using RAID as a standard IDE... thingy... Asus A7v333

[Ness]

Okay, I got a HD back from RMA today, had some free time and figured I'd try to figure out how to use the extra IDE headers for extra devices, without the whole RAID thing.

It seems I bit off more than I can chew.

The Mobo manual only mentions that you can use this feature, it doesn't say what steps you have to go through for it. There is no option in the BIOS to set up the drive, as you would on the normal IDE channels. It won't work by just plugging it in and hoping windows XP will take care of it... at least not that I noticed.

So I moved the jumper to allow RAID.

Now when I boot the PC, the Promise Fasttrack screen comes up (For setting up a RAID array), and I can more or less do nothing in there. Fine by me, I don't want a RAID array anyway, I just want to use the IDE devices. So XP boots up, and I see no mention of it finding the HD. Nothing under my computer, just the main HD. Under the device manager, it's there.... listed as "Maxtor 5 T040H4 SCSI Disk device" Isn't SCSI a whole different ballpark?
I have no clue whether I did something wrong, or if in the RMA process, my HD got replaced with a SCSI version or some dumb crap like that.

Oh boy. I have no clue what I did or didn't do, and I'm needing some serious guidance here.

Can anyone help?


-Brian

 

[gaidin123]

Heya, most all IDE controllers whether RAID or offboard PCI will show up in windows as SCSI. It's weird yes, but that's just the way things seem to work.

Try opening up the Computer Management program which should be in the Administrative Tools folder in the Control Panels area in 2k/XP. It may prompt you to format the new drive but if it doesn't you should still see your drive listed in there and will be allowed to format it however you want. If you don't see the drive in there at all then something may be wrong.

Some motherboard manufacturerers skimp on the onboard RAID controllers and only pay for the BIOSes that allow you to RAID drives...this would mean no single drives or optical drives. One way of getting around this from what I've read is to create a single disk RAID array in the controller's management area in its BIOS.

Gaidin

 

[Ness]

Awesome! It's alive and kicking!


Thanks, Gaidin!

 

[gaidin123]

Glad it was something as simple as that and not another RMA waiting to happen.

Gaidin

 

[MercenaryForHire]

So what exactly was the trick here? Disabling the RAID jumper, making a single-drive array, or was it just working all along?

- M4H

 

[Ness]

well, the RAID jumper has to stay on, otherwise it sorta "cuts off" the two other IDE channels.

XP automatically picked up on the promise ATA-100 controller... but it needed to be upgraded to the 133...

so under the device manager, I found it, then upgraded the drive from the CD (with the instructions provided on the CD) and restarted.

When I did this, it picked up the hard drive as I said...

Then, I went into disk management and it asked me to format the drive. It wanted me to format both of my drives, and obviously, because windows is installed on one, I chose to cancel.

Then, I went to the drive, and chose to format just that one.

BAM, It's working, I got myself a spare 40 gigs

It wasn't necessary to play with any of the RAID settings before windows booted, although it still scans for the IDE devices at startup (before windows). (adds about 20 seconds to startup, but I leave my machine on, so it's no problem)