Asus A8V SATA setup problems

[Sparky19692]

Well I have it working Just not the way that I want it to. Running in raid at this point. XP will not recocngize promise 378 even when I down load a new one But it will recognize promise raid378. and YES i know they have different drivers

 

[arcas]

Let me try to understand...if hawksballer tries to connect his drive to the "regular" SATA connectors on his A8V, the drive isn't found but when connected to the SATA_RAID ports, everything is fine? What's up with that?

Is the A8V worthy of consideration or is it simply too finicky to bother with? I'm looking to upgrade an old Athlon-750 machine sometime in the next few weeks.

 

[Sparky19692]

Originally posted by: arcas
Let me try to understand...if hawksballer tries to connect his drive to the "regular" SATA connectors on his A8V, the drive isn't found but when connected to the SATA_RAID ports, everything is fine? What's up with that?

Is the A8V worthy of consideration or is it simply too finicky to bother with? I'm looking to upgrade an old Athlon-750 machine sometime in the next few weeks.

well I have never had a problom with ASUS before but yes my board will recognize the drives just XP will not. however in the RAID xp will recognize the driver.and Yes i have downloaded every 378promise driver that I can find. if anyone has this setup and a driver that quoteworks zip it and e-mail it to me, I'll unzip it to floppy and try again. Raid 0 does VERY little for speed and I have no use for RAID 1

 

[Kimono]

Hi guys,
I bought my setup this weekend and am very frustrated... at least until now.
I have the A8V Deluxe with Wifi option thing, 1GB of Memory (2 512 sticks) and a 160 GB Maxtor Diamondmax10 SATA drive.
The memory is OK, and the Maxtor software found and partitioned and formatted the drive as well. However, I have the same WIndows installing problem as Insolence here.
Question 1: I tried to update the BIOS but the crappy AFUDOS program fails after reading the new 1008 version. It reads it and then goes into 'Advanced checksum' and then says that the "Main BIOS checksum is bad".... What is that???

Question 2: you advise putting the BIOS option to 'IDE'. Does that do ANYTHING bad for performance?

Question 3: I tried to follow your solution and I relocated my SATA cables to the Promise controller and then during boot, the S378 sees my SATA drive (it also saw it on the VIA chips btw). But then, when I try to install WinXP Pro SP2, (without using the F6 option) it can't find a drive.
So I try it then WITH using F6 and then use the floppy I made from the Asus CD for SATA378 (which is the Promise chip, right?) and then... the floppy was corrupt so now I'm frustrated and will drink a rum&coke before trying again.

Hopefully your expertise will help me as well!

Mike

 

[Sparky19692]

First I had no probloms updating bois however I simply placed the new "A8V.ROM" on a disk and rebooted it grabed it and updated bois without having to play with a boot disk.
Second if you are talking about the IDE for the raid controller that should be off with onlu one drive.

 

[goldgunner]

Any further help developments on this topic? Specifically: Kimono - any resolution?
Anybody - any further help?

I have a new build with the essentially the same issues:
WD Raptor and AV8 Deluxe, and XP Pro

I've read more problem boards on this issue over the last several days...

SATA: single HD (No Raid)
I have updated BIOS and updated SATA drivers.
I have reset CMOS.
I have On Board Sata Bootrom enabled.
I have Promise Controller Enabled, with IDE (Not Raid).
SATA HD is recognized on boot up (Not listed in IDEs)
Boot sequence: used 'em all as necessary to load BIOS update (floppy), XP (CD) and SATA drivers.
[Have also tried with Promise Controller Disabled - same result']

Error messages, depending on how i set up above:
"No Drive attached to fastrac controller. The Bios is not installed"
"Bios is not installed"
and Windows can not find a HD to load to...

I'll keep flogging the beast, but any feedback and hand holding would be great: I'll keep checking in for replies.

 

[goldgunner]

C'mon you heros...someone knows something and please spill your guts~!

 

[Sardian]

A question for everyone having problems. If you are going to use one sata drive why don't you use the VIA SATA connectors?

I did and my build couldn't have been better. I have a 3200+ A64 Winchester, A8V Delux, 1gb corsair, 1x74gb SATA Raptor hooked to the VIA SATA.

I made a floppy from the ASUS CD-ROM that came with the mobo, put in the XP disk, hit F6 when it asked me to, stuck in the floppy and away I went. Only took about 12 minutes for XP to load.

All has been working great, my Raptor is giving about 70mbs read and 120mbs burst.

About the only thing I don't like about he board is the fact that if I install a different "storage" drive or swap out a drive in my moble rack it wants to boot from the newly installed drive. I have to go into the bios and have it boot from the VIA sata Drive 1.

 

[Kimono]

Hey Goldrunner, I thought I replied that everything worked thanks to the experts in this thread. I had the sameproblem as you and everything was solved when I connected my SATA drive to the Promise controller instead of the VIA. Then I could use the Windows F6-trick. I do remember that I had to get the latest drivers even then...
Good luck!

