Highpoint HPT372 ATA133 RAID controller question

[Megatomic]

My new motherboard (Abit KR7A-Raid) has a Highpoint HPT372 ATA133 RAID controller on it. I'm currently using it for my 2 hard drives as a standard IDE controller and not as a RAID controller.

Here's my question: I want to flash the motherboard's bios to the latest rev. and it will also update the HPT372 bios. There are warnings at the Highpoint and Abit sites about having to backup your drives before you do this because the flash process will destroy the data on the RAID drives. As I said, I am not using the RAID feature. Will the flash wipe out the data on my hard drives or does this warning only apply to drives in actual RAID configurations?

Thanks for any help/advice you can give.

 

[Insane3D]

Nah, you will be fine. I think the danger is that it might screw up a RAID array, but even that seems unlikely. A flash should not affect anything..

 

[Megatomic]

Thanks for the encouragement Insane3D . I will flash the bios tomorrow afternoon and post up my results.

 

[Megatomic]

Hahaha, 2 years of experience here and one year admining VBull forums and I can't post properly here...

 

[RanDum72]

I have flashed a RAID adapter's BIOS (Highpoint's own RocketRAID133 with the 372A chipset) with a RAID 0 array stuck to it just to see if it messes it up. It didn't even miss a beat.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: RanDum72
I have flashed a RAID adapter's BIOS (Highpoint's own RocketRAID133 with the 372A chipset) with a RAID 0 array stuck to it just to see if it messes it up. It didn't even miss a beat.

Excellent news to hear! Apparently I worried for nothing. In my defense I do have 30GB of mp3s and 3 years worth of my kids pics on one of the drives. I would hate to lose those files.

 

[RanDum72]

But just to be on the cautious side, its always a good idea to back-up important files when doing something like this.

 

[Megatomic]

What I was thinking about doing is putting that storage drive on the primary Via IDE channel all by itself. It's only ATA100 anyways and I don't need high performance from it. I need it to survive and serve files. I'll probably do that and leave the OS drive as is and flash away. I'm guessing it will go without a hitch but you just never know eh?

Thanks for the added input RanDum72.