KT7a RAID IDE Hell, Need Help!

[igor01]

I got ABIT KT7A Raid and a 1GHz Tbird at a computer show on the weekend, switching from a ABIT BX6 and PIII 650. Pulled all the guts out of my computer, put the new mobo in, put everything back, reconnected the drives (40GB Maxtor 7200, 27 GB Maxtor 5400, Plextor 8X CDRW, Toshiba 24X CDROM). Windows 98 booted fine, installed the drivers, I installed all the via drivers and the service pack for the mobo (Via 4in1 4.28) and everything seemed to work fine except this weird problem - BIOS identifies my drives setup correctly:

Primary Master: 40 GB
Primary Slave: Toshiba CDROM

Secondary Master: 27 GB
Secondary Slave: Plextor CDRW

When the system boots, it has a messege: Scand Devices... Please Wait. This takes a minute, then a screen flashes that says something like Primary Master - None, Primary Slave - Note, Secondary Master None, Secondary Slave - None.

I can boot into Windows 98, but the 27 GB does not show in the Windows Exlorer. The biggest problem is that all my backup harddrive images are on that drive, I can't even reghost now because Drive Image does not see the drive either! I put the harddrives into my old PIII box and I have the same problem - the 27 gig doesn't show up, the BIOS sees it no problem. Is there a reason why Windows would not recognize this drive?

Please help people, I've reached the limit of my wits and patience on this one. On a bright note, the CPU does 1330 MHz - 10x133, whohoo!

Here's my system info:

Abit KT7a RAID (KT133a chipset)
198 MB No Name PC133
TBird 1Ghz (it's not overclocked right now)
Creative Annihilator2
Creative SB Live!
Realtech NIC
350 Watt Power Supply
Klipsch 4.1 Promedia Speakers
17" Optiquest V75

Thanks a lot!

 

[igor01]

Anyone?

 

[misle]

Have you checked your jumpers on your drives? Make sure they are set to the correct Master/Slave setting. That always screws me up. But that doesn't explain why BIOS see them but not Windows... Odd. Do you have any drives installed on the IDE 3 or 4 (The Raid Buses)? You might want to make sure and install the HighPoint IDE Controller. I believe that is on the Floppy that should have come with your board.

That's all I know to do...

Hope it helps

Matt

 

[igor01]

Thanks Matt, the jumpers are fine, it's gotta be some sort of software error. I am getting some good responses on different message boards, will try a few things people suggested. But it looks like I still will have to reinstall OS. I was trying to avoid having to use the raid ide controllers (was saving them for raid setup later), but now I will use them if I have to (someone else suggested using all four drives as masters on different controllers).

Any other suggestions, guys and girls?

 

[Fumiup]

Possibly your boot record got screwed up.

Use fdisk and see if it sees any partitons on the 27gb.

 

[igor01]

I will try rebuilding the boot record with fdisk /mbr, but the thing is the 27Gigger is not showing either in DOS or Windows, only can see it in BIOS. Any suggestions?

 

[Quad]

sorry igor, i'm probably of no help to you. but just out of curiosity...u said u bought yur stuff at a comp show this past weekend. Would this happen to be computerfest toronto? hehe, cuz i was at that one
cheap stuff there eh?

try putting both hard disks on one ide channel, and both cdroms on the other. leave the raid channels alone.

good luck

keep us posted

 

[Regalk]

Correct me if I am wrong - shouldn't you have the HDs on the RAID controllers and the CDRom/CDRW on the primary and secondary ports ALL as masters! No need for master/slave setup. I have my setup as follows:
Primary (master) - CDRom
Secondary (master) - CDRW
Promise Raid - 20GB master on 1st port
Promise Raid - 20GB master on 2nd port

 

[Technonut]

The Hard drives should be set as masters on IDE 3 and 4. Your other CD drives should be set as masters on IDE 1 and 2.

 

[Pederv]

On the KT7, even if you can see the drives in the cmos standard setup screen you still need to set the bios to enable them. Select each drive in the standard setup screen and hit enter, does the following screen say "NONE", "AUTO", or "USER DEFINED"?

 

[igor01]

Thanks a lot for your help, guys. The problem indeed was in the incorrect use of the IDE controllers, I set all the drives to master, put the two harddrives on IDE 3 and IDE 4, put the two CD drives on the IDE 1 and IDE 2, and sure enough, everyting works like a charm. Reghosted the C: and found out that the HD performance has significantly increased - before it used to take me over 20 minutes to restore a 4 GB image file, now it took about 8 minutes. I installed all the drivers, set the BIOS, and it's flying now. Went from 6300 scores in 3DMark 2000 (PIII @800, GF2) to 9400 with Tbird @1266! Thanks a lot guys, you made my day!

Quad: yes, it was the Compufest in Toronto, got the mobo for Can $239, an ATX case with 350 Watt power supply for Can $36, MS Intellimouse Optical for Can $52. My buddy picked up a Maxtor 7200 rpm 40 GB drive for Can $200!

Thanks again guys! and God bless the Internet...

 

[Fumiup]

Congrats