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A7V and ATA mess

S

Sleater

Senior member
Hi All.

I'm having some problems I hope you can help me with. My hard-drive was connected to the ATA66 controller and my friend said I could speed it up on the ATA100 (promise) controller. It didn't really work though because the CD-RW and DVD weren't showing up in Device Manager -- we tried different ways of connecting them too) so we put the hd back on the original controller.

We fiddled with a few other little things too (changed a couple settings in BIOS, enabled DMA,etc).

My problem is: now theres a yellow exclamation mark next to 'primary IDE contoller' and every time windows loads it detects 'PCI mass storage controller' as new hardware but I don't know what drivers its looking for (i've tried a bunch of different things).

And, my hard drive is now running in MS-DOS compatiblilty mode, which sucks.

What should I do?

Heres my system: A7V (bios1004d), Win98se, 1GHZ T-bird, GX75 45GB IBM HD, Geforce2gts, SB-Live, d-link network card, modem,
 
This is elementary, my friend, that "mass storage controller" is your Promise ATA-100 controller and logically it won't work unless you install correct driver for it. Drivers can be found from ASUS CD or homepage...
 
Also, you may want to flash the BIOS to 1007. It fixes some problems with the Promise controller. Although those problems were likely introduced with the 1005 series of BIOSes.
 
But actually, you don't need the Promise to run ATA100. The normal IDE controller should do ATA100. You only need the Promise for RAID I believe. And it boots a lot faster if you disable RAID in the bios if you are not using it.

At least that is the way it is on the A7V133.
 
Bglad: ASUS A7V has VIA VT82c686a south bridge which doesn't support ATA-100. Also, that Promise ATA-100 controller isn't (hw) RAID-capable ...
 
Ah, it is very different than the A7V133 then. Couldn't check it out when I was posting because link to manual on the Asus site is broken.
 
If you read the benchmark testing at any of the hardware sites, you will see the difference between ATA66 and ATA100 is negligible. Personally, IMO, I think you've wasted your time and money adding the promise card. I would remove it and go back to your old configuration....just my opinion...and you know what they say about those, LOL. 😀

Here's a comparison between ATA33 and 66:
Comparo. The diff between ATA66 and 100 is basically the same.


Just curious, is the promise card a RAID or a standard one?
 
It is not integrated per se. Yes he already has it, but it has 4 IDE controllers, 2 Promise and 2 ATA100. You don't have to use the Promise controllers unless you are using RAID. Therefore, no reason to toil with it.
 
Sleater,
If you want to use the promise controller just put the ATA100 hard drives on it. Leave CD and DVD drives on the Via controllers. I have read problems putting those on the promise.
 
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