Disappearing Slave Drive

When I attempt to use a PCI - EIDE card in the IDE mode (Not RAID). The system (XP-SP2) boots OK, but Windows Explorer displays only the Master Drive. When the drives are attached to the motherboards, both Master and Slave appear normally. I have tried new cables, checked the MB BIOS (ASUS CUSL2-C)setup, and downloaded the latest drivers for the PCI Cards.

The IDE sockets on the MB are getting worn so I wanted to try using a PCI IDE card. Both are RAID cards (Belkin and SIIG: I tried both brands of cards), but the RAID functions have been disabled (jumper removed). RAID is bypassed in the startup dialog.

No matter what I try there is no Slave drive through the PCI card.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. SN

 

Hi,
I was reading the manual for the ATA card at the Belkin website. They make a point of putting the card into a DMA bus mastering PCI slot. Because some motherboard manuals (User Guides) do not have a lot of information, I would say to choose a slot close to the AGP slot.
You can swap the PCI cards around, the drivers should be automatically reinstalled (if not, they may have required reinstallation of the drivers anyway).

Have you tried a different drive as "slave ". If you find another drive works as slave, the original slave drive may require a firmware update.

Have the motherboard/chipset drivers been installed? Run the CD that came with the computer/motherboard or find the (updated) motherboard/chipset drivers at the manufacturer's website.

After that I might suspect the Windows ASPI layer drivers which run optical and SCSI drives (you should see the ATA/IDE card listed as "SCSI" under Device Manager). You could try to reset the drivers, unless they have been corrupted.

If you have no luck, let us know what sort of "no matter what I try" you have tried

Matt

 

Matt:

Thanks for the suggestions. I have NOT tried substituting a different hard drive NOR have I tried changing the PCI slot. The drive does work when installed on the motherboard so it did not occur to me that the drive might be flakey. I did notice the DMA caution in the Belkin info, but it did not register as a possibility, probably because of my ignorance of the issue.

The box is running now so it will be a few days before get up the courage (and want to take the time) to open it again and try your suggestions.

I do have some concern about the on-board IDE sockets -- I want to keep the attachment and removal of cables from them to a minimum.

Thanks again, Regards, Steve N.

 

Thanks for the extra info Steve.
If you are concerned about the "health" of the IDE connections (is there a particular reason why?), you may want to make a plan before the weekend so that you could do as many tests as possible before having to swap back to an IDE connection.
Before the weekend I would recommend that you download the manufacturer's utilities for the "slave" drive and run those. I am wondering if there may be a DDO (Dynamic Drive Overlay) on that drive that may not work when connected via the card. Another possibility is that the slave drive has been partitioned as logical partitions of the main C: drive (although it should work in the same configuration). I would at least check the "integrity" of the drive in the meantime.

Does the BIOS settings have "Identify Hard Drives" (check that you "save settings" at Exit).

You could try running the harddrives with the jumpers set to CS (Cable Select). As CS the master is the drive at the end of the cable.

Start with the master disconnected and see if the BIOS identifies the slave.

Do you have a backup of the slave drive? There may be a possibility that it's MBR could get corrupted if a problem there is the reason why it cannot be identified. You will feel more confident if the data is backed up.

Matt

 

Update . . .

RECAP: When the computer boots, the RAID Card BIOS sees both the master and slave drives, but when booting is complete, the slave drive is not seen by Windows Explorer, Partition Magic, Norton Ghost. When the two drives are attached the motherboard, everything works as it should.

Here are some of the unsuccessful stategies I tried to make the PCI card work ( "no effect" means that the slave drive is NOT seen):

1. Downloaded and ran latest Western Digital diagnostics: no problems with any of the drives.

2. Moved the PCI card to a different PCI slot, to #1 PCI slot, the one closest to the AGP socket: no effect (The card has installed in two different PCI slots.)

3. Used BIOS Setup to disabled the primary IDE input on the motherboard: no effect

4. Jumpered both drives to "Cable Select ": no effect

5. Set all partitions on both drives to 'active' (with Partition Magic): no effect

6. Changed jumper position on the PCI Card to disable and/or enable RAID: no effect

The only strategy that did work was to try a CD/DVD Drive on the same channel with a hard drive. When the CD/DVD AND a hard drive was attached to either the primary or secondary channel, the card 'saw' both devices and they could be used as they should be.

I have been keeping both the programs and data on the same physical drive and using Ghost to back up the drive. However, since I want to use one hard drive for my programs and another for my data, I need to have two hard drives set up in a way that I can still use Ghost to back up the drives. I do not want to use RAID (no real reason, just don't like it).

At the moment the motherboard, cables and drives are behaving themselves so I will leave well enough alone unless some other interesting strategy emerges.

Thanks for all the help.

 

I can only think that it is problem with the MBR of that drive. It may possibly have a DDO or it has been set up as a logical partition of the main drive and cannot be seen through the cards controller or maybe a program has "adjusted" the MBR somehow.

Because the only thing that will see it is the WD tools, you may need to back up the data and repartition and reformat with those utilities. If it is still not be identified it may need to be zero/low-level formatted. I don't think(?) WD utilities have a low-level format, you may have to use a third party program. Try www.majorgeeks.com .

One VERY small chance. Try running Add New Hardware in Control Panel.

Hope you get some luck.

Matt
Edit: On the WD website the drive model should have a webpage. Check for firmware updates for that drive.