GA-K8NF-9 BIOS

[foxxxer]

Has anyone ever had a problem installing Windows XP with this motherboard? I have a Seagata SATA 160 GB hard drive and the windows install can format/partition it, but when I reboot and it says its going to continue the install, it just keeps starting from the beginning. Is this because it is not detecting my hard drive on boot? Do I need a new BIOS? Someone please help, I just bought this new computer and can't even use it!

 

[peroxide]

Hey man, I had a similar problem. You need to put your CD-ROM into a different computer and make a boot disk from the nvraid folder

Look for the folder "BootDrv" on your cd-rom. Then double-click on run.bat. Select NVRAID and put a blank floppy in and make the boot disk.

Put your floppy in the drive and go back to the windows installer. As soon as it loads and says "Press F6 to load third party drivers" press F6. Select both Serial ATA RAID and Serial ATA Bus.

It should work.

 

[Trente]

I hope I read your post correctly, but here goes nothing: After booting from Win XP installation CD for the first time and after it does what it does and asks for a restart, you need to change boot order in the BIOS since now you need to boot from your HD itself and continue the installation...

 

[imported_sleepless]

I had that problem too, go into bios and turn off the RAID support on the onboard controller then reinstall windows. Well at least that is what I did since I wasn't using the RAID and it seemed to work.

 

[jterrell]

You have to setup the raid even if its a single drive raid.
Its f10 or f6 at boot.

 

[Trente]

Originally posted by: jterrell
You have to setup the raid even if its a single drive raid.
Its f10 or f6 at boot.

No, you do not. You can simply turn off Raid for IDE/SATA in the BIOS and that makes XP (or any other OS for that matter) think it is dealing with an IDE drive. there is no need for a driver if you are not going for Raid as the only SATA cotroller on this motherboard is located in the nForce chip; or in other words - there is no 3rd party chip on this motherboard that provides IDE/SATA functionality, only the native one in the chipset.

 

[jterrell]

Originally posted by: Trente

Originally posted by: jterrell
You have to setup the raid even if its a single drive raid.
Its f10 or f6 at boot.

No, you do not. You can simply turn off Raid for IDE/SATA in the BIOS and that makes XP (or any other OS for that matter) think it is dealing with an IDE drive. there is no need for a driver if you are not going for Raid as the only SATA cotroller on this motherboard is located in the nForce chip; or in other words - there is no 3rd party chip on this motherboard that provides IDE/SATA functionality, only the native one in the chipset.

Why would you pay for SATA then have your BIOS recognize it as IDE?
Its about a 10 second setup for the RAID and you can add drives to it easily if you ever need/want to.

 

[Trente]

Originally posted by: jterrell

Originally posted by: Trente

Originally posted by: jterrell
You have to setup the raid even if its a single drive raid.
Its f10 or f6 at boot.

No, you do not. You can simply turn off Raid for IDE/SATA in the BIOS and that makes XP (or any other OS for that matter) think it is dealing with an IDE drive. there is no need for a driver if you are not going for Raid as the only SATA cotroller on this motherboard is located in the nForce chip; or in other words - there is no 3rd party chip on this motherboard that provides IDE/SATA functionality, only the native one in the chipset.

Why would you pay for SATA then have your BIOS recognize it as IDE?
Its about a 10 second setup for the RAID and you can add drives to it easily if you ever need/want to.

No, you didn't get my point. you do NOT have to load those drivers on XP installation using F6 key. you may need it only if you are using more than one drive in a Raid array. if you are about to use one drive - be it SATA or IDE - or even more than one drive but without the intention of using Raid, you can simply disable that in the BIOS, and continue the installation like you are used to. no need for drivers if Raid isn't used...

 

[jterrell]

Actually Trente bro, I think you are misunderstanding me.

If you set up the RAID NOW you can add another SATA drive later and it will be quite easy. If, however, you disable RAID now and add a HDD how do you make it part of a RAID without a total reformat? I guess at best you'd have to enable the BIOS RAID function then use the setup I already used and hope the chip recognizes your HDD.

I think you are undervaluing the tool which is really nice at recognizing and formatting your drives into whatever type of RAID you desire.
I did not manually load any drivers or copy anything to floppy. Just hit f10 on initial boot and it saw my oem SATA HDD then asked what type of RAID I wanted to run. It didn't require loading BIOS or anything beyond following the on screen prompt to hit f10 for raid.

 

[Infohawk]

So if you disable RAID, windows will treat your sata drive like it's IDE?

 

[hafa]

Originally posted by: Infohawk
So if you disable RAID, windows will treat your sata drive like it's IDE?

Yep, that's my experience...

 

[Infohawk]

Originally posted by: hafa

Originally posted by: Infohawk
So if you disable RAID, windows will treat your sata drive like it's IDE?

Yep, that's my experience...

Dos that affect performance?

Is Sata only useful for raid?

 

[grooge]

Originally posted by: Infohawk

Originally posted by: hafa

Originally posted by: Infohawk
So if you disable RAID, windows will treat your sata drive like it's IDE?

Yep, that's my experience...

Dos that affect performance?

Is Sata only useful for raid?

Wow... confusing thread here...

