no hard drives, no raid, no nothing!

kermitkermit
edited June 2005 in Hardware
I’m having no success trying to install Win XP on a brand new computer.

I’ve had a system has been built to the following spec:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8I915P Duo Pro.
This has an on-board SATA RAID ICH6R chipset and an IDE RAID VT6410 chipset.

Hard Drives: 2 x Hitachi 160GB SATA 7200RPM

Memory: 2 x 512MB 533MHz DDR2 Kingston

CPU: Pentium 4 540

Graphics: Sparkle 6600GT PCI E 128MB TD

A DVD recorder and DVD combo is fitted.

The computer builders were told that I wanted the machine with the RAM to be configured in dual channel mode and with the drives configured in RAID O. No OS was ordered as I would install my own Windows XP Pro Corp with SP2. But I wanted the machine configured as above as far as was possible.

I’m not sure if the BIOS settings are OK or what changes if any to make but when Setup begins, it very soon reports that it cannot find any hard drives on the machine. I'd be grateful to have some help on what the settings should be in the Integrated Peripherals section of the Bios. At the moment it reads:
On-chip Primary PCI IDE [enabled]
Sata Raid/AHCI Mode [Raid]
The next 4 lines,
x On-chip Sata mode [Auto]
x PATA IDE Set to Ch.1 Master/Slave
SATA Port0/2 Set to Ch.2 Master/Slave
SATA Port1/3 Set to Ch.3 Master/Slave

It continues with USB settings which I think are OK

The MB manual does not explain very well the differences between two features on the MB;
a) the on-board SATA Raid (the ICH6R chipset) and
b) the on-board IDE Raid )IDE2, IDE3) which has a built in VT6410 chipset.
Both support RAID0.

I am not sure if this is solely due to the driver and RAID software installation. The MB came with a CD and IDE RAIDE function manual which deals with transferring a driver from the CD to a floppy and describes its installation. It says:
“Boot from the Windows CD to install the RAID drivers. When install XP from the HDDs in Serial ATA controller, press F6 as XP boots up, then supply serial ATA controller driver by this floppy disk.”

The Gigabyte CD has a collection of ‘Chipsets/Serial-ATA/RAID Network/Audio drivers. There’s a choice of 17 RAID drivers on the CD under which include ones called ‘Promise, Hance rapids, and Si3144 – all of which I think are irrelevant. Also present, however, are three which might be correct, one called ‘Via 6410 RAID’, ‘GIGARAID’ and ‘SCSI’.
I’ve downloaded the first one to a floppy and tried it but this does not solve the ‘no hard drives’ message.

The computer was built by an interstate company and I don’t want to get into a ‘voided warranty argument by undoing anything yet. I do spot mention of the two drives when first starting but the text is moving at warp speed and I can’t halt it for a better look.

Sorry this is a bit long winded but as a newbie, I'm fearful of leaving out something important!

Has anyone any ideas how I can get the drives recognised, configure them in RAID0 and install Win XP?

TIA
Ray

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited March 2005
    I've never worked with raid on a personal cpu only servers and it's different, but normally it works like this you boot up with the windows cd and when it asks if you need any scsi or raid drivers you put in the disk. That disk is what you need to make. So if your mobo didn't come with the raid drivers on a floppy (which they often do) you will have to find the appropriate raid drivers on the supplied cd and put them onto a floppy.
  • verselloversello New
    edited March 2005
    If your drives are already configured for RAID 0, then do what Kryyst mentioned.

    If not, you'll have to configure your drives outside of Windows.

    However, the benefits of RAID 0 aren't really worth it unless you're working with large media files. Games do not count.
  • kermitkermit
    edited March 2005
    versello wrote:
    If your drives are already configured for RAID 0, then do what Kryyst mentioned.

    If not, you'll have to configure your drives outside of Windows.

