Can I use a RAID IDE as an ordinary HDD IDE?

Hi folks,

Got a problem with the secondary IDE drive on an MSI motherboard. I have no idea why it isn't working but I'm making an educated guess that it's a permanent problem. I will try and troubleshoot that at some stage but at the moment, I mainly want to get this poor friend up and running. It's been a long haul to the point we thought we were nearly done and then I discovered the IDE problem.

So, is it possible to plug the HDD into one of the RAID sockets so that I can use the primary IDE for the DVD & CD drives? I know I can't put those into the RAID socket because the manual clearly states that they can only be used for hard drives.

I'm not wanting to wipe data because there's a fair bit there and I don't know if using the RAID IDE will do anything strange like that.

Board is a VIA KT333 chipset KT3 Ultra2-R MS6830E.

If we can't do that, exactly how much performance loss are we talking about if we hook up the DVD burner and the HDD, which is what I'm going to do as a short term solution anyway, until someone can give me a hand. I'd like the computer not to lose too much in the way of performance because it gets used as a gaming computer at LANs.

Thanks!

 

I tried to google your mobo, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

So do you not have a primary and a secondary IDE connection on your mobo?
I don't see why there would be a problem with plugging your hdd into one of the RAID IDE slots. Then put the DVD drive in the primary IDE slot.

 

Oops! Sorry, I meant to put a link to the mobo. It's here:

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=downloadfile&dno=3556&type=manual

Easy to find when you've once learned your way through their hoops but hard to Google.

The problem is that the secondary IDE isn't working so I want to use the primary to run the CD and DVD drives and hook the HDD to RAID IDE but I don't know if that's possible.

Is it possible that the BIOS has the secondary IDE disabled? I had forgotten that the BIOS lost track of some facts and needed telling again. I wondered if there might be a setting to enable/disable the secondary IDE although I haven't noticed it anywhere. I may have overlooked it, of course.

Thanks!

 

Possibly. Your RAID controller could have it disabled. Thanks for the link, I'll do some research and see what I can come up with.

 

Set it to raid 0 this is effectifely the same as no raid if you only connect one drive.

 

If I'm understanding what I'm reading, You can't have the RAID IDE slots enabled if you plan on using the primary and secondary IDE slots.

Do you know if the RAID slots are enabled?

 

Reading you motherboard manual I found the following

page 3-25 IDE bios settings disabled, /primaryonly/secondaryonly/both

So yes you could have one or both IDE enabled or disabled.

page 3-26 setting to enable Promise RAID

That's the easy bit. Now for the more difficult part.

page 2-29 IRQ tables. You can only use 'order 1' with the raid, but the manual doesn't offer this in the settings so try 'auto'

If you elect to use the RAID you will need to have the RAID drivers, which you load, during the installation of Windows. Presumably these drivers came with the mobo package. Set a single drive to master and the RAID to zero.

The manual says to look at the quickstart manual to find out how to setup the RAID, unfortunately I can't seem to find this to download from US, UK, Taiwan or China so can't comment. Again presumably this came with the package?

 

Taken me a good few days to get back to this with a mind capable of taking in what's here....

Thanks padam and studiot. I'm still bit lost with the RAID but since we don't want to use it and my main reason for wanting it was to overcome the issue of no secondary IDE, it doesn't really matter at the moment. Studiot pinned down the exact page with the setting that needed changing - goodness only knows how the bios ended up with the secondary IDE disabled but then who knows how it ended up with the other strange settings either! And I was pretty tired the night I was trying to sort it out and ended up with a "blind spot" on the setting. So I'm now working my way through the entire bios and checking all the settings. So this post is probably done with and I'll start a new post for any help with bios settings I need.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

While your tinkering with the bios settings this would be a good time to check (change) the battery.

:major:major

 

Mmm, good point - I've got a multi-meter here - I will check the battery.

Thanks for the heads up.

 

Yes, see my sig. I am runing 2 IDE HDDs (one each) on IDE 3 & 4. These HDD make use of the controller on the RAID to run 2 independant and separate HDD.

Not sure if you still need this info but post if you do and I will provide instructions.

Good Luck

 

Thanks, Risk but it was only because the ordinary secondary IDE wasn't working that I was enquiring. Turned out that it was yet another bios setting had got scrambled along the way. Because the bios defaults include the secondary working, I'm starting to wonder if someone was fiddling in the bios before they asked me to fix it up. It would be a bit unusual for the settings to have got into a mess when there wasn't anything causing bios problems in the first place.

Anyway, I'll keep in mind what you've said in case one of these days I find myself needing to use the RAIDs for someone.

Thanks again!