Connecting 4 IDE devices to ASUS Motherboard

[duryodhan]

I have ASUS P5GDC-V Deluxe mobo. I wanted to connect 4 IDE Devices to this viz. 2 DVD drives and 2 HDDs. I already have connected a SATA HDD to the primary SATA connector and WinXP is installed on it.

Ref : Image of Motherboard

I have connected the 2 DVD drives to the Blue IDE slot (near 24 pins power supply slot). Uptil now everything is fine and I access all from WinXP.
When I connected 1 HDD to the RED IDE connector ( the one near SATA connectors or the one near floppy drive connector) I can see the HDD being detected in BIOS. But when I reach WinXP the drive is just not shown. I tried Add Hardware etc. etc. but I can't find the damn thing. If I replace one of the DVD drives with one of the Hard Disks then All is detected fine and works fine. Whats the problem ? Am I missing something?

How can I connect 4 IDE devices to the mobo??

P.S : Sorry for looooong post

 

[lenjack]

Jumpers?

 

[duryodhan]

its detected in BIOS so no prob with jumpers . Anyways I tried with 1 HDD only and still doesn't work.

 

[Kyanzes]

Make sure you connect the Master drive to the end of the IDE cable and the Slave to the middle. If they are set to Cable Select then they should be recognized notwithstanding where you connect them.

 

[duryodhan]

Thats what I am sayin...
I have connected all correctly AND I can see them at BOOT UP, If I go to Boot Selection Menu I can also select them for boot up. Clearly no problem with connection. Its a problem of drivers but WHAT???
When I go to WinXP which is on my SATA HDD It just refuses to show the HDDs on IDE channel.

 

[boomerang]

Right click My Computer and choose Manage.

Click Disk Management.

You can partition and format them from there. They will be available afterwards.

Edit: Be aware that those are called out in the manual as RAID connectors. You may have to do some futzing in your BIOS to do what you want to do with them. If that's even possible.

Actually, in reading through your manual a bit, it appears that by default they are enabled to be used as you wish. Disk Management is your friend.

 

[duryodhan]

Can't see it in Disk Manager.
I contacted ASUS support and they tell me I will have to install ITE drivers(whatever that is) during install of Windows XP by pressing F6. But wht do I do if I already have WINXP installed?

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: duryodhan

Can't see it in Disk Manager.
I contacted ASUS support and they tell me I will have to install ITE drivers(whatever that is) during install of Windows XP by pressing F6. But wht do I do if I already have WINXP installed?

It's probably because the extra IDE connector is not native to the chipset, so you need pre-XP drivers for them to be recognized. It may be that you'll have to reformat your machine and use the ITE drivers if you want to use that IDE port.