SATA IDE mode?

[JC]

Having troubles getting XP installed on a SATA HDD...I've got it partitioned and formatted (used EASEUS Partition Master on another computer), activated partition in FDISK. RAID bios sees it, bios setup sees it, and yet XP install doesn't see it...even after installing the RAID drivers via F6/floppy. If SATA mode isn't set to IDE, could that cause this problem, even though I installed the drivers during install? I'm at my wit's end.

 

[Paperdoc]

I presume your question focuses on how to set the BIOS Setup option for SATA Port Mode (as my system calls it). Options usually are: IDE (or PATA) Emulation; SATA; AHCI; or, RAID. In fact, AHCI is the true type of device for a SATA HDD.

First, I'm not sure why you are concerned with RAID. You say you are trying to install to ONE SATA HDD, whereas RAID always involves more than one in some array. So, let's review the possible options for installation of XP.

1. You forget the true AHCI nature of SATA devices (and the need to install drivers) and use the work-around that the BIOS contains. You set the SATA Port Mode to IDE (or PATA) Emulation, and the BIOS makes that port and its HDD appear to be only a plain old IDE device which XP fully understands. When you Install, you do NOT need to install ANY extra driver from floppy - XP will find and use the (apparent) IDE drive. BUT this means you do not get to take advantage of some extra features of the new SATA (AHCI) drive system.

2. You do want the new advantages. So you set the SATA Port Mode to SATA or, better yet, to AHCI. Now when you go to install XP, you WILL have to install drivers for that device type from floppy via the F6 key routine you already know. But remember, the driver needed is for an AHCI device, not a RAID device. However, I realize that some mobo makers create confusion here because they bundle both AHCI (or SATA) and RAID drivers into ONE driver they call "RAID" and that's the driver you get to install from floppy. So in your case, check the manual for your mobo and its accompanying CD of utilities, etc to be sure which way you have to proceed. Are AHCI and RAID all together in one driver? Or, is there a separate AHCI (or SATA) driver (NOT the RAID driver) you need to install from floppy? Either way, you still have to set the SATA Port Mode to SATA or, better yet, AHCI.

3. You actually do plan to install to a RAID array consisting of at least two HDD's and boot from that. This process has an extra step. First, you set the SATA Port Mode to RAID and ensure you have BOTH HDD's installed. Get out the instructions for how to create and manage your RAID array. Save and Exit from BIOS Setup, and the machine will reboot. Now, watch the screen carefully for a prompt to enter the RAID Setup and Management routines - usually with a particular key like CTRL-A or whatever your system uses. Within this system you specify which HDD's actually are assigned to a particular RAID array (any not specifically assigned are left as NON-RAID drives), what type of RAID array you are creating, some setup parameters, etc, and finally you tell it to go ahead and Create the RAID array. This step basically Partitions and Formats the HDD's. When done you can back out of the Management screens and let it finish the boot sequence. If you do NOT have your XP Install disk in the optical drive, it will simply fail to boot because there is no disk with an OS. If your XP Install disk is in place, you will now begin the Install and will need to use the F6 - floppy process to install the RAID drivers. But NOW you actually do have an established RAID array for Win XP Install to find, and it should go ahead.

My guess is you intended Option 2 - use a single drive as an AHCI device. So you will need to set the BIOS Setup SATA Port Mode option to AHCI (or SATA if there is not an AHCI option) and install the correct driver from floppy using F6. Just be sure which driver you are installing. Even if it is one of those combined drivers that calls itself "RAID", do not set the Port Mode to RAID unless you actually are going to create a RAID array of two or more HDD's and use that.

By the way, I found out (after Partitioning and Formatting ahead as you did) that you don't need to do that up front. XP Install does all that for you as it starts to use the chosen boot drive.

 

[JC]

Wow, thanks for the thorough reply

OK, I left a bit out that I felt was extraneous- for now. I am setting up a RAID 1, I set up the mirror OK, but the bios setup didn't seem to recognize the drives. Now I'm thinking it actually did, boot device was ALi_RAID. Anyway, to take that out of the equation, I deleted the RAID setup and will install the second drive later.

So...I'm trying to install on one HDD for now, I F6 and install the drivers, but XP setup still doesn't find any drives. Only thing I can think of is that SATA setting. Unfortunately, I'll have to wait until I get home from work to check it.

 

[sm625]

I would always install xp on a single partition on a single drive, then later create the raid array from the single os drive if the motherboard comes with good software that lets me do it easily. If the software is crap then I just dont bother. RAID can be such a pita that (if you value your time) it would be easier and cheaper just to get one SSD rather than trying to set up a raid with 2 hdd.

 

[mfenn]

Paperdoc, do you have the whole thing typed up and ready to go? Cause that is impressive. :thumbsup:

OP, the process that Paperdoc describes should work perfectly. If it doesn't, the most likely problem is that you're using the wrong drivers.

 

[JC]

Up and running (one HDD so far). Had to set SATA to 'non-RAID'.

Odd though, when it was set to 'RAID' and I had the array set up, it didn't detect the drives then.

Hopefully I can create the array and let it copy over with no more problems!

Thanks to all for your help! :beer:

 

[Paperdoc]

Paperdoc, do you have the whole thing typed up and ready to go? Cause that is impressive. :thumbsup:

OP, the process that Paperdoc describes should work perfectly. If it doesn't, the most likely problem is that you're using the wrong drivers.

Thanks for your comment. I just wrote that post in today, but I've seen such problems posted before and replied in similar manner, so it's not entirely new.

 

[Paperdoc]

Up and running (one HDD so far). Had to set SATA to 'non-RAID'.

Odd though, when it was set to 'RAID' and I had the array set up, it didn't detect the drives then.

