marcella

I'm baffled by this situation, and I don't know whether this is a BIOS or Vista 64 "issue", and whether it should be posted here or in the motherboard or vista forum. I have no IDE devices installed. I keep having my RAID array boot drive moved from the top of the BIOS hard disk list (not the HD, CD-ROM, Removable, etc. boot order). All storage devices are SATA, as follows:

On Crosshair Motherboard Connections:
-SATA 1 = Raptor 37gb HD 1
-SATA 2 = Raptor 37gb HD 2
-SATA 3 = Seagate 160gb HD
-SATA 4 = empty
-SATA 5 = WD 320gb HD
-SATA 6 = Samsung DVD-Writer

BIOS v904 RAID settings:
-RAID = enabled (nVidia, not Silicon Image)
-SATA 1 = enabled
-SATA 2 = enabled
-SATA 3 = disabled
-SATA 4 = disabled
-SATA 5 = disabled
-SATA 6 = disabled

I've configured SATA 1 and 2 as a nVidia RAID 0, with Vista 64 bit installed.

As checked and seen by nVidia RAID during bootup (accessible via F10):
- nVidia RAID 0 Stripe Healthy

BIOS v904 Hard Drive list under "BOOT" tab:
-I place nVidia RAID Array at top of hard drive list (until mysteriously shifted below another HD that is non-bootable)
- other hard drives, including a READYBOOST USB thumb drive, and (if they are powered on before bootup) two eSATA externals HD's on Silicon Image eSata ports fill out the list. The latter are listed as SCSI devices.

Vista 64 bit Disk Management list is different:
- Disk 0 = Seagate 160gb (Formatted as Extended with logical volumes)
- Disk 1 = WD 320gb (formatted as a mix of primary and logical volumes
- Disk 2 = nVidia RAID array (Vista System Drive, healthy, active)
- Disk 3 = eSATA 5oogb (if on)
- Disks 4-7 = Flash Card slots in Atech 3.5" bay
- Disk 8 = ReadBoost USB
- Disk 9 = eSATA 400gb (if on)
- CD-ROM 0 = Samsung DVD

I am often (not every time) presented with NO OS or other boot failures, only to find that my nVidia Array has been shuffled by "unseen gremlins" to the bottom of the HD order in the BIOS despite being attached at Sata Port 1. Is there a way to correct this? Why does a non-Primary HD get seen as Disk 0 by Vista given my setup?

dai

replace the cmos battery if it's not holding the settings

philb7

Sometimes the simple things are missed. Did you tell the bios to SAVE CHANGES when you closed it?? There have been times that I have made changes and just closed the bios forgetting to save the changes.

marcella

Yes - and I'm not offended as I've done that too. I found the answer here, which should save a lot of people a lot of wasted sata recabling time! :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937251

SOLVED

dai

thanks for the link