Strange SATA Raid behavior

[DocGiggs]

Okay, as the title states, I'm having some strange sata raid problems. Before I go forward, I'll list what I have equipment wise that matters.

 

CPU: Mobile 3000+

Memory: 512MB (1 stick) giel golden dragon pc4000, 3-3-3-7 default timings @250fsb

Bios: 10/05

Hard Drives: 2 Western Digital 74GB raptors

 

Currently the bios is at default with minor tweaks which include getting rid of the logo and CPU throttling disabled. The FSB, multipliers, voltages and everything else is currently left at default.

 

Here's the problem. I have tried creating a RAID array on both the 1&2 ports and the 3&4 ports with this drive. I enable the RAID in both the IDE and genie. When I boot up, the raid controller says to hit f10 to setup raid so I do. In the RAID utility I can set up a raid array for striping no problem. I can restart and the BIOS registers the one hard drive now as 140GB. The raid utility also recognizes it as one drive as 140GB. I then use my boot disk to get into DOS and use FDISK.... here's the problem. FDISK registers 3 seperate "fixed" drives. It see's 1 drive 70GB, 2 drive as 70gb, and 3 drive as 140GB BUT only 70gb useable.

 

So, when I try loading windows XP directly off the CD.. same thing, it see's all 3 as well. I can't get anything beyiond the bios and raid utility to see the raid array as ONE drive of 70GB. It see's everything and it's driving me up the wall.

 

Is anyone else having this problem or have a solution to this? Please. If you need more information as to exact steps I've done I can try to recount everything that I can.

[RGone]

...you posted this in two forums and I already answered and linked you back here to my post about it. You catch it over there at OC?

 

Sincerely, RGone...:confused:

[DocGiggs]

yah, I read the link over there.. and followed your steps exactly, however, in doing so, I found the bug in the BIOS and it's all screwy. Your steps do NOT work for the 10/05 bios. It's is a repeatable bug on my part and if you guys want I can repost everything over here as to how I verified the bug.

 

It's basically a bug with the Standard CMOS drive detection section. It will only detect drives on the sata channels as 2 seperate drives regardless if they are a raid array or not. If they aren't detected in the Standard CMOS section then the drives can not be booted from. If they are... then you get corruption on the drives because the system registers 3 seperate hard drives: 2 seperate sata drives, and 1 raid array of the 2. It's all screwy and nothing works.

[Samurai Jack]

 

The only place they will show as one in bios is the Hard drive boot priority section, as far as drive detection it will show both seperatly. When you go to boot at the first boot screen you should not show any drives except CD,DVD ect.

 

 

When you go into raid bios be sure to CLEAR DISK, after building array.

 

 

You also may want to make changes in main bios and then save & exit & go back in & see if one big drive shows up in Boot priority section. It must show up there & then not show up in first boot screen.

 

 

SJ

[bldegle2]

back to an earlier bios so you can get her running properly.

 

i read just yesterday that there are problems with the 10/5 and the 4.66 raid with some boards.

 

baldy:D

[DocGiggs]

yah, I think I might go to an earlier bios as well.

 

Yah.. I DID make sure I cleared the raid array. I did that several times in fact. The problem is that if the Standard CMOS section does NOT detect anything the the drive can not be booted from. The point of the boot process where it looks for the DMI pool resources won't find the drive to boot from. This is despite the Hard Disk Boot Priority finding the raid array and the raid utility showing the raid array. The system just won't boot from the raid array no matter what.

[jess1313]

yes in bios it should detect the drives, but first post screen should show no drives. You may have to force bios to detect the drives.

 

 

If a older bios fixes yuor prob let us know.

 

 

-jess-

[RGone]

:confused: ...when the jess-914 bios that I flashed too before ever even booting past the A:> is working and you turn on SATA everywhere that you can> you will see the two drives of the array listed in the 'standard cmos features' as the last two drives because they are on sata 3-4, but in my experience once you go into F10 and 'array' them AND I ALWAYS reboot and re-enter the bios and make the Hdd boot order choices > the drives 'no longer' appear in standard CMOS features but "now" I see an array in hard drive booting priority > "instead" of the two separate drives. Now that is how it does using the Sata drivers and SATA rom 4.52 in the jess-914 bios. (upped Vdimm); when it is working what I call correctly.

 

Now enter 10/05 and you can flash it "on top of" jess-914 and all remains as I said above. BUT you have 10/05 on the computer and decide to RELOAD windoors and you get a wholey different set of symptoms.

 

1. Now turn on all SATA anywhere you can.

2. Put the two sata drives on 3-4 where I want them.

3. Boot and see the two sata drives in standard cmos features.

4. Reboot and f10 and make sure my drives are arrayed.

5. They are.

6. Leave Sata bios and enter mobo bios and the two sata drives are not in the cmos standard features.

7. So far so good.

8. Hdd boot priority sees the SCSI array.

9. So far so good and set to boot sCsI raid.

10. Boot up to PM8.0 and format the two partitions I want to reload unto that were previously in use. Do so and reboot.

11. Enter bios and hdd boot priority and SCSI raid array is still there. So far so good.

12. Boot to WinXP cd and install windoors using the SATA drivers I have and all goes OK.

13. Re-enter bios and hdd boot priority menu and SCSI array is "gone" BUT windoors still boots. This scared me badly as I have no idea when/what or if the array is working except that windoors still is booting. I did not like this so flashed back to jess-914 and old NVRAID ROM 4.52 and my SCSI array is always present in the hdd booting priority menu and all works just as it does when you follow my 25 step install plan I had linked you too.

