First time using SATA Drive on P4P800-E DLX

HI all,

I don't know if it's appropriate to post this in here but I need some help quick.

This is the first time I'm using a SATA Drive on P4P800-E DLX but I see no Serial RAID post to prompt me to install RAID as I see when using my PATA drive.

So can I use just a single SATA drive as RAID just like with PATA on this board? The manual sugg to enable Enhanced mode, Serial on, RAID on and I did all that but couldn't figure out why the drive is not recognized and no post to setup in Bios.

Thanks.

IIRC, the ICH5R northbridge does not allow combining PATA and SATA for RAID arrays. The ICH5R only allows RAID 0/1 on the 2 SATA ports.

If you really want to RAID a PATA and a SATA, you will have to use the Promise Controller and the "RAID SATA1" port and the "PRI_RAID" PATA ports. Then, you will enter BIOS and assign the Promise as "RAID". Then, create the array by entering Fastbuild ("Control+F" when the Promise screen pops up).

You will then need to get the Promise Fasttrack drivers on a Floppy, and use the "F6" option when XP is installing. Point to the Promise drivers, and XP should install as usual...

I run a PATA and a SATA on my Promise in RAID-0, but these drives are essentially the same drive - but one is a SATA and one is a PATA (same model, same cache, just different interface). I don't boot off my Promise RAID (it is for Data), as I also have a Raptor RAID-0 array on the ICH5R Southbridge as my OS drive. Buy you certaily can setup the Promise RAID as your OS drive if you really want to (if you don't mind the PCI bus traffic for any OS HD access)...

You could also use a PATA-to-SATA converter, and use the 2 SATA ports on the ICH5R Southbridge. This might be better, but it is hard to say. The PATA-to-SATA converter should work fine (I used one with 2 PATA drives on the Promise controller, used 1 HD via PATA, and one HD via PATA-to-SATA converter in RAID-0 and it worked fine), and you would use the Southbridge's superior bandwidth w/o clogging the PCI bus...

RandyMan,

Thanks for the info, but I simply just want to use my single SATA drive on the Serial1 channel.

The thing is I already enable Serial RAID but Promise RAID screen always says no bios detected even though I can use my SATA when it boots into windows.

My point is, Is this SATA drive running at RAID like capacity or just a regular drive? Before that, Windows just format the drive as "simple" drive vs Dynamic.

Thanks.

OK. You do NOT need to have the Promise controller enabled in BIOS. You are not currently using it. That is wht it says "BIOS not found". Go ahead and disable the Promise in your BIOS, it will speed up the MoBo's "POST" by about 10-15 seconds!

You might be misunderstanding what RAID is. Do you want to "RAID" these 2 drives together (that is what RAID is, 2 or more drives in a "Cluster" with many different possible configurations), or do you just want to use 2 HD's seperately like most people do? Sounds like you just want to use the 2 drives seperately, right?

Your current config should be fine if I read you correctly. The Promise controller is not being used (and should be disabled in BIOS) - and all of your HD's and Optical drives are connected to the ICH5R Southbridge controller. RAID is not needed (or possible) in this case.

What exactly is the problem you are having?

Like I mentioned, I just want to use a single SATA drive as a boot drive and leave other drives in regular channels to see if the SATA wil be any faster than the PATA drive on the Promise RAID as before. I just thought that why not taking advandtage of the Serial drive while having it on the board anyway.

I enable Serial RAID to Yes, Serial Boot Rom Bios to Yes and disable Promise RAID but I see nothing asking me to set up a Serial RAID when Post as the manual said.

Problem is, I clone Ghost image to the SATA drive but it wont boot, saying no OS, makes me wonder because I was cloning the same image back to any PATA or IDE drive without any problems. I did load Intel Serial RAID drive in windows.

I don't have a need to have 2 same drives on the the RAID channel right now, just want to use one drive on the Serial ATA and see if it's any faster than the PATA.

Thanks again for following up with me on this.

You don't need any shape or form of RAID drivers for this setup. In your BIOS, "Enable Serial ATA as RAID" should be set to "NO" as you are NOT running a RAID array. This should help immensely