booting off sata1

[Auran]

I got a nf4 SLI-DR Expert and i want to know if its possible to boot off the sata one ports supported by the sil3114 chip.

 

I have 4 x 320gb WD sataII but i would rather use an old 200gb maxtor for booting/system.

 

Ideally

 

Sata 5 - 200gb sata I - OS (WinXIP sp2)

Sata 6 - 300gb sata I - storage

 

Sata 1,2,3,4 - 320gb sata II - storage(s)

 

I dont want to use any raiding at all - just pure plain space. I dont think i can do it the way i want but i thought i would chuck it out there...

 

Hrm... I guess whats more important is without any raid setup can i just plug 8 Sata drives in at all???

 

Thanks.

[BrIONwoshMunky]

Yep to both questions, you don't have to raid your Sata drives, and in the BIOS settings, you can set whichever drive you like to boot first.

[Auran]

Yep to both questions, you don't have to raid your Sata drives, and in the BIOS settings, you can set whichever drive you like to boot first.

 

 

Ok i need to be a bit more detailed - sorry.

 

On the standard CMOS Features page i get

 

Primary IDE Master

Primary IDE Slave

Secondary IDE Master

Secondary IDE Slave

Internal Phy Sata 3

Internal Phy Sata 4

Internal Phy Sata 1

Internal Phy Sata 2

 

Simarly for boot options i can only choose from the above. Having a 200gb sataI drive plugged into sata 5 doesnt show up in cmos (so when you boot off the windows disc it loads itself into memory and then says "no harddrive - press f3")

 

The only place i can see (in bios) where it mentions the sil3114 sata I's is in the GenieBios where i've disabled RAID for that controller.

 

Dont know if that makes it clearer or not...

[Auran]

Ok put the boot bit on hold. I've installed windows to a sata2 drive connected to sata1. I have 3 other sata2 drives on sata2,3 and 4. (That rounds out the nForce thing).

 

I've plugged a sata1 drive into sata5 (the first of the 4 sil3114 ports) but i cant get it show up in windows? i cant find anything in the instruction book and i've looked about about 20 pages of serched material on these forums... maybe im looking in the wrong place?

[Muppet]

Did you enable the Silicon Image controller in the bios, it's seperate fron the Nvidia Sata. Plus you'll also need to run the Silicon Image drivers in Windows.

[Auran]

Did you enable the Silicon Image controller in the bios, it's seperate fron the Nvidia Sata. Plus you'll also need to run the Silicon Image drivers in Windows.

 

Thanks Muppet - i had it on disable not sata... and then i plugged the windows error into search and found the SI drivers

 

Awesome. My disgusting amount of porn will find a new home.