Chris Wilson Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 I have 2 matched hard drives in a Raid 0 configuration, with them split as C and D. They have Windows 2000 on them. My Asus m/board only has two SATA connectors. I want to add a 320 gig Barracuda as a third hard drive, so I have bought a cheapo PCI SATA card with one external and one internal connector. The PC sees the now installed controller card, and the cards BIOS sees the new HD. However, with the new drive connected, (as bought, no format, nothing), Win 2000 fails to boot (No OS shows in boot up screens). Disconnected the SATA cable from the new drive restores the Win 2000 boot up OK. I want the new drive to be usable initially to experiment with Obuntu Linux, but if I don't get on with it I want to use it as back up space. The SATA card BIOS intimidates me, I expected the card to just allow the new drive to be seen, and for me to partion it and format it as I liked. I didn't expect all these various RAID options in the menu. Can someone, in the most basic terms possible, kindly explain how I should attend to its BIOS settings, and how to have the new drive connected without causing 2000 to stop booting please? I have played around a bit and the SATA card BIOS now has this new drive shown as bootable, and I see no way to remove this attribute... I should have asked this BEFORE mucking about ... Thanks for any tips you can share. BIOS is ALi and the card itself Card is an M5283 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Sounds like the boot order in the BIOS is looking at the new drive/card before the onboard. Check the bios for boot order options, normally floppy, cdrom and then hdd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wilson Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 m/board biso is set to SCSI, floppy, CD. I have tried HD0, floppy, CD, no good. Cheers Wes. The M/board BIOS doesn't show the new controller or drive at all as a boot option. The CD with the card auto loaded and installed XP drivers, although my OS is 2000, dunno if that's an issue...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 If you are getting an operating system not found type error maybe the card itself has a BIOS set that can be configured to not boot. Use to have this on old adaptec SCSI cards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 If you crack on and install Ubuntu onto the new drive (make a modest sized partition so you can use the rest of the drive for Windows if you want), then this will install a boot loader. You can then config the boot loader to either boot Linux, or boot your other Windows drive....which is what you wanted to do in the end anyway? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Chris, If you are just playing with it for experimentation purposes, why not use Virtual PC or VMWare. It would be far easier for you, and less dangerous to the original OS. However if you are doing it for a learning experience, then crack on.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wilson Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 Pete: The OS won't see the drive, do you mean disconnect the RAID drives and just leave the new one there, as a standalone on a SATA port on the m/board? Or do you mean Linux will find the drive when it's loaded? Phoenix-One: Learning curve, slow and painful Having said that I never USED to have any trouble doing this with 4 IDE drives, or proper SCSI drives! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Pete: The OS won't see the drive, do you mean disconnect the RAID drives and just leave the new one there, as a standalone on a SATA port on the m/board? Or do you mean Linux will find the drive when it's loaded? Phoenix-One: Learning curve, slow and painful Fair dues, good on you... There is a possibility that the card you are using does not have a kernel driver with that particular version. You may either need to load the module at install time or something similar. I'll have a quick look to see if that card is in the standard ubuntu kernel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Have a look here... http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html#uli-ahci Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Pete: The OS won't see the drive, do you mean disconnect the RAID drives and just leave the new one there, as a standalone on a SATA port on the m/board? Or do you mean Linux will find the drive when it's loaded? Ah - you mean Ubuntu won't see the drive when installing? Driver required for the card. Oh bum! Swap the SATA and use an IDE drive instead? Do you have a spare IDE port on board? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Apparently a driver exists in Ubunto 6.06 and above ? see bottom of https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debian-installer/+bug/38900 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Ah - you mean Ubuntu won't see the drive when installing? Driver required for the card. Oh bum! Swap the SATA and use an IDE drive instead? Do you have a spare IDE port on board? Probably a good option.... because you can then install the driver in the kernel to see the SATA disk. http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=275728 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Something else - have you set the drive jumper to be SATA1 and not 2? