GA-7VXRP Problems - How to set up 3 IDE devices on a non-RAID system?

[Gog]

A friend of mine got the Gigabyte GA-7VXRP which has 4 IDE channels and RAID. He has 1xHD, 1xDVD and 1xCDRW and wanted to connect each one to an individal ide chanel. He doesn't intend on using the RAID feature.

What he did is setup up each device on its individual chanel, making each drive master. He then changed the setting in the bios from RAID to ATA.

With this setup, when the bios first loads up, it takes about 30 seconds for the bios to detect the drives and its about 1-2 minutes before WindowsXP loads up...

Do you guys have an idea what the problem can be?

 

[Ninaholic]

I believe it's to do with the Promise RAID controller. It seems to want to check for RAIDed drives even when you tell it not to. Not having a board with a Promise controller, I can't tell you for sure. But it seems like a decent bet.

Anand actually mentions this in the roundup of KT333 motherboards.

4) IDE RAID - The "light" edition of Promise's FastTrack IDE RAID controller is useless for anything other than RAID 1. Not being able to control stripe sizes is unacceptable, either use another controller or don't offer the option at all. Also, we definitely want to have the option to disable on-board RAID. Those users that don't use the functionality shouldn't have to wait for the controller to go through its detection phase before their system boots.

That doesn't sound good - it means the RAID is b0rked and you can't do much unless there's a bios update that fixes it.

Then again, it could be the Gigabyte offers the ability to turn it off, somewhere in the deep heart of it's BIOS. I'm just working of intuition here. Although I'll keep an eye on the thread if you figure it out since I'm interested in buying one.

 

[VTrider]

Oh what a nightmare! I also want this board, been waiting and waiting - this is the last thing I want to hear. I was also planning on using the GA-7VXRP in a non-raid fashion at first. I don't want to the board to hang/wait upon boot just so it can figure out that i'm not running raid. Hmmmm? Can anybody else shed some light on this?

-VTrider

 

[Gog]

bump

 

[gsethi]

Thats the only way you can use your RAID as IDE controllers. Gigabyte uses Promise Raid that takes about 30 sec to detect drives. If you disable it, you will boot instantaneously but it wont detect drives connected to it. So, only way to use it is to enable it and wait for about 30+ sec.

I like Highpoint raid controllers since they detect my drives within 10 sec. Also, i was recommended to always choose Highpoint onboard Raid as compared to Promise onboard Raid. (if your getting PCI Raid cards, then get Promise over highpoint though).

its just a pain that you have to deal with each time you reboot.

 

[VTrider]

Are you serious?! Seems there is no way around this 30sec. raid detect bootup? This is a major bummer, I've had my eye set on this board for a while now, but who wants to wait 30sec. for system to boot? (God I'm spoiled, I remember back in the days when I would wait 2 minutes for Win95 to load!)

-VTrider

 

[bunker]

There are three settings for the controller in the bios: Raid, ATA, Disabled

With raid or ata you have to wait the 30 seconds.

 

[daveqb]

yeah theres no way around,
its not actually looking for RAID devices. thats a whole other BIOS set up (the RAID BIOS kicks in when its enabled)

but it simply checks for devices.

once it has found the devices it enables the chips BIOS (obviously in an ATA format) and kicks on...

its like having "auto" set for your IDE devices. so u never have to worry about going to BIOS to re-detect devies when adding and moving and changing around on the two Promise channels.

but it is slow.

but (yes another one ) ONCE you get the system going it is very stable!

mines been going for about 60 hours now straight, not one hitch, got ... let me count them..... 27 windows open now and it doesnt miss a beat.

PS you need to pump (max) 1.92 Vcore through your CPU in order to get stable mind you, read that somewhere and found it to be true when testing with Prime95, it would freeze on Prime95 every time, even at 133FSB, until i put it up to 1.92Vcore
not too much more heat though thankfully!

 

[VTrider]

Ahh, what am I complaining about anyway? I guess I can wait 30sec. for boot (everybody else does, right?).

-VTrider