 

So using jess-914 and NVRAID ROM 4.52 I can use my 25 stepper and all is well just as earlier reported. I have yet to tear down and fully investigate the failure that I saw using the 10/05. But hear me on this> it is standard procedure for the 2 used sata drives to 'dissappear' from the standard cmos features menu as they are not available there any longer because they are supposed to be picked up and viewed in the Raid bios setup and are NO longer useable as single drives and so will not be seen in standard cmos features. That is how I have seen it work with the 4.52 NVRAID ROM and if you stop and think about it > that makes sense as they cannot be available to use as single drives from standard cmos but are under the control of the NVRAID feature.

 

I have more testing to do and will try to get to it. I do know that Oskar is still looking at the NVRAID ROM but I have heard nothing in a day or two.

 

Now I have got to flash again to the 10/15 and retry the install of windoorsXP to see if it can work. Not sure yet and that not sure is why I flashed backwards and 'away' from 10/05 to re-install using a procedure that works fine with my 2x80 gig Hitachi SATA drives.

 

Sincerely, RGone...:mad: :confused:

[DocGiggs]

Here's the steps I'll lay out exactly as they happened.

 

NO OPTICAL drives are being used or any other hard drives at this point.

 

1) Attach two unparititioned sata drives to either 1/2 or 3/4 (it doesn't matter which since they both give me the same result).

2) boot up

3) see that both drives are listed as INTERNAL SATA drives on the respective channels

4) enter BIOS

5) check Standard CMOS Configuration

6) See both drives listed there for their respective sata channels they are attached to.

7) go to Genie bios and verify that all sata channels are enabled (they are on by default for me)

8) go to Integrated Periphials and click on IDE Raid

9) at next screen ENABLE IDE RAID at the top. Then skip down the list to the SATA channels and enable them. This leaves the IDE channels as normal.

10) reboot

11) notice the sata drives still show up as internal drives on their respective channels

12) when the RAID utility says hit F10 I hit F10 to enter it

13) create a Striping raid array using both drives. Hit f7 to complete. Hit y to clear all data. Hit enter AGAIN to see details and Then Clear all data again. Back out and hit B to make the array bootable.

14) turn off computer and attack floppy drive with DOS boot disk inserted.

15) restart system.

16) notice the two drives are NOT detected at boot up.

17) go into bios and check Standard CMOS configuration to see no drives are shown for any channel. Check Hard Disk Boot Priority and see that Raid ARRAY for 140GB is listed there and ONLY that drive is listed.

18) exit bios and continue to boot to DOS

19) enter FDISK, make a partition for 140GB then restart system, boot back into DOS and format partition to complete the making of the partition with a fat32 file system.

20) turn off system, attach CD rom with windows XP install cd inserted. restart system

21) boot into DOS, my boot disk contains CD drivers. Copy i386 folder from CD rom to hard drive (this is much faster for installing XP and I have never had a problem doing this before on hundreds of systems I've installed XP on. I literally mean HUNDREDS).

22) enter i386 folder on hard drive and hit winnt. Continue setup to instal the files needed for installation.

23) turn off computer and detach floppy and reboot. System fails to find a bootable hard drive to continue installation process. NEVER have had that happen before.

 

Okay... so I try this. Use a single IDE hard drive with a fresh copy of windows XP already pre-loaded on it (it's my test hard drive). Boot into XP no problem with that hard drive. Notice that I have my 140GB Raid array partition created from the drive list with no problem. All files and folders created on that raid array are shown with no problem. The only problem is that the system will FAIL to boot from that drive or recognize it during boot up.

 

Okay, so I try to go into the Standard CMOS Configuration setting in the bios. If I make that auto detect the 2 sata drives on their respective channels it finds them just fine. However, NOW listed in the Hard Disk Boot Priority is the 140GB Raid array AND each seperate drive. FDISK will also show all 3 drives as 3 seperate "fixed" drives as if I had 3 different hard drives. At this point ALL data on the drives has been corrupted beyond use. It all comes up as gooblygok. I can never get to the point where it actually starts the windows XP installation.

 

 

Now... before, when I originally posted my problem I had ONLY those sata channels I attached the drives to as enabled for RAID from the Integrated Periphials screen in the bios. This would not remove them from the Standard CMOS Configuration detection screen in the bios even after creating the raid array again from scratch. So FDISK would always see 3 different fixed drives.

 

So the bug remains and can not be worked around with this version of the bios as of 10/05. I have yet to try another other bios but when I get off of work tonight I will flash to another one. The problem is that if the drives are made as an array then they either a) disappear from the Standard CMOS Configuration screen and in that case the array won't be counted as a bootable drive, or B) the drives are individually detected in the Standard CMOS Configuration screen along with the RAID array and in that case I get 3 seperate drives showing and nothing but corruption.

 

 

Do you see the problem now?

[DocGiggs]

Update:

 

Okay, been working feverently since I've come home. Nothing I tried with the 10/05 bios worked to gte the sata raid working. So, I finally switched over to the 9/14 beta bios. I repeated my above steps and blamo! it worked! Seems the 10/05 bios does NOT work with the Sata RAID. I am now typing from my completely operational system with the 9/14 bios and my raptors in raid 0 yay!

[RGone]

... that is what I was trying to tell you is why I switched back to the 9/14 bios. However you can flash to the 10/05 now but of what value is that? Because all the 10/05 is supposed to be is the 9/14 with the NVRAID ROM swapped in. But it surely seems not going to work like it should. Got to try it one more time to make sure that I cannot make it work and then to let Taiawan know what is being seen.

 

I actually have another set of drives shipping from NewEgg today and I may wait a day or so to pound this out until I get some spare stuff to keep from having to start it all over each time.

 

Good and glad you are up and going Doc.

 

Sincerely, RGone...

[bldegle2]

yer welcome.

 

baldy:D