KT7-RAID Being Screwy! Please Help!

[Tiggerbaby]

Hi, long time listener, first time caller... Anyway, I have been using my Abit KT7-RAID motherboard for about half a year now with no problems. That is, until recently. I have had 3 drives fail on me in the last 2 WEEKS!! All of my drives have failed EXCEPT my main hard drive (the drive I boot from). This hard drive is the new IBM 60GXP 40GB. This is the drive that still works, though I have never connected it as a secondary device. The following are the 3 drives that have failed on me: Quantum Fireball KX Plus 20GB, Lite-On 12x10x32 CD-RW, and Creative Blaster 52x CDROM. I had used the Quantum Fireball as my main boot drive for over year, then all of the sudden it went bad... the same night that my Lite-On CD-RW quit. On that night, both of these drives were secondary to my IBM drive. After that, I RMA'd both drives and am still waiting for the replacements. In the meantime, I bought a Creative Blaster 52x CDROM, which failed on me after using it for just a few days. I took this drive back to Wal-Mart and got a replacement. The replacement isn't working either. As with both of the Creative CDROM, the drive is recognized a few times then isn't recognized for a while, then is, then fails. By fails I mean that odd noises have come from the drives, the drive light will stay on the whole time, the drive light won't come on at all, the drive door will open and close by itself upon booting my computer but the drive will not open when I push the button. When these problems occur, the CDROM isn't recognized during POST or when I boot into Windows 98. Though once the drive was recognized during POST, but incorrectly identified and didn't show up in Windows.
Things I have tried: different IDE cables, different IDE cable configurations (with my IBM drive as master and the CDROM as slave), different power connectors. I have checked and double checked the jumpers on the back of the drives to ensure that they are properly connected. I also tested the Quantum HD and Liteon CD-RW on my friend's computer, he encountered the same problems. As for SiSoft Sandra, Performance Tune-Up Wizard reports Tip T1202: VT82C686A ACPI Power Management Controller : Device does not support bus mastering. Sandra also reports Warning W2533: Disabled host controllers are present. Check BIOS settings. Trust me, I have checked the BIOS a dozen times and there are no disabled host controllers. And one other thing, when I go into Control Panel, System Properties, Device Manager Tab, Disk Drives, select my IBM disk, Properties, Settings Tab, there is no DMA check box. Shouldn't there be a DMA check box on my hard drive?
Thanks in advance! I really appreciate it.

My system:
ABIT KT7-RAID
Duron 650
IBM 60GXP 40GB
Crucial 128MB PC133
Mitsumi FDD
INNO 3D Geforce2 MX 32MB
SB Live! Value
Generic 56k Modem

 

[Tiggerbaby]

*Checking to see if my profile update worked.*

 

[Tiggerbaby]

Please help me

 

[clarkmo]

There won't be a dma checkbox if your drive is connected to the raid controller, the drive is already dma enabled by the highpoint controller. I assume you have a good 300 watt power supply? You also seem to have ACPI enabled. Your exact system configuration would be helpful, i.e which ide connectors are you using and what pci cards in which slots. My preliminary advice is to disable ACPI in the bios and all of your problems could be solved right there, but in order to do that you are going to have to read the KT7 faq at Viahardware. There is a ton of info in the faq and a forum as well just for your mobo. The KT7 forum at Icrontic as still very active as well.

Been there,done that, but every situation is different. I got all my fixes from thesr 2 sites.

 

[mastertech01]

Just from postings from other users, the Quantum drive and the Creative 52x are not the most durable drives in the world.. the problem may just be bad drives..

 

[knutp]

If I remember right the raid channels cannot be used for cd'roms, cd'rw or dvds. But if the abit board is screwing up your drives it would be scary! Another problem with abit board?!?