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrRalphMan Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Somehow the SATA card is nabbing first place in the boot contest and not letting the onboard SATA controllers get a look in. Somewhere in the card's BIOS must be a setting to allow it to release control back to the MB SATA controllers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnK Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 I have a similar issue with a pc I have here (windows only) and I think its BIOS related and have yet to find a way around it. I have the onboard RAID controller looking after 2 SATA drive with my OS ect on and works fine. As soon as I plug in my PCI ultra SCSI card the the MB refuses to see the on board RAID and wants to boot from SCSI. It doesnt matter what I set the boot order to or which PCI slot I use. This sounds very similar to your problem Chris? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrRalphMan Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Don't think it'll the boot order, the new SATA card is taking over from the MB's controllers. Silly question, have you googled it or looked on the card makers web site? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
osso Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 you shouldn't partition a raid 0 configuration.. if something happens to your raid configuration, you will loose data on all your partitions! RAID 0 is for speed, data storage should be placed on another physical drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrRalphMan Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 My PC has 2 x 200GB disks in Raid 0. All the data I want to keep get's sync'd to my second machine with 320GB disk and then onto DLT tape.. Oh my god, that was a real Geek comment wasn't it.. DOH! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Somehow the SATA card is nabbing first place in the boot contest and not letting the onboard SATA controllers get a look in. Somewhere in the card's BIOS must be a setting to allow it to release control back to the MB SATA controllers. From chris original post :- The SATA card BIOS intimidates me, I expected the card to just allow the new drive to be seen, and for me to partion it and format it as I liked. I didn't expect all these various RAID options in the menu. Can someone, in the most basic terms possible, kindly explain how I should attend to its BIOS settings, and how to have the new drive connected without causing 2000 to stop booting please? I have played around a bit and the SATA card BIOS now has this new drive shown as bootable, and I see no way to remove this attribute... I should have asked this BEFORE mucking about ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wilson Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 Something else - have you set the drive jumper to be SATA1 and not 2? I don't think it has one! Can't see one anyway. Thanks for the idea though. Silly question here; There is an IDE connnector socket on the SATA card, should this be connected to the IDE cables, which currently go to 2 IDE CD drives? As it is I have nothing going to the cards IDE socket, I assumed, maybe wrongly, that all the "info" came via the PCI card socket? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wilson Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 I have a similar issue with a pc I have here (windows only) and I think its BIOS related and have yet to find a way around it. I have the onboard RAID controller looking after 2 SATA drive with my OS ect on and works fine. As soon as I plug in my PCI ultra SCSI card the the MB refuses to see the on board RAID and wants to boot from SCSI. It doesnt matter what I set the boot order to or which PCI slot I use. This sounds very similar to your problem Chris? I *THINK* so.... I am much happier with camshafts and suspension geo, to be frank Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wilson Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 I am wondering if what I want to do is impossible with this card, and that is to keep the existing on board Sil ports running a 2 disk RAID 0 Striped set, and use the add on card to run the new single disk as extra storage, and eventually to load Ubuntu linux onto it. I am getting the feeling this card NEEDS 2 drives connected to it, in a RAID, and won't work with just one drive? Thanks for any reply, my level of knowledge of this is very scanty! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnK Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Chris, if it is the same problem as mine, I put it down to an incompatibility between the new card and the motherboard. Mine worked perfectly on another motherboard. On this one the card just takes over from the onboard RAID and its as if it didnt exist. If you can, try it in a different PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 Could it be an IRQ clash be between the two controllers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Wilson Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 Chris, if it is the same problem as mine, I put it down to an incompatibility between the new card and the motherboard. Mine worked perfectly on another motherboard. On this one the card just takes over from the onboard RAID and its as if it didnt exist. If you can, try it in a different PC. I don't have another PC. Well, that's not strictly true, but my other ones *SHOULD* really be in the skip... I am getting wound up now, I hate it when I get beaten by a small cream box, but I am really well out of my depth now. Thanks for the help John, I suspect it isn't gonn work though, as you say Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.