    However, the benefits of RAID 0 aren't really worth it unless you're working with large media files. Games do not count.
  • kermitkermit
    edited March 2005
    It will be for media files - very, very large Photoshop stuff! I decided on a RAID set up to squeeze every bit of speed out of it
    I feel sure the problem is in the BIOS settings somewhere. If I can crack that, I'll be into the black art of striping, with luck!
  • youvegotjermzyouvegotjermz Baton Rouge, La
    edited March 2005
    kryyst is right but windows won't prompt you if you do not press F6 while it's loading the preliminary stuff
  • youvegotjermzyouvegotjermz Baton Rouge, La
    edited March 2005
    slaps himself for not fully reading original post!
  • kermitkermit
    edited March 2005
    The CD did contain the driver I needed - but there was no clue as to how to identify it, let alone load it.
    Contacting Gigabyte from Australia takes you to Taiwan. Their tech dept dept sent me driver which they swear is the correct one - but it doesn't work. I still end up with the 'no hard drives found' message.

    but at Dux computer Forums, I was sent a step by step guide link at http://america.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/FileList/Manual/manual_sata_raid_os_ich6r_e.pdf
    and there it all was.

    Strange that this too was a gigabyte site and that no mention was made of it by the HQ tech people in Taiwan? And why wasn't the same information included where it's needed most - on the CD?

    And by the way. although the link is model specific, it contains extremely useful advice of a general nature on driver installations.
  • ZuntarZuntar North Carolina Icrontian
    edited March 2005
    kermit wrote:
    The CD did contain the driver I needed - but there was no clue as to how to identify it, let alone load it.
    Contacting Gigabyte from Australia takes you to Taiwan. Their tech dept dept sent me driver which they swear is the correct one - but it doesn't work. I still end up with the 'no hard drives found' message.

    but at Dux computer Forums, I was sent a step by step guide link at http://america.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/FileList/Manual/manual_sata_raid_os_ich6r_e.pdf
    and there it all was.

    Strange that this too was a gigabyte site and that no mention was made of it by the HQ tech people in Taiwan? And why wasn't the same information included where it's needed most - on the CD?

    And by the way. although the link is model specific, it contains extremely useful advice of a general nature on driver installations.


    Thanks for the update and info!! :cool:
  • caekxcaekx
    edited April 2005
    I have this exact problem, I know I need drivers for it, but I don't know which one.

    I thought it might be D:/BootDrv/SCSI.exe. When I run the file it asks me if I want to continue, I say yes, but then it says 'can't open textsetup.oem' and also every other file..Could someone link me to an online one, or kermit could you mirror it or transfer over msn/aim to me?

    Edit: Finally that PDF document shared some of it's secrets, it didn't want to load certain parts but I saw the part I needed =)
  • hyltytesshyltytess
    edited June 2005
    download from intel iaa...
    read--- readme files step 7
    how to extract from iaa
    7.2 Use one of the following command examples to extract the
    driver files from the different package types:

    c:\iata_cd.exe -a -a -p c:\<path>
    c:\iata_enu.exe -a -a -p c:\<path>
    c:\setup.exe -a -p c:\<path>

    When run, the installation process begins; simply click
    through the dialogs as prompted. This will not install
    the driver, it will only extract the driver files to
    <path>. After the extraction is completed, the driver
    files can be found in <path>\Driver.
    put those on flopy disk and have fun
    on boot you have to press F6 to specify
    choose ich6 raid desktop and have fun installing win
    5.3 Pre-Installation Using the F6 Method

    Note:
    The Steps 1 and 2 can be skipped if you use the F6 Floppy
    disk utility provided by Intel. This utility can also be
    downloaded from the following website. These methods
    are applicable to systems configured for RAID or
    AHCI mode.

    http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/Product_Filter.asp?ProductID=1809

    1. Extract all driver files from the installation package.
    See Section 7.2 for instructions on extracting the
    files.

    2. Create a floppy containing the following files in the root directory:
    iaAhci.inf, iaAhci.cat,
    iaStor.inf, iaStor.cat,
    iaStor.sys, and
    TxtSetup.oem.

    3. At the beginning of the operating system installation, press F6
    to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver.

    4. When prompted, select 'S' to Specify Additional Device.

    5. When prompted, insert the floppy disk you created in
    step 2 and press Enter.
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