OK..SATA is Serial ATA. IDE is Integrated Drive Electronic, and IDE on older HDD is PATA (Parallele ATA). Two different standard, doing the same thing. SATA is the interface between the computer and the HDD for IDE SATA drive. PATA is the interface between the computer and the HDD for IDE (ATA)drive.

A SATA drive is an IDE drive using a serial interface to transfer data to the board, while PATA drive is the same drive, but with a parallele interface between the drive and the computer. Serail ATA has greater bandwidth for data transfer than the PATA drive interface, and supposely greater speed, but in reality, drive are not yet able to fully utilise the ATA 100 bandwidth, so you wont get faster speed from either ATA133 and SATA150.

You can set PATA and SATA raid. If you dont plan on RAID, then use the SATA interface as it. SO, no, SATA is not only useful for RAID. SATA is useful to connect the drive to the computer. Just like SCSI. Or ATA. RAID is just a way to set up some drive to have more data security or performance. Read about that on the web. RAID can be used on ATA, SATA and SCSI.

Adding RAID once a drive is already functionning is possible only for RAID1. RAID1 is data mirroring. If you plan to do RAID0, or stripping for better performance, then you CANNOT simply add another drive, as stripping strip the data and send them to bot drive at once. so, you have one half of your data in one drive and the other half on the other drive. In RAID0, if one drive fail, you loose everything. in RAID 1, if one drive fail, the other contain the exact copy of the failing drive, so, you dont loose anything.


So just remember. IDE drive are IDE drive no matther if they USE ATA or SATA to connect to the board. Serial ATA move data to and from the drive with a serial wire (small wire)and Parallele ATA move the data to and from the drive with a parallele (wide ribbon).

RAID is just another controller that use the drive in different way as standard controller. If you are not yet familiar with all this stuff, then just use your serial ata drive as a normal drive and forget the RAID thing as it take two identic drive to perform at its best. By setting the controller as a normal SATA one in BIOS, you wont have to bother about driver install at windows setup. The native serial controller will be recognized in windows and the installation will continue.

 

[Infohawk]

Good post.

So in other words you need to load drivers if you are setting up RAID with SATA, not if you are just setting up a SATA drive alone?

 

[grooge]

Originally posted by: Infohawk
Good post.

So in other words you need to load drivers if you are setting up RAID with SATA, not if you are just setting up a SATA drive alone?

Right. Drivers are useful only for RAID on native controller(either SATA or PATA) or using SATA or RAID on non native controller (read onboard), like the Promise, SIL or other PCI card that could be used to connect drives like ATA card, SATA card or SCSI card.

 

[Infohawk]

How do I know if I'm using SATA on an onboard? I also have the GA-K8NF-9 (nforce 4x).

 

[grooge]

Originally posted by: Infohawk
How do I know if I'm using SATA on an onboard? I also have the GA-K8NF-9 (nforce 4x).

Your manual will give you clue about that. check page 10. It will tell you the info you need to know if if it is onboard native(provide by nvidia chipset) or onboard by external PCI controller(read, Promise, Sil, ..

And while you are there, keep rewading it, you'll learn a trick or 2 about your board.)

 

[Infohawk]

Onboard SATA4 Serial ATA ports from nVIDIA nForce4-4X controller (S_ATA0_SB,
S_ATA1_SB, S_ATA2_SB, S_ATA3_SB)

I guess that means I need dirvers...

 

[grooge]

Originally posted by: Infohawk
Onboard SATA4 Serial ATA ports from nVIDIA nForce4-4X controller (S_ATA0_SB,
S_ATA1_SB, S_ATA2_SB, S_ATA3_SB)

I guess that means I need dirvers...

Remember my other post?? native controller from the nforce4 chipset??? no, you dont need drivers. The manual call them onboard, but they are natives. If it it was written:

Onboard SATA4 Serial ATA ports from Promise(or Sil, ITE,..) controller, then that will be a non native PCI solution.

 

[HighCalibreHooch]

Here's how I set up mine. Runs great, less filling.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=29&threadid=1505309&enterthread=y

 

[00obrimw]

I just got a Gigabyte K8NXP-9 nForce 4 Ultra board and you definitely don't need to install any raid drivers, just turn off raid in the bios. I was installing windows in 5 mins.

 

[pr0na]

(sorry to revive a seemingly dead topic)

same issue here, my SATA hd is not being recognized as a bootable drive. the only difference here is that instead XP i've got x64 installed (partially anyways). the RAID/SATA drivers i've tried to install fail because they are not compatible with x64.

this is my first build, and (admittedly) i'm probably biting off more than i can chew with this project. i guess my concern is even if i'm able to get past this issue, can i expect a lot driver/software compatibility issues with x64? am i better off just using XP until the x64 retail version is out and better supported by other companies?

any insight/advice you guys could give me is greatly appreciated.
thanks.

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Althon 64 3200+ (939)
GA-K8NF-9
2x1G Patriot RAM
ATI X800XL 256
Audigy ZS2 Platinum Pro
WD 160G SATA
Aspire X-Navigator 500w

 

[grooge]

Then go in the BIOS, disable RAID for the SATA channel and you wont need any drivers to install Windows.

Read the manual at page 37, you"ll see, near the bottom, SERIAL ATA RAID ..that wwhat you have to disable while in BIOS