In article , Phil Thompson
wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 14:32:31 -0400, (Paul) wrote:

Section 3.4.5 of the manual is titled "Select Boot Array".
Maybe that will get it to show in the boot order.
Otherwise, there don't seem to be many options for that RAID.

we can't do RAID with one drive, so never get that option to select
boot array.

Phil

Start he

http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=310

I see mention of JBOD. Now, "Just a Bunch Of Disks" implies you
could use one disk. JBOD may require "dynamic disk" formatting
or something - all I know is the term, but not the consequences
of using that format.

Have a look through the Via package:

http://downloads.viaarena.com/driver...RAID_V300b.zip

So far, I have to agree with your opinion that it requires a
minimum of two disks.

But logically, think about this. If a RAID mirror is broken,
then it must be able to run with just one good disk connected.
The disk may be marked as an orphan, but the controller should
still be able to start. What good would a mirror be, if the
controller wouldn't start with one disk, after the second
disk fails.

There has got to be a way...

The final solution, is there are two BIOS addition files for
the Via RAID. From the "readme.txt" file in the V300b.zip
package:

"VT6420 (VT8237 SATA):
SATA RAID BIOS: 6420Rxxx.rom; This BIOS supports SATA RAID

None RAID BIOS: 6420Nxxx.rom; This BIOS does not support
RAID functions and does not
support installing Windows 98SE
or Me into SATA HDD."

Now, hacking the BIOS to use 6420Nxxx.rom, instead of whatever
version of 6420Rxxx.rom that Asus has appended to the current
BIOS file, isn't going to be easy, but I think the idea is,
that supports individual drives.

Many other RAID controllers support single drive
operation, via doing an "Auto Setup" with just one
drive connected to the controller. While I've seen
comments about the odd controller that won't load its
RAID BIOS, unless two disks are connected, I would think
if the RAID BIOS will load, there has got to be a way to
get it to boot and work, with one drive.

HTH,
Paul