BD7-II Raid Help needed

BigAl · Jul 17, 2003

Hi All

Any suggestions on the following little problem. Providing I don't power off the system everything is OK. If I power off the system I lose the 2 hard drives connected to the RAID IDE3 and 4 slots. I'm not using them for RAID, simply as additional drive space.

If I simply restart the system they're still there, but if I power off/on I don't get the <cntrl> and <H> message to go into raid setup bios, and sure enough the drives aren't there when XP loads.

This does not appear to be anything to do with XP, I get the same symptoms if I use a Win98 boot disk. The only way to recover the drives is to pull the power lead out of the PSU, wait a few seconds and plug it back in. As I said I can restart all day and the drives will still be there, only happens if I power off.

TIA

Alan

TomG · Jul 17, 2003

how are the drive cabled and jumpered? almost sounds like they aren't coming ready and being detected by the controller under certain circumstances...

BigAl · Jul 18, 2003

This does not appear to be anything to do with XP, I get the same symptoms if I use a Win98 boot disk. The only way to recover the drives is to pull the power lead out of the PSU, wait a few seconds and plug it back in.

As

I
said I can restart all day and the drives will still be there, only happens
if I power off.

how are the drive cabled and jumpered? almost sounds like they aren't coming ready and being detected by the controller under certain circumstances...

It's not the drives that are causing the problem. I get the same if I disconnect the drives from IDE3&4, following a power down the raid bios setup utility does not appear during boot up, I can only get it back if I pull the power cord out.

Alan

TomG · Jul 18, 2003

be advised that the Highpoint controller will not show the bios splash screen if no drives are connected. if no drives are detected, the bios considers that as no drives connected and the splash screen does not show. same with ATAPI devices, as ATAPI devices are not supported by Highpoint.

Homie · Jul 19, 2003

Hello,
If you would have answered Tom's question, he would have been able to tell you the solution..... Some days this is like pulling teeth !

The proper way to connect drives to the HPT controller is to jumper them as cable select. Some drives just don't play well together on the same cable, you may need to try different combinations Don't use atapi devices (cd,dvd,zip,ect.) on the HPT controller.

aggie07 · Jul 19, 2003

I have had this problem from not jumpering the hard drives correctly. If the problem continues after setting the jumper, try reseting the BIOS defaults and reconfigure the BIOS.

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 21:47:46 -0400, "TomG"
wrote:

how are the drive cabled and jumpered? almost sounds like they aren't coming ready and being detected by the controller under certain circumstances...

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BigAl · Jul 20, 2003

be advised that the Highpoint controller will not show the bios splash screen if no drives are connected. if no drives are detected, the bios considers that as no drives connected and the splash screen does not show. same with ATAPI devices, as ATAPI devices are not supported by Highpoint.

Well what can I say, the prompt to enter raid bios setup *does* appear if no drives are connected, providing the machine has been restarted following a power off.

Thanks for your sugegstion and advice though, looks like I'm going to have to get the lot to pieces at start seeing if it's a particular piece of hardware that's causing the problem.

Alan

BigAl · Jul 20, 2003

Hello,
If you would have answered Tom's question, he would have been able to tell you the solution.....
Some days this is like pulling teeth !

Bit harsh wasn't it? Relax old son, if we were all experts there'd be no need for the group at all.

The proper way to connect drives to the HPT controller is to jumper them as cable select.
Some drives just don't play well together on the same cable, you may need to try different combinations
Don't use atapi devices (cd,dvd,zip,ect.) on the HPT controller.

I have two drives a 6Gb and an 80Gb on IDE3 & 4, interstingly I had to set the 80Gb to CS as it was the only way the system would recognise the drive as 80Gb. Good point about the ^Gb though, I'm sure that was setup as a master.

I'll check it out.

Alan

TomG · Jul 20, 2003

hmmm, I have to admit that I have not tested the current Highpoint bios sets with no devices connected but earlier Highpoint bios would not show with ATAPI devices connected or no devices.

did you ever revisit your jumpering and cabling of the drives to set them to Cable Select on 80 conductor cables? blue end of the cable to the mobo and the master drive is on the other end with the slave in the middle.

TomG · Jul 20, 2003

you cannot mix Cable Select and Master or Slave jumpering.