Raid MB problem

[Gos]

I have a Soyo P4S Dragon Ultra MB with on board raid. I tried to use IDE 3 and 4 for extra IDE devices rather than raid, but I cannot get them to work. Is there anything I need to do other than connect the hard drives? The manual does not really offer any help in this matter. I tried enabling raid in the Bios, but then I had difficulty rebooting.

 

[cleverhandle]

I can only speak for the AMD Soyo's, but for those you need to install the Ultra drivers (from the Soyo CD or site) before using the drive. Thus, if the disk is going to be a boot drive, you need to attach it to a normal IDE channel first, install the OS, install the drivers, and then move it to the RAID IDE channel. And, IIRC, the RAID needs to be enabled in the BIOS even though you're using the channel as regular IDE - someone correct me if I'm wrong here.

 

[Gos]

I have been using a drive (with Win98 SE) with this MB now for several weeks on IDE 1. I tried to install another hard drive just for data storage on IDE 3. That drive works normally when it was on IDE 2. I also tried a CD-r on IDE 3 but nothing would work on 3 or 4. I did install the raid drivers from the Soyo CD and then enabled the raid function in the bios, but that is when I start having trouble booting to the hard drive on IDE 1. Did you ever have any problems after installing the raid drivers? I have attempted to contact Soyo support but they have not anwered my email yet.

 

[cleverhandle]

(Again, just for the AMD Soyo in my experience) - The RAID drivers are not the same as the normal IDE drivers. You need the "Ultra family drivers."

 

[dunkster]

I don't have a Soyo board, but the three steps common to enabling the RAID IDE ports on most RAID boards are:
1. Install RAID-controller drivers.
2. Enable RAID-controller in BIOS.
3. If you're booting from RAID IDE port, be sure that the boot device is properly identified in the BIOS boot order sequence.

Perhaps it's step 3. that you've omitted.

Hope this helps!

 

[Gos]

I finally gave up with my Win 98 SE system after it kept locking up. I used another hard drive and installed WinXP. I enabled raid and installed the drivers and it worked the first time around. I was planning on using using my other older drive until I could transfer or reinstall my applications and data over to the new drive. I am now having problems running the older drive which was partitioned. After the last lock up, I had to run scan disk in safe mode before it would start. The drive letters are now wrong and I do not know how to correct the drive letters. Any sugestions?