Hopefully I can create the array and let it copy over with no more problems!

Thanks to all for your help! :beer:

Let me clarify a few things.
1. You say that earlier the Win XP Install failed to find a RAID array to install to. For it to find an array, TWO steps have to precede the Install: (a) set up BIOS to configure the SATA drives to be RAID; and, (b) use the RAID Management utility during bootup to actually assign drives and create the RAID array. Until it has been created, Win Install can't find it.
2. "Create the array and copy it over" causes me a little concern. You CAN install Win XP to a single HDD, then later add two more HDD's to the system and create a RAID array to use for data. Then you have to install the RAID driver into Windows so it can use the array. However, you cannot simply "copy" the single boot drive's content to the RAID array and expect to boot from that without the original single bootable drive. Most often when you install to a single HDD you do NOT install a RAID driver from floppy, so whatever you copy (even if you use a cloning utility - NOT a simple copy - which is really what you need) does not have any way to access the RAID array for the boot process, and it can't boot from the array. sm625 hinted that, IF your plan specifically is RAID1, and not RAID0, and IF you have good software, you might be able to convert a single HDD into a RAID1 array. Some RAID Management systems are good at that. But you still have the problem of the missing driver. At some point in the process, that RAID driver MUST be installed into Windows XP at a base level (usually done via F6 in Install). Simply installing the RAID driver in a running Windows OS does NOT do this, because the OS must load from the boot HDD before the RAID driver can be read from there. To be honest, I have no idea whether you could Install to a single HDD INCLUDING using F6 to install the RAID driver (even though you are not using it yet), and then LATER convert that single HDD into a RAID1 array and have it bootable.

By the way, I don't know of any good way to convert a single HDD into a 2-HDD RAID0 array. The re-arrangement of data in such a conversion is so profound it is very easy to lose everything. Anyone who wants to do something like that is better off making a complete backup, wiping out the original HDD, installing the second, creating the RAID0 array, and restoring from the backup. But that still has the problem of the missing RAID driver.

 

[mfenn]

Some backup software has functionality that allows you to insert a driver into the Windows image as part of the restore process. Acronis Universal Restore will do it, but I dunno if it is worth the $100.

 

[corkyg]

By the way, I don't know of any good way to convert a single HDD into a 2-HDD RAID0 array.

Not really that hard. First, set up and establish the single boot drive on a separate HDD. Second, build the RAID 0 array, and leave it empty. Third, boot to Acronis media, and clone the single drive to the RAID 0 array. Forth, Disconnect the old boot drive and boot to the RAID 0 array.

When booted to the Linux-based Acronis media, it sees any RAID array as a single lettered drive. The RAID controller takes care of whether it is mirrored or striped. No?

In case it fails, you always can reconnect the original boot drive you started with.

 

[mfenn]

Not really that hard. First, set up and establish the single boot drive on a separate HDD. Second, build the RAID 0 array, and leave it empty. Third, boot to Acronis media, and clone the single drive to the RAID 0 array. Forth, Disconnect the old boot drive and boot to the RAID 0 array.

When booted to the Linux-based Acronis media, it sees any RAID array as a single lettered drive. The RAID controller takes care of whether it is mirrored or striped. No?

In case it fails, you always can reconnect the original boot drive you started with.

That's not really converting the array though because it requires a 3rd drive.

 

[Paperdoc]

corkyg and mfenn:
Yeah, that is the only safe way to do it - cloning from a single HDD with an OS installed. My original comment was to say I know of no good way to simply add one HDD to an existing single HDD with OS, migrating data so that these two drives become a RAID0 array with an installed OS. You can do that with some RAID management systems for RAID1 (mirroring), but not RAID0.

Here is what I do not know about this, though. If one plans to boot from a RAID array of any type, one MUST install the required driver from floppy at an early stage of the Windows Install process via the F6 key routine. This is because no Windows has built-in drivers for RAID or any of many different "non-standard" (that is, not IDE, CD-ROM or floppy) drive devices. The F6 route somehow makes that driver become a "built-in" component of this particular Windows installation that it CAN read from the array HDD's and use to access the array for all further boot tasks. Now how about the plan to Install Windows on a single disk, create a RAID0 array, then clone the OS to the array and remove the original single HDD? Where does that driver get into it? I could hypothesize that you could Install the RAID driver during the first installation to the single HDD even though you do not need it to work that way. Later after the cloning operation, that driver WOULD be somewhere on the cloned array. But I don't know whether it would be in the right place to be found by the Windows OS on it that is trying to boot. Has anybody ever actually done this and succeeded?

 

[mfenn]

I believe that as long as the INF has been installed (right click, install) then it would theoretically work. I've never tried though!

 

[JC]

Well, to finish this up, here's what happened.

When I was originally setting up the RAID1 array, I saw the option for 'copy data to mirror'. After I had XP installed on the primary drive, I set SATA to 'RAID', set up the RAID1, and rolled the 'copy'. There was no warning about destroying any data doing this, so I'm assuming it ghosted the mirror drive. It did take quite a while! It boots up fine, shows RAID as the HDD. Not really any way to check the data on the mirror I guess, except to try to boot it on the mirror drive only.

Thanks to all for their help sorting this out.




Oh yeah, to compound matters, I was trying to use drivers from the wrong mobo. Doh.

"Problem lies between chair and keyboard"

 

[mfenn]

Oh yeah, to compound matters, I was trying to use drivers from the wrong mobo. Doh.

"Problem lies between chair and keyboard"

Can I say, "I called it"? :awe:

 

[Paperdoc]

Can I say, "I called it"? :awe:

Yeah, you did, on your first post in this thread! Congrats!