Need to boot with SATA RAID

jammydodger

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I just got 2 brand new seagate baracuda 120Gb serial ATA hard drives and an EIO SATA PCI RAID controller card. The problem is that either there is a problem with the card or it is non bootable, I really wanted to use the card to boot from so i wouldnt need to use my old parellel hard disk. Does anyone know how much the cheapest bootable serial ATA card is? And where i could buy it from? I live in England so i need one from there.

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lunitic

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Are you sure the Raid controller is non-bootable? That would be weird, what's the use of a HD controller from which you can't boot?

To make a Raid array bootable you'll need to
1. Set the correct boot order in the Bios. Sometimes the Raid array is correctly identified by the bios and shows up, but sometimes you have to select SCSI. If this doesn't work check the motherboard manufacturers website for a new bios.
2. In the Raid controller BIOS you need to define an array as bootable. The manufacturers website may have a newer Bios.
 

jammydodger

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Yeh i assumed a RAID card would be bootable, the problem is that when i change the boot order in my mother boards BIOS the only options are floppy, CD or my old PATA hard drive. Neither SCSI nor RAID appear.

Also when the RAID card scans for hard drives at start up it tells me that there is no drive on the primary or secondary channels. I can however view the drives in windows no problem? I find this very odd.

I would download a new BIOS, unfortunatly because SATA RAID cards are relitivly new there is not a new one availiable yet which is a bit of a b*tch.

I really dont know what to do. Has anyone had any similar problems?

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gothitbycar

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I sort of had the oppisite problem with my onboard SATA and Raid controller. With just one drive the motherboard would recognize it but windows didn't when i tried to install it(windows said it couldn't find a mass storage device.) It took me forever to find out what was wrong and it turned out i had to install a promise raid driver just to see one hd. SOB, i was trying to make a legacy free pc with no floppy but noo.. in the end i wanted raid so it worked out fine after i added another hd.

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Crashman

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Changing cards won't help, your RAID controller has BIOS so it should be bootable, you simply have to find a way to make your board use it as a boot device. I've never seen a motherboard BIOS that didn't have the "SCSI" boot option.

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jammydodger

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Ok Ive flashed the BIOS on the controller card and it now works perfectly on one of my computers, yay!..Unfortunatly its not the correct computer. I think the card is not compatible with my Abit SR7-8x (SiS648) motherboard. So im going to have to either:
A)Buy new motherboard
B)Wait for new Silicon Image Sil3112 BIOS
C)Wait for new Abit BIOS
..it could be a long wait.

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Crashman

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Like I said, I've never seen a motherboard BIOS that didn't allow you to boot from SCSI. Since ATA and SATA PCI cards are treated as SCSI cards by BIOS, that's the option you need.

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advent

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Sometimes SCSI drives are handled as "Other" in the BIOS. For example I have a PC with an option "Boot other device [yes/no]". Please also make sure that the BIOS of the adapter is actually loaded during the POST (you should see some messages showing the drive(s) connected to the adapter). On some occasions the adapter BIOS is simply not loaded by the PC BIOS (eg when you have many PCI cards plugged in).