If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Getting a single SATA drive to act as boot device on A7V600-X board
I am trying to get a single Samsung SATA 120 GB drive to work as boot
drive for Windows XP on an A7V600-X board. Thus far I have downloaded the latest VIA drivers for the RAID onboard VT8237 Southbridge and updated the BIOS. With an IDE drive camped in we got to see and partition the SATA drive and installed a copy of Windows XP Home to it starting from the version running on the IDE. After going nowhere tok the IDE drive out and went to re-install XP including doing the F6 trick with the latest RAID drivers on a floppy. XP sets up fine and the first partition of the drive is used OK. After rebooting without the XP CD in we get stuck as there is no bootable drive listed. Can't see a way to get the SATA drive on the boot list. Tried SCSI option but it didn't fly. Suggestions please for getting single SATA drive in non-RAID config onto boot menu in BIOS ? Phil |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
In article , Phil Thompson
wrote: I am trying to get a single Samsung SATA 120 GB drive to work as boot drive for Windows XP on an A7V600-X board. Thus far I have downloaded the latest VIA drivers for the RAID onboard VT8237 Southbridge and updated the BIOS. With an IDE drive camped in we got to see and partition the SATA drive and installed a copy of Windows XP Home to it starting from the version running on the IDE. After going nowhere tok the IDE drive out and went to re-install XP including doing the F6 trick with the latest RAID drivers on a floppy. XP sets up fine and the first partition of the drive is used OK. After rebooting without the XP CD in we get stuck as there is no bootable drive listed. Can't see a way to get the SATA drive on the boot list. Tried SCSI option but it didn't fly. Suggestions please for getting single SATA drive in non-RAID config onto boot menu in BIOS ? Phil 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. Paul |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
In message , Paul
writes After rebooting without the XP CD in we get stuck as there is no bootable drive listed. Can't see a way to get the SATA drive on the boot list. Tried SCSI option but it didn't fly. Suggestions please for getting single SATA drive in non-RAID config onto boot menu in BIOS ? Phil 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. Worrying. I've got three A7V600 boards now. One had dual SATA in a RAID0 running XP. No probs there, but at some point in the future, I'm going to probably swap the PATA drives in the other two to SATA!! I take it you have the onboard ATA bios enabled? (Must have I guess). The last bootable device in the list set to 'SCSI / external device' (or similar) should do it. I don't have a spare SATA drive around or I'd give it a go! Let us know how you get on. -- __________________________________________________ Personal email for Gareth Jones can be sent to: 'usenet4gareth' followed by an at symbol followed by 'uk2' followed by a dot followed by 'net' __________________________________________________ |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
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 |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 20:24:52 +0100, Gareth Jones
wrote: I take it you have the onboard ATA bios enabled? (Must have I guess). The last bootable device in the list set to 'SCSI / external device' (or similar) should do it. *last* bootable device ? We did get it to work, with SCSI, Floppy, CD as the boot order. We can run SCSI, CD, Floppy as the boot order also, repeatably. What did we do ? not 100% certain. Last night we flashed the BIOS of the mobo up to the latest 1004 from the Asus site (which is later than the Asus updater tool gets you) - this eliminated an error due to a slow fan in the system which got rid of POST stoppong each time. This in itself wasn't enough to make it boot from SATA. http://www.asus.com.tw/support/downl...lName=A7V600-X Today we used the latest VIA drivers http://downloads.viaarena.com/driver...RAID_V300b.zip on a floppy with the F6 option in Windows, then ran the setup.exe after Windows had installed using these drivers. Next we poured over the BIOS screens looking for things that may help - there is no SATA reference at all and anything RAID specific (accessed via TAB key after POST) don't work at all with a single drive. We did go into the HDD manual setup on IDE2 just looking to see if maybe we could find something SATA related, we hadn't done that before and although we left it as we found it it makes me wonder (it was about the only thing memorably different in 10 reboots). We did not update anything else before the reboot, so there were lots of yellow question marks in Device Manager If you're going to use 2 SATA drives then you get the ATA bios RAID menus and can select a boot array, but this isn't an option with a single drive. The symptoms of our problem were a SATA drive that we had formatted and used from Windows, installed windows on but could not boot from. It was a BIOS level issue as Windows never got to try starting as we sat at a black screen without a boot device working. Phil |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
In message , Phil Thompson
writes I take it you have the onboard ATA bios enabled? (Must have I guess). The last bootable device in the list set to 'SCSI / external device' (or similar) should do it. *last* bootable device ? We did get it to work, with SCSI, Floppy, CD as the boot order. We can run SCSI, CD, Floppy as the boot order also, repeatably. Mine is set with all the bootable devices disabled, apart from the last one. Works fine. What did we do ? not 100% certain. Last night we flashed the BIOS of the mobo up to the latest 1004 from the Asus site Strange. Maybe its because you have the -X version, but mine are 'standard' A7V600 boards, the bios version was 1004 from last year sometime. Its 1005 now with a beta 1006 ??? -- __________________________________________________ Personal email for Gareth Jones can be sent to: 'usenet4gareth' followed by an at symbol followed by 'uk2' followed by a dot followed by 'net' __________________________________________________ |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
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 |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
Just installed a BArracuda 160GB Sata. Just downloaded the tools from
Seagate and kept hitting next drive was recognized and all data from C: was copied over. set it as boot device under BOOT options in bios. The Sata drive shows as a SCSI drive I now have to reasign drive letters and make XP think its drive C: I don't think its booting from it though it is the first boot device in list. Tomorrow morning is it for reassigning drive letters "Phil Thompson" wrote in message news I am trying to get a single Samsung SATA 120 GB drive to work as boot drive for Windows XP on an A7V600-X board. Thus far I have downloaded the latest VIA drivers for the RAID onboard VT8237 Southbridge and updated the BIOS. With an IDE drive camped in we got to see and partition the SATA drive and installed a copy of Windows XP Home to it starting from the version running on the IDE. After going nowhere tok the IDE drive out and went to re-install XP including doing the F6 trick with the latest RAID drivers on a floppy. XP sets up fine and the first partition of the drive is used OK. After rebooting without the XP CD in we get stuck as there is no bootable drive listed. Can't see a way to get the SATA drive on the boot list. Tried SCSI option but it didn't fly. Suggestions please for getting single SATA drive in non-RAID config onto boot menu in BIOS ? Phil |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 00:14:15 +0100, Gareth Jones
wrote: Mine is set with all the bootable devices disabled, apart from the last one. Works fine. so your boot order is nothing, nothing, nothing, SCSI ?? Phil |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Norton Ghost - Clone Won't Work | jimbo | Homebuilt PC's | 70 | November 15th 04 01:56 AM |
SATA or IDE as a boot drive? | no spam | Homebuilt PC's | 7 | October 1st 04 01:27 PM |
XP Won't boot after SATA drive added | Darren Newman | Asus Motherboards | 1 | January 20th 04 02:44 PM |
A7N8X Maxtor SATA drive no boot | Phut | Asus Motherboards | 1 | July 23rd 03 10:58 PM |
A7N8X Dx SATA-only boot... | Phut | Asus Motherboards | 2 | July 22nd 03 09:27 PM |