Boot from HDD Problem [SATA drive not detected]

Hi Christer,

IMHO, the drivers the OS needs are for the 'RAID' chip on the mobo, not the SATA disk. The chip is or has a BIOS addition to the mobo BIOS, that recognises the drive (and additionally handles RAID functionality if the need arises). The drivers added to the OS enable it to see the RAID chip and through it to see the drive. RAID HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT; they're called raid drivers for lack of a better name because they enable the os to see and use the RAID chip on the mobo (or on an add-in card).

I can see my 'raid' bios working during the boot process, even tho 'raid' isnt installed, an unfortunate double meaning of the word raid.

From your quotes, not impressed with the article; doesn't fit with my experience or undrestanding of BIOSs in general, or this in particular.

All HDDs have embedded electronics which could be considered BIOS additions and could have drivers, though generally don't. Chips on the mobo usually DO require drivers. In this case, I see the RAID chip's BIOS working every time I watch the box boot, and see no evidence of a HDD BIOS working during boot (which proves nothing ).

 

Well! Finally got around to looking at the "Installing Windows on a SATA drive" thread and see nothing that contradicts my opinion.

 

i've been watching this myself. Interesting how many twist and turns there are
present.

The whole thing seems to boil down to a trial and error routine. Maybe by the
next generation of SATA (3.0) or next Windows, they will have a straight-
forward method.

savagcl

 

I can't answer Christer's question, but I think Pete has. I look at the RAID chip as a dual function chip, first to recognise SATA drives (which otherwise the mobo can't do) and second to to impliment RAID 0, RAID 1, etc.

Multifunction might be a better description and that's not unusual in mobo chips these days. Look up the definition of the northbridge chip for instance.

 

From the Promise RAID manual:
Quoting the menu in the on-RAID-chip BIOS (which comes up after POST and before control is given to the OS.)

5. Choose the RAID Level you want. In the Define Array Definition Menu section, press the Spacebar to cycle through array types:
• RAID 0 (Striping)
• RAID 1 (Mirroring)
• RAID 0+1 (Striping / Mirroring)
• RAID 5 (Data / Parity Striping)
• JBOD (Single Drive)

See the pic below (click to enlarge)

Tabs removed below by the bbs, but think you can make sense of it.
Level: Number of Drives
RAID 0: 2, 3 or 4
RAID 1: 2 only
RAID 0+1: 4 only
RAID 5: 3 or 4
JBOD: 1, 2, 3 or 4

JBOD is just additional connections for adding one or more drives to a system. A disk drive that is not assigned to an array will automatically function as a spare or only drive.

And found this too but can't recall the site:
A smart thing that JBOD does is that it can treat the odd sized drives as if they are a single volume (thus a 10GB drive and a 30GB would be seen as a single 40GB drive), so it is good to use if you have a bunch of odd sized drives sitting around.

 

Final thought (I hope):

Agreed, in the sense that it must have a RAID or equivalent chip. I'm not aware of any of the latter, but seems I've read that VIA is implementing RAID on its chipset (Northbridge?). If that's true, we'll be setting up SATA disks in the normal BIOS Setup program.

 

Yes.

Excellent question.

Not sure, but the Asus Av8 Delux has both Promise and VIA RAIDs available and wonder if you'd have to (or even could) put one disk on each? Just a thought. My experience is only with boxes having single HDDs, except my own, but have so many GB on ATAs, can't justify the purchase of more HDDs presently.

You mean, like Windows? Just marketing; have to raise the money to continue deveoping. And, of course, to continue deveoping to raise money, kind of a circle!

I can't recall ever hearing a programmer or software or hardware company or even the government say anything's ever finished!

 

Interestiing, but nobody in that thread made the partition on the SATA active! See http://www.windowsbbs.com/showpost.php?p=253442&postcount=37
(last paragraph). More than one way to .....

Normally, BIOS looks on the first HDD (when there are several) for the OS. Don't know what a BIOS upgrade did, but maybe changed from that normal procedure? Windows and DOS will only make the first hard drive active, but linux or PM will make any active, and maybe more than one (not sure about that). "Turning off RAID" is not the same as turning off the RAID BIOS or the chip, which is necessary for the mobo to see the SATA drive. The drivers are for the OS, just like the mobo drivers you load from CD after you install the OS.

 

Have you looked? The installer certainly didn't for me!

The installer also didn't in the thread you quoted.

Mine was the only case I've personally encountered where installation was done with an ATA disk (which DOS/Windows considers to be c:\) and a SATA disk (D:\); otherwise haven't needed to make a disk active, and really don't know whether the other SATAs are. I shall look if I get the oportunity.

Suspect the BIOS update is fortuitous and coincidentally worked for some inexplicable reason (even twice). None of the participants even looked at what the install program did! The originator of the thread should have just made his SATA active and there wouldn't have been a need for the thread! A case of the blind leading the blind!

That's probably good practice, but suspect you didn't need to do that! Might try without doing it to see. Can't on the Asus board; it's automatically off with a lone SATA disk installed.