blob.

I tried to reinstall on Win2000 and it found what it claimed was a
good driver match but again there was a yellow blob.

This was error ms:

System Information report written at: 06/05/2009 01:32:13 PM
[Problem Devices]

Device PNP Device ID Error Code
VIA RAID Controller - 3249
PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3249&SUBSYS_32491106&REV_50\4&29817089&0&10F0 10

Thx for help.

http://pciids.sourceforge.net/pci.ids

1106 VIA Technologies, Inc.
3249 VT6421 IDE RAID Controller

It is indeed a VIA chip.

What you need to do, is check the jumper on the Seagate drive. There is
probably room for two jumpers. One jumper controls "spread spectrum" and
you don't need to play with that one. The second jumper is called
"Force 150", and it is used to set the communications rate on the
cable. When mixing VIA chipsets, with SATA2 drives, you need to
install the Force 150 jumper, so that the cable operates at
150MB/sec. Once you do that, the drive may be detected.

You should also be able to look at the PCI card itself, and check
the writing on the main big chip. You should see "VT6421" on there
somewhere.

Look on the CD for a VIA storage driver of some sort.

Paul

Thank you Paul for your help.

The VIA chip had the number: VT6421A, so you were pretty close. By
moving the SATA card to a new slot - slot 1 - it started to work again
and I finally have all drives running again. I did not need to change
the jumper on the SATA drive - it worked ok as it was. There may be a
faster setting but what I have now is all I need.

Now I have an encryption problem (fortunately for one BIG folder only)
to solve. I set it up a year ago and a lot has happened since. At that
time after I logged into the computer I was aware of no restrictions on
that folder at all. Security settings show R only. Now with things moved
around I cannot access those files at all. However, I'll start worrying
about that one next week.

Thanks again and have a great weekend

 

[RFR]

I agree with Kony - you are not looking at your SATA controller
here. The ICH4 is a motherboard southbridge - the last Intel one
without a built in SATA controller. The SMBus is the way old "ISA"
peripherals are implemented on modern mobos - it isn't really ISA
but appears that way to software. You will find your serial and
parallel ports and floppy drive controller connected to the SMBus,
but the bus itself never leaves the motherboard - it does not have
an add-on connector.

Thanks Andrew. I had heard of Southbridge but didn't know that is what
SMBus meant.

After my last post I realized that I was working on the C: drive
installation at the time I did the checking on the encryption. The drive
I was referring to previously was the D: drive and very likely I still
have complete access to the encrypted files on it.

The agony continues; when I try to access this D: drive I get the
"system32\config\systemced - missing or corrupt ........." message.
This drive booted ok until early yesterday.

I have done a search and found one MSoft article, and a lot of garbage,
on the subject. A lot more work to do :-(

 

[Andrew Smallshaw]

Thanks Andrew. I had heard of Southbridge but didn't know that is what
SMBus meant.

No. The SMBus is _one_ of the the things that the southbridge
provides. It also provides the PCI bus, clock, USB and sundry
other "slow" functions. SMBUS is just one of those things. The
variosu capabilities are regarded as separate conceptually and so
you need several drivers even though the southbridge is only a
single chip.

 

[RFR]

Agreed, though "separate drivers" these days often means
only the one, full package chipset driver which includes
several separate drivers it installs at the same time.

Thanks guys. My education continues. I'll make a note of those comments

Have a great week.