Re: Making a SATA drive the boot drive

Apart from mobo, model/version which you dont mention
Asus have had problems with Sil and bios versions on at least one mobo that
I know about, apparently cured by a bios update.
Niether do you mention whether you are using the Assus supplied Sil driver,
or driver direct from Sil.


"Chris PLACAK" <Chris.PLACAK.1qhr3b@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Chris.PLACAK.1qhr3b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> I have set up RAID sets of various types of motherboards many times in
> the past and have had NO significant problems but this time I am
> experiencing VERY severe problems with this model of ASUS motherboard.
>
> I have a quantity of 10 identical boards, each has 3 gigabytes of
> memory, an Athlon XP 3000+ processor, ATI 9800 All in Wonder video card
> AND for hard drives each has two identical IBM, now HITACHI,
> HDS722525VLSA80 Serial ATA hard drives, these are 250 GB serial ATA
> drives with 8 megabytes of cache. I noticed some very difficult
> problems while attempting to set up my first system. I checked to see
> if the same problems existed on two other boards and they all turned
> out to have the same problems. I am NOT going to bother to check all 7
> other boards, I assume that the problem is the same with each one.
>
> I am going to make this discussion extremely clear with eacting
> references to what is in the motherboard reference manual and the EXACT
> messages that I see on the screen when I attempt to follow steps.
>
> On this particular model of board when you want to have RAID 0 or RAID
> 1 you must enable the Serial ATA jumper as noted in Section 2.6.6 on
> page 2-17 of the motherbaord manual. Failure to take this step will
> not allow the Silicon Image 3112 controller chip to be active. This
> step is completed properly.
>
> Next, when you boot up, you will see the following message on the
> screen:
>
> SiI 3112A SATARaid BIOS Version 4.2.47
> Copyright (C) 1997-2004 Silicon Image, Inc.
>
> Press <Ctrl S> or F4 to enter RAID utility
>
> When I press either Ctrl S or F4 REPEATEDLY this does NOT allow me to
> enter the RAID Configuration Utility except for 1 out of approximately
> 10 boot up attempts. On the one out of 10 times that I am able to
> enter the RAID Configuration Utility, the RAID Configuration Utility
> does not recognize the presence of the two drives that are present.
> Only one drive is recognized as being present. Creating a RAID Set
> does not work because only one drive is recognized as being present and
> if you select Resolve Conflicts you get the message that there are not
> any conflicts. I do not know why the RAID Configuration Utility (see
> Section 5.5.2 on page 5-14 of the motherboard manual) does NOT seem to
> work as shown or work in a way that I KNOW it should work.
>
> I know that each one of these drives and the associated cables and
> power supply (fancy model from PC Power and Cooling) are working
> perfectly since I have tested them on other working systems. What I do
> not know yet is whether or not there is some inherent problem with
> IBM/Hitachi drives or whether or not this drive size is too large for
> this RAID controller chip or what. The system does recognize the one
> drive properly. I have not had a chance to use a smaller size in GB
> IBM/Hitachi matched pair or a matched pair of drives from another
> manufacturer such as Seagate. I do not use Maxtor drives and I
> DEFINITELY do NOT use Western Digital drives.
>
> If I attempt to load Windows XP Professional SP2 on the 1 SATA drive
> that is recognized I can do this by pressing S and having a setup disk
> in the floppy drive that has drivers for the Silicon Image 3112
> controller chip. Windows XP Professional sees the 2 drives as separate
> drives and you can format each one individually but each one is separate
> and you can load the operating system on only one drive and the Windows
> XP does not see the two drives as one drive with an approximate size of
> 500 gigabytes. The installation has never completed properly after
> multiple tweakings. After the installation thinks that it is complete
> (but it never completed properly) I CANNOT boot from the drive onto
> which I installed the operating system.
>
> Here is what the screen looks like:
>
> Windows XP Professional Setup
>
> The following list shows the existing partitions and unpartitioned
> space on this computer.
>
> Use the UP and Down ARROW keys to select an item in the list.
> *To set up Windows XP on the selected item, press ENTER.
> *To create a partition in the unpartitioned space, press C.
> *To delete the selected partition, press D.
>
> 239367 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on si3112r [MBR]
> C: Partition1 [NTFS] 239359 MB (239287 MB free)
> Unpartitioned space 8 MB
>
> 239367 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 1 on si3112r [MBR]
> D: Partition1 [NTFS] 239359 MB (239287 MB free)
> Unpartitioned space 8 MB
>
>
>
> If I leave the 2 SATA drives alone and place an IDE drive on the
> primary IDE drive controller and load the operating system on the IDE
> drive after I load all appropriate drivers I can see the 2 separate
> SATA drives and I can load programs and data on them and I can
> partition them and do whatever I want with them, BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT I
> WANT TO DO WITH THESE 10 SYSTEMS. I want the operating system, all
> programs and all data to appear on the 2 SATA drives as a STRIPED RAID
> set.
>
> I am sending a copy of this discussion of problems to both ASUS and
> Silicon Image.
>
> If there is anyone out there who has some information about what is
> going on with this particular model of board and the problems that I am
> facing I would like to hear about it. I want to know if this is a
> defective product that I cannot get to work properly no matter what I
> do. I DO NOT want to have to spend 10 hours of my time looking at the
> BIOS only to independently determine that there is some insurrmountable
> problem that will keep me from having a FUNCTIONAL STRIPED RAID SET.
>
>
> --
> Chris PLACAK
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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