help with raid!

i bought a pci expansion card that should give me and extra 4 ide devices, but whenever i plug a disk drive into it, it wont start windows! it just says 'insert system disk or replace when ready'

i'm rele annoyed, casue it was a sorta gift and it wont work. the device manager says its raid, and i no my motherboard isnt, so could that be the issue?

 

do you want to setup your system as RAID?
if you have an already existing installation that is NOT RAID, and you want to make it RAID, you have to format do the following.
1. Make RAID card boot option #1 (might say SCSI card in bios even though it's pci)
2. Set up RAID array in RAID card config
3. Install Operating system following onscreen instructions for installing with RAID drivers.

so, what do you want to do?

 

well if you move your harddrive onto the raid card your moving its recognition slot; ie before it was on IDE 1 and now you moved it to IDE 4. That changes the boot order and you wont get any OS to boot. In bios you can set which HDD to recognize as 1st boot (if your bios allows it)

 

Check your BIOS setting for PCI IDE Master type setting. I think you should find something in the BIOS, change that. It sounds like the onboard IDE is being disabled as it is detecting the prescence of a PCI IDE device.

KCL

 

thanks fellas, but all i want is to attach 2 cd/dvd drives to that expansion card, my hard disks are still on the primary motherboard cables, and i dont want a raid system, i just want to be able to have 4 more ide devices on my system

 

Do your hard drives still show up on the screen you get when the POST completes? Or was your primary IDE channel disabled when you installed the extra IDE adapter?

If the latter, was your secondary IDE channel also disabled? Boot from a floppy that provides CD-ROM support and see if you can access one of the devices on the secondary IDE channel. A Win98 Startup Disk would do it. Or try booting from a bootable CD-ROM if your CD-ROM is on the secondary channel and if your BIOS provides support for that. Most newer machines do, but you might have to change a BIOS setting.

Does the extra IDE adapter also use IRQs 14 and 15? If so, there may be a conflict with the on-board IDE controller. It will be using IRQ 14 for the primary IDE channel, and IRQ 15 for the secondary channel.

 

when nothing is plugged in, it still shows the two harddrives, and the other disk drive (dont have enough power connectors for 6 ide devices, im buying some more), but then it goes to a black screen showing the text: 'Disk Drive: 1 Optorite wateva the model number is'

Then it goes o a screen that lists the PCI devices it says:

Bus No. Device No. Func No. Vendor ID Device ID Device Class IRQ
0 29 0 8086 24C2 Serial Bus Controller 5
0 29 1 8086 24C4 Serial Bus Controller 9
0 29 2 8086 24C7 Serial Bus Controller 9
0 31 1 8086 24CB IDE Controller 14/15
1 00 0 10DE 0171 Display Controller 5
2 12 0 1095 0680 Mass Storage Controller 12

Update ESCD Successfully

NON SYSTEM DISK, INSERT BOOT DISK (or something similar)

Then it just stays there until i press the power button and unplug the device.

i dont no what the problem is!!!!

 

sorry, the first sentence i actually mean when 1 thing is plugged into the card

my bad

 

hey, any luck with figuring out what the problem may be?

 

Nope. It's beat me. Besides, I don't know next to nothing about RAID controllers, whether they are just used as a second IDE adapter or for a RAID setup.

The only thing I'm sure of is that your BIOS is not finding your boot drive on startup. That's what the "NON SYSTEM DISK, INSERT BOOT DISK" message is telling you. Someone else will have to figure out what's getting in the way.

Omegamerc may have put his finger on a possible issue: if the BIOS is assigning your boot drive a letter other than C: when the RAID card is installed, that will explain why your system won't boot. What drives can you access when you boot from a floppy or CD-ROM? You may need to make some setting changes to make your system see your boot drive as C: when the card is installed.

Another possibility: Your first post said that your Device Manager sees it as a RAID controller. I'd bet that it needs its own drivers if that's the case. Have you installed any for that card? Perhaps they need to load before the OS. Check the installation instructions for the card.

 

Thanks for all your help, I will try those sugesstions.

Thanks

 

Another step, but help still needed!

OK, I found a tech support guy, who gave me some free advise, and he said that it was something to do with the BIOS, but more specifically, that it was the SCSI was booting before the ATA or something like that....

So, he said look in the BIOS for that sort of setting, and look in your motherboard book to find a setting like that. Now, I couldnt find anything to do with SCSI in the BIOS or the book, so I'm lost.

If anyone knows anything about this, it would be great!!!

My BIOS is ASUS P4B533 standard BIOS (e.g. came with the motherboard)

Thanks

 

Hey guys. I'm new here as I Googled a search for the same problem Qwerty has. I hope you don't mind me asking a few questions of my own.

I bought a RAID card because I wanted to add an internal Zip drive. Since my two hd's already occupied the ide slots on my mobo (ASUS mobo w/900mhz AMD CPU--Win2k), I thought I could add my two hd's (one 40 gig and one 120 gig; both w/their own ide cables) to my RAID card and the Zip to my ide slot on my mobo. I knew I was going to lose all my data when I configured the array, but it wasn't a problem for me.

So I added the card to my pci slot and installed the drivers. Then I switched the hd's to the PCI RAID card and the Zip to my mobo. I figured since I already installed the drivers, then it was a simple matter of plug-n-play. That was stupid. That was also when I came across this thread (using my wife's computer).

I went to BIOS and made my RAID card boot option #1 (SCSI card, like you say). Then I hit ctrl-f to go to the RAID config menu. That menu gave me 5 options and I chose the first one--Auto configure. Hit ctrl-Y to save.

At this point, I already have the win2k cd in my DVD drive so I figure that if I boot from that, I could install it on the hd's on the RAID array. It boots from the cd w/no prob. It asks me to hit F6 if I need to install a RAID driver. I do that, then it goes on to tell me something of my hd being new, erased, etc.

I go through a few button pushes and I'm ready to install the OS on my array, but there's one problem--the OS cd is telling me that there's no disk in the system.

WTF?!?!?!

How can there be no disk in the system? I installed the card and drivers, configured the array, and now there's no disk? C'mon.

ANy help is greatly appreciated.