Help with SATA on NF7-S

Ed-Chigliak

Problem is with jumper on WD1200 drive set to master and connected to SATA with Abit Serillel2 convertor the raid controller on the NF7-S doesn't see the drive. Oddly when booting from XP Pro CD the drive is recognised and windows copies files onto the drive however on first restart during installation SATA drive is not bootable so boots from CD again. How do I get out of this fix?

Remove the drive jumper or pretty much any other jumper position and the raid controller will see the drive but then booting from the XP Pro CD immediately identifies a hardware problem and halts the install.

Eventually got up and running on the IDE and then swapped back to the SATA and the system is fine however because of this problem I do no know how to get the raid array in place and then install XP Pro.

Any ideas?

Ed^

Tex

The wd is sorta weird and has jumpers for master/slave and also as single drive. Use that. Some controllers barf with the wd set as master not single drive and the sata is probably one but not the only one either. a number of MB's with their built in IDE's are croaking too. Remember there is no master slave in sata anyway. I bet with them set as single it works. Also you first start installing XP and it says "copying files"..... it does that with no partitions or formated drives. You ever wonder why? Its going to ram disks until you get the drive partitoned and formated anyway.

Good luck on the XP install

Tex

Ed-Chigliak

Prior to partitioning and formating files get copied into RAM as you say but I get further into the setup. I get the HDD partitioned and formated then continue to copy files onto the HDD. At no point does the bios/raid SATA controller detect or identify the drives so when my PC reboots expecting the HDD to be the primary boot device it simply boots from the CD again. I don't understand how it is possible for XP to copy files to a HDD that the bios/controller does not detect but that seems to be what is happening here.

Ed^

EQuito

Did you go into Sil bios and setup the array? did you press F6 to install Sil drivers?

Ed-Chigliak

It is not possible to access the sil bios when no drives are detected which makes sense I suppose.

Loading the sil drivers F6 during XP boot CD works just fine and windows is then happy enough to copy files onto the drive even though the sil bios doesn't detect the drives.

Only way so far to get up and running was to go with IDE and then swap over onto the SATA. This worked with the jumper in single neutral position pins 6 & 4 after deleting the partitioning and performing a quick format. I found that I could only delete the partition and crappy partial install if I hooked the drive back up to SATA with the jumper in master position 5 & 6 otherwise the XP boot CD reported hardware problem/fault and would not continue.

I found with the drive(s) jumpers in single neutral position on pins 6 & 4 that the sil bios detects the drive(s) but the XP boot CD was reporting the same hardware problem/fault. Now I wonder if I cleared off the previous crappy partial install or if I just switched the jumper positions. Pretty sure I tried from a clean unpartitioned drive for each jumper change on the SATA but I guess I will have to double check.

Ed^

Mt_Goat

Did you set SATA as a boot device in the mobo bios? If you don't you can access the drive(s) or array but cannot boot from it. During the Windows install it will need to boot from the drive you are installing to. When I boot from my SATA mounted OS, I have mine set as follows in the bios:

First boot device; Floppy
Second boot device; CD-ROM
Third boot device; SATA
Boot from other devices; Yes

My WD SE HD's are set as "master" with the adapters and work just fine.

Ed-Chigliak

Originally posted by mtgoat
Did you set SATA as a boot device in the mobo bios?

Yes but the PC will not boot from the SATA because it does not think there is a drive present.

Your hardware is similar but you are not using the NF7-S oboard raid/SATA but atleast it gives me hope I can get raid working off of the adaptors. Just not with the onboard SATA raid for the time being anyway.

Had some weird problems with the bios version v16 which would hang on the temps/fanspeed/votages page but this problem was fixed when I flashed to latest v18 bios. Also only 50% chance of getting ito the v16 bios with blue bar at the bottom of the screen and flashing white cursor top left. That also fixed with the v18 bios.

Maybe there is a later version of the sil bios I can flash that will work with my hardware.

Ed^

Mt_Goat

Originally posted by Ed^Chigliak


Yes but the PC will not boot from the SATA because it does not think there is a drive present.

Your hardware is similar but you are not using the NF7-S oboard raid/SATA but atleast it gives me hope I can get raid working off of the adaptors. Just not with the onboard SATA raid for the time being anyway.

Had some weird problems with the bios version v16 which would hang on the temps/fanspeed/votages page but this problem was fixed when I flashed to latest v18 bios. Also only 50% chance of getting ito the v16 bios with blue bar at the bottom of the screen and flashing white cursor top left. That also fixed with the v18 bios.

Maybe there is a later version of the sil bios I can flash that will work with my hardware.

Ed^

Actually I am using my Silicon Image SATA controller in RAID-0 now (needed to update my sig). I have 2 WD 600JB drives connected to it. I used to have my spare drive on the SATA controller but am now running a dual RAID-0 config with my spare now mounted on IDE-0 The 16 bios and up have the latest SATA bios incororated.