Problem setting up hdd on ata controller card

[Seska]

Hi, I got this problem of hooking up two harddrive maxtor 6L080L4 to this controller card. I connect each on a separate channel but only one detects the full capacity while the other with less than half.

The weird thing is when I connected that harddisk to the onboard controller, it detects its full capacity. Also, when it boots into windows, it appears unformatted when connected to the card. The other harddrive is working fine.

here's what I've tried:

- re-install the controller card's driver
- running maxblast and powermax to check the disk
- swapping ide cables, channels on the controller
- connecting using that harddrive alone
- fdisk, reformated the harddrive

It just refuses to detect its full capacity on the controller card. Btw, I'm not using any raid function.

See here

Any help will be appreciated, thanks.

Seska

 

[Viper96720]

Maybe a jumper setting on the hard drive. Each drive reports the total size when alone on the card.

 

[Jiggz]

Try formatting the hdd using WinXP (I assume you are using XP) CD. Boot from the CD and then press F6 when instructed about additional RAID or SCSI interface. Make sure you have the drivers for the ATA card on a floppy. Continue like you are installing WinXP up to the point of creating partitions and formatting the HDD (You should see two drives connected to the ATA card if it's configured as ATA. If you see only one hdd then it's configured as RAID). You will have to do it twice for each of the HDD. Then boot back normally with your existing system and the HDD should be detected fully. With each HDD on each channel they should be each configured as Master. You do not need MaxBlast if you do the above. Also make sure you are installing the ATA driver for the card and not the Raid driver. Configure the card as ATA and not RAID. The bios for the card will show during POST. It seems to me the card is configured as RAID that's why you are being held up by the 127GB limit