ga-8knxp: bootable from non-raid ich5r sata?

[LaughnCynic]

A bit clueless and frustrated here. :frown:

Been trying to get a ga-8knxp (rev 1.0, F5 bios) to boot (with fresh XP Pro SP1) from an SATA drive connected to the ICH5R SATA controller. I have 1 dvdrw (Pioneer A06U) connected to IDE1 as master and the SATA drive (120GB Seagate) connected to SATA0_SB. I think I've heard there can be conflicts between bootable drives on the ICH5R's IDE and SATA controllers but I thought that was between hard drives not a cd/dvd and a hard drive.

I've tried every bios setting/XP install combination I can think of and I can't get past first XP reboot. Meaning XP can see, partition, format, and install to the drive but it will not boot that drive when XP's installation does it's first reboot (or any boot after for that matter).

XP installation with and without supplemental ICH5R SATA raid driver disk (and SATA RAID BIOS settings even though I only have the 1 SATA drive).

Advanced BIOS Features:
SCSI/RAID Cntlr Boot Order: Intel ATA Controller set as first device
First Boot Device: CDROM
Second Boot Device: SCSI (read Gigabyte FAQ's that said to boot from SATA this should be 'SCSI' but I've tried 'HDD-0,1,etc.' too.)

Integrated Peripherals:
On-Chip SATA: Manual (I think I've tried 'Auto' where in remaps to IDE when no IDE devices are present too.)
SATA Port0 Configure as: SATA Port0
SATA RAID Function: Disabled (Tried both for the hell of it along with raid drivers.)

I've think I've tried every combination of settings I can think of (to the point where my memory's fuzzing out with all the variations) and I'm about to give up and just try it on the Sil8112 controller instead. I just can't help having the feeling I'm missing something obvious or am doing something stupid here.

I guess my questions are: Is it possible to boot from ICH5R SATA interface with a non-raid setup when there are any devices on the ICH5R IDE controllers, or is it only in RAID mode that this can be done?

 

[KoolHonda]

Yes, it is possible (at least with my mobo it was). Try swaping the boot order of your drives.

 

[LaughnCynic]

Originally posted by: KoolHonda
Yes, it is possible (at least with my mobo it was). Try swaping the boot order of your drives.

Heh... Did that (and many other combinations of settings). No go so far. Think I'll just give up and try the Silicon Image controller.

 

[mariam]

I have a cheaper version of your board - GA-8IK1100 with Raptor drive (just one hard drive) and the same problem you mentioned struck me very hard. I was so frustrated that I E-mailed a question about it to Gigabyte and the answer is: we are sorry that it's impossible to configure your hard drive as SATA0 or SATA1 to boot up the system. In this case it doesn't matter if any devices are connected to ICH5R IDE controllers. I wasn't lucky as you are because my mobo doesn't have extra controllers. I didn't want to map my Raptor to IDE controller to be able to boot from it because the drive would have taken the whole IDE channel. So I had to buy additional PCI SATA controller to solve the problem. The guy who answered that it is possible by swapping the boot order has different mobo (AOpen AX4C Max). With these two Gigabyte boards we have it simply can't work.

 

[LaughnCynic]

Originally posted by: mariam*snip* you can't boot from non-raid ich5r sata. I wasn't lucky as you are because my mobo doesn't have extra controllers. I had to buy additional PCI SATA controller to solve the problem. *snip*

Ouch! That sucks.

However I have been messing with my 8knxp further and find I can boot with a single SATA drive on ICH5R. The only way I've been able to get it to work is to set On-Chip SATA: Auto. This remaps the SATA drive to one of the 2 ICH5R IDE channels if one of them doesn't have any device connected to it. So with my dvdrw on IDE1 as master my SATA drive remaps to IDE2 master and is bootable. You have to sacrifice an IDE channel to boot to a single SATA on ICH5R it would seem. I don't know at what interface speed it's operating when the SATA drive is remapped (ie is it dropped down to ATA100 or still at SATA's 150?).

If I remove all devices from ICH5R IDE channels and set " On-Chip SATA: Manual; SATA Port0 Configure as: SATA Port0; SATA RAID Function: Disabled" the drive is seen as "3rd Master" but can't boot.

I'm wondering if the same IDE channel sacrifice is required for booting SATA Raid 0 from the ICH5R? It would help to know for future expansion planning.

At this point I'm just going to boot the SATA drive off the Sil3112 controller so that I can get XP Pro up and running and actually try to do something with this damn board.

*sigh* It would be really nice to know if it would boot without sacrificing channels using Raid 0. Wish I had another matching drive to try it.

 

[mariam]

It would boot without sacrificing channels using Raid 0. I haven't done it yet but I've read that other guys did it. Also, when I configured my SATA drive to SATA0 (using one hard drive) and enabled RAID function the system tried to boot but couldn't find the second drive and it was the only reason that it didn't go to Windows.

 

[LaughnCynic]

Originally posted by: mariam
It would boot without sacrificing channels using Raid 0. I haven't done it yet but I've read that other guys did it. *snip*

Yeah I've read that too. Don't know if I'll be able to swing a raid 0 in the next box I'm building (hopefully very soon) with the cost of high end vid cards the way they are. Would be nice to have.

I'm finding this 7200rpm 8MB cache SATA Seagate pretty nice on it's own. Haven't done any real stress tesing of it yet but it feels pretty snappy. I tried to grab the new Sandra today to try out and give this new box a bit of stressing but the damn md5sums didn't match up so I didn't trust it enought to install (call me paranoid). Tomorrow's another day...

I'm lucky I guess. The problems I've had have been the result of my own lack of knowedge and confusion rather than any trouble with this motherboard. I gasped when it posted first try. Only glitch I've had so far is 3 mem errors in memtest86 (in test 3). Which occured running Corsair TWINX1024-pc3200LL at 2.5v. I've bumped it to 2.7v as per Cosair's recomendation though I haven't loosened up the timings any (still 2326). I'll find out how it's doing when I get around to throwing something though to crunch at it.