hardedge

If I was in any more over my head I think my nose would be filled with solder by now. It seemed simple enough from the manual. Here's the deal...

P5AS2-E Premium
2GB DDR2 Ballistix
ASUS EN6600
WinDVD PVR-250
Maxtor 120GB ATA133 HD
WD 160GB SATA HD x2
NEC 2510A DL DVD+/-R

I have the two SATA drives connected to the Silicon Images SATA 1 and SATA 2 connectors and configured as a single RAID volume via the BIOS setup.

I have the ATA133 drive connected to the Pri-RAID 1 connector. (set to IDE in the BIOS config)

I originally had the DVD drive connected to the Sec-RAID 1 connector. (Ditto)
(According to the manual, I can connect boot/data and optical drives to these connectors. Yeah, sure...) All drives are recognized in the various stages of the POST.

First time I tried to install XP Pro from the optical drive, the system didn't recognize the optical drive as a boot device. (I had previously arranged the boot sequence in the BIOS.) So I switched the optical drive to the Pri-IDE connector.

This time through, Win XP Pro booted up through the DVD drive, went through the load steps, but told me it couldn't find any hard dirves in my computer. By this time, it's this time, and I'd been assembling all day... ASUS email support server is, of course, down.

All I want to do is use the 120GB ATA133 drive as the boot device, the two 160GB SATA drives as a RAID data drive and the DVD bruner as a DVD burner. Can someone please tell me where to put..., er, let me rephrase that, can someone please give me a clue as to what drives connect to what connectors? If you can, you'll have earned my undying gratitude. Thanks!

blackduck30

have you try'd conecting the maxtor ata drive to the ide socket instead of the primary raid 1 ( if I see it right you have the ATA plugged into the red Pri Raid , can you hook it up to the blue ide ? ) you should be able to run both your ATA and DVD off that, you will still have to set the ATA as first in you boot sequence and maybe disable your other sata drives from the boot sequence

rePete

hardedge,
I feel your pain. I'm mostly through my build right now.
Blackduck seems like he has a handle on this.

I have a WD 80Gb Ide and one optical DVD-ROM drive on the IDE connector near the floppy connector at the front of the board (PRI_IDE1), opposite side of the rear panel. My SATA DVDR is plugged in to SATA3 (ICH6R) controller. I will eventually get the second SATA drive for the raid and those will be on the SATA_RAID1 and 2 connectors. Drives were recognized properly by xp during install.

I would also advise disabling the ITE8212 in bios if you don't need it. This will make for a faster bootup.

Just my $.02 USD

hardedge

Thanks, guys. I found a mounting kit (on the floor, under a box, in the closet) so I can stick the 3.5-inch Maxrot drive into a 5.25-inch bay above the DVD drive. (There ain't but that much bitty room between the cable connectors and all of that much distance between the drives in the P160 case.) Didn't really want to couple UDMA 6 and UDMA 2 devices but I'll give it a try a little later, when I have some available fingers to cross, and let you know.

It's just damn frustrating when a product doesn't deliver as advertised. (Then again, I should have suspected it. To this day, a year later, I can't get RAID working on my P4C800 Deluxe mbd.)

hardedge

Okay, uninstalled, rejumpered, re-installed, and voila! I have third IDE master (HD) and slave (DVD) devices. Windows installed, all upgrades done, all ASUS driver files installed, configured the two SATA drives as a RAID volume from the BIOS during boot-up. And..., no way to access the SATA RAID volume.

Somewhere along the way I missed the secret handshake that let's this happen. I've gone back to RTFM, but can't find it there. What am I missing?

blackduck30

First check in the device manager and see if there are any problems in there ,and have the sata drives been formatted ?

blackduck30

First check in the device manager and see if there are any problems in there ,and have the sata drives been formatted ?, did you install the raid drivers ?
That interesting a double post, I amaze myself sometimes

hardedge

Heck, if two heads are better than one, then two posts must be worth a picture. I had forgotten that the drives won't just show up on the desktop if they're not formatted so I never checked the device manager after I installed the drivers. (Duh!) They're there and now have been formatted and are working just nifty peachy keen.

Thanks to all!! I appreciate it!

blackduck30

glad to see you got it sorted out