 

[goldgunner]

Yesterday evening I found the solution! Via drivers! NOT Asus drivers!
Here's step by step from Saphirex: http://forums.viaarena.com/mes...2467&enterthread=y

 

[goldgunner]

Argggh...I posted the wrong link for the 'step by step'.


Link to drivers I used: http://www.viaarena.com/downlo...AID/VIA_RAID_V310E.zip

Link to solution: http://forums.viaarena.com/mes...2587&enterthread=y

 

[Kimono]

Hi Goldgunner, that's prtty cool... it makes we want to switch back to the VIA drivers... However, I'm not sure if by doijg that, I will screw up my entire shiny new system. What do you think? How do I do this... Just install the VIA drivers in my current XP then turn off the machine, put the SATA drive on the VIA chipset and boot up? Will that work?
Mike

 

[cjconrad]

Folks, this is my first posting, so be easy on me (please!). I also am having difficulties with my new ASUS A8V. I have the A8V, an AGP video card, a DVD-ROM, and a Maxtor SATA 250GB drive. The drive is brand new -- I have it connected to the non-Promise SATA1 connector. I have NOT run any utility (including any Maxtor utility) on the drive to partition or format it.

You might have noted that I have no floppy drive -- that is true except that I have a USB drive, which I have told the ASUS BIOS is indeed a floppy.

My problem is that, when I run the Windows Server 2003 setup (booting from the CD), and press F6, it asks for me to insert the diskette in "A", but it never seems to see the USB floppy as "A" (doesn't spin up when I press enter), so it merely asks again.

I am able to boot from this floppy and bring up DOS (and see the CD), but I can't run SETUP.EXE in DOS mode, so that is useless.

How can I get the USB floppy to be seen as "A" when booting from the CD? Can I put the drivers onto a modified Windows Installation CD (to avoid it ever asking for the diskette)? Is there some setting in the ASUS BIOS to force the USB floppy to be seen as if it were the system internal floppy? Or, do I need to go and buy a floppy drive (yuck!) ...

Many thanks, Craig

 

[goldgunner]

Kimono Mike
I am absolutely no expert, and it sounds like you have your system and xp up and running.
But, if it were me, I probably would not hesitate in going to the Via driver link and downloading.
At this point, I'm convinced Via knows much more what it's doing than Asus. (Besides you could always to back to the Asus drivers by 'rolling back' within 'processor' within device manager).

cjconrad Craig
I'm pretty certain that this Asus mb's bios has a selection to 'engage' (or activate) the external USB ports, and I think that the default is 'disengage'. Perhaps I'm right, and if you turn that on in the bios, you're external USB connected flobby drive will awaken. I know there is reference to this function in the Asus manual, I'm just too lazy to check it out this morn...

 

[cjconrad]

goldgunner -- thanks for responding. I figured out how to get past this. If I have a non-bootable diskette in the USB drive, then the BIOS tries to boot it, but fails. At the failure message, I eject the diskette and press a key. It then boots from the CD, but still sees the diskette as "A:" drive. I've tried every other BIOS option I could imagine, but having the diskette in the drive at boot time seems to be a requirement.

In any case, I'm past that one, and proceeding with the installation.

Thanks, Craig

 

[fooby]

i have this mobo just thought i'd let you know my problem and what i did to fix it

i used the promise drivers off the mobo cd,

i plugged my sata drive into SATA_RAID1

Set my BIOS settings for Promise Raid mode to "IDE"

then it detected and installed my hard drive, hope this is of some use to youi

 

[cab3]

I just went thru this as well. The trick I found is that my BIOS had to have the Promise controller in RAID mode, and then I had to use the Promise RAID drivers off of the Motherboard CD. It's a bit deceiving as there is a Promise IDE and a Promise RAID driver, and depending upon the BIOS setting is which you need to use. Also, if you've got your Promise controller set to IDE mode, you don't get the "Press CTRL-F" message for RAID setup.

 

[MarisO]

About the only thing I don't like about he board is the fact that if I install a different "storage" drive or swap out a drive in my moble rack it wants to boot from the newly installed drive. I have to go into the bios and have it boot from the VIA sata Drive 1.

Hi


I have a problem with this. I have SEAGATE 7200.8 300GB SATA drive connected to VIA SATA and I want to connect my old Maxtor ATA drive to copy data from my old pc.

If I connect the ATA drive then mobo tries to boot from it and when I got to BIOS I cannot select SATA drive to boot from. It just disappears from boot devices list!

What version of BIOS do you have ?

And which ATA port do you use ?

 

[TheGoat Eater]

As a first time builder I had a hell of a time trying to get the promise raid array set up with the floppies- very poor instructions on how to set it up in the manual. I deleted the promise array and switched it to the Via and created the array and used the via driver on the floppy and it worked great

 

[Tbirdkid]

What a big pos... i have been sitting here for at least 3 hours trying to figure out this sata thing... and come to find out, the disk didnt even come with the motherboard for the correct drivers. They are on cd... well, has anyone tried to install sata drivers on a non floppy based system? You cant do it. The correct drivers have to be transferred over to floppy, then put into the system and do it that way... what a pos. Asus, you can do better....