Installing XP on extra controller card isn't working

[ctre...@gmail.com]

I have an A7N8X-E and have purchased a 320G Seagate SATA II and SIIG
3114 external controller card to replace 2x120G drives configured in
Raid 0 on the builtin SiiG 3112a controller.

Here is the drive layout:
2x120G in Raid 0 = 240G virtual disk:
C: 60G System drive with WinXP and most apps
D: 120G Games and downloads
E: 60G MP3s, photos, etc

My plan was to use Ghost 9 to copy the existing C: drive, boot off of
it and then copy the D: and E: across.

Using Ghost 9 I was able to copy the existing C: drive across onto the
new drive with no problems as the Windows driver installed fine and I
was able to assign a drive letter to it. I then configured the SCSI as
the bootable drive in the BIOS rather than the RAID which was what I
had before (they really need to be a little more descriptive of what
each is).
However it would continue to boot into the old C: drive rather onto the
new one.

To see if it would at least detect the new drive, I started the XP
install and provided the SiiG drivers on a floppy which it used but it
still didn't detect the drive.

My suspicion is one of the following:
1. If the 3112a is enabled, it will never boot off of the external card
2. There may be an issue with SATA2 drives hooked up to a SATA1 card.

I believe I have the latest BIOS.

I was thinking of disabling the 3112 via the jumper but will this make
me lose the contents of the RAID when I reenable it?

Any ideas or suggestions?

P.S I did notice a message during the BIOS for the 3114 where it said
something like "No (can't remember) Devices" but I suspect this has to
do with no RAID configuration detected as it did detect and list the
drive as being present.

[old man]

I would be very surprised if your existing raid array works on the new
controler.

If you intend to use this controler/raid as your boot device you will have
to rebuild from scratch.
I'm sure if you read the manual for your controler it will tell you such.
If you are using a sata1 card, you may have to set a hd jumper to enable
sata1
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/ref/sata_jumpers.html

When you clone a system disk, you have to remove/disconnect the origonal sys
disk *before* you attempt to boot.

<ctre...@gmail.com> wrote in message
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[ctre...@gmail.com]

I was trying to get rid of the raid altogether and thought it may work
as I have drivers for both chipsets installed. I figured even if it got
to BSOD as I could have sysprepped the drive and let it redetect all
the hardware after cloning .

I don't mind rebuilding XP in parallel as long as I keep the existing
install alive to ensure the wife is able to get to her forums.

The thing that concerns me is that even when I tried to install XP on
the 320G and provided the drivers, XP said there wasn't any disks.
Reading some other postings say that the 3114 can be set in RAID mode
or SATA mode. However in some cases it sounds like these are onboard
implementations so they may be configured differently. Looking in the
bios of the card there isn't any mention.

Thanks for the link as this may help.

[old man]

According to Seagate site, there is a hd jumper to force sata1 on a sata2
drive. If you havnt done so for a sata1 card the hd's will not be detected.
(as per prev.link)

Your new disk will not boot whilst the old C is connected

You may have to set an option in your bios to enable boot from this card,
scsi usually but some bios may have a specfic 'card' type entry

Its not entirely clear from your first post whether C,D,E are actually your
0 raid array or whether you have two other 120gb disks which are the 0 raid

If indeed C,D,E are your only disks/partitions, then install the new
seagate, jumper it for sata1, on boot win should detect new hardware, use
your SIIG controler driver floppy to install the drivers. Reboot, ensure new
disk is detected in Disk management.
Clone C,D,E to your new seagate - I'm assuming your version of ghost can
expand the partitions as you require, if not Acronis True Image has a 30 day
trial download.
Once Clone complete shutdown, disconnect the C,D,E (Old drives) Disable the
onboard raid in both bios and mobo (I cannot recall whether this mobo has
disble raid controler jumper)
Reboot and repair the win installation if neccessary.
I dont know as to whether you have to configure this sata card array to JBOD
in order to use as a single disk
The SIIG manual did'nt elaborate on this.

A raid array created in one controler will not work using another controler,
and may even not work if changing the mobo even if it uses the same
controler, with seemingly identical versions.

<ctre...@gmail.com> wrote in message
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[ctre...@gmail.com]

I got it working but I will leave the suspense to the end but you were
close :)
Answers inline:

old man wrote:
> According to Seagate site, there is a hd jumper to force sata1 on a sata2
> drive. If you havnt done so for a sata1 card the hd's will not be detected.
> (as per prev.link)

The new drive had the jumper set by default to limit to 1.5G

>
> Your new disk will not boot whilst the old C is connected
>
> You may have to set an option in your bios to enable boot from this card,
> scsi usually but some bios may have a specfic 'card' type entry

There were only two entries in the BIOS, one had RAID or SCSI as an
option. RAID specifies the builtin SATA controller (3112) and the SCSI
is any external card mounted controller (in this case th 3114).
Whichever one was set would be probed first.But once the builtin one
was disabled, it didn't make a difference.

>
> Its not entirely clear from your first post whether C,D,E are actually your
> 0 raid array or whether you have two other 120gb disks which are the 0 raid

That was correct, I have 2 120 Gig hard drives that were configured in
a Raid 0 array that contained the C, D, and E drive

>
> If indeed C,D,E are your only disks/partitions, then install the new
> seagate, jumper it for sata1, on boot win should detect new hardware, use
> your SIIG controler driver floppy to install the drivers. Reboot, ensure new
> disk is detected in Disk management.

That worked when I first got it.

> Clone C,D,E to your new seagate - I'm assuming your version of ghost can
> expand the partitions as you require, if not Acronis True Image has a 30 day
> trial download.
> Once Clone complete shutdown, disconnect the C,D,E (Old drives) Disable the
> onboard raid in both bios and mobo (I cannot recall whether this mobo has
> disble raid controler jumper)
> Reboot and repair the win installation if neccessary.

All the steps worked... until after the onboard raid was disabled
(there is a jumper on the board for this). It never booted, I went
through the same steps yesterday before posting except I didn't disable
the onboard controller (not like it did any difference)..
However what I ended up doing then was moving the 320G drive over to
the builtin SATA controller and lo and behold, it booted and
flawlessly, which was what I expected

> I dont know as to whether you have to configure this sata card array to JBOD
> in order to use as a single disk
> The SIIG manual did'nt elaborate on this.

The controller board I got doesn't mention any way to set up JBOD in
the BIOS config.

>
> A raid array created in one controler will not work using another controler,
> and may even not work if changing the mobo even if it uses the same
> controler, with seemingly identical versions.

A good (read real (i.e SCSI) ) array will rebuild based on what is
stored on the drive. Can't expect much though from a $30 card :)
The thing I knew though was that once XP boots, it just looks at it as
a single drive. It could really care less what the hardware
substructure was. I was trying to use the old RAID 0 drives as a source
to copy from but instead I said screw it and replicated everything
across using Ghost 9.

Needless to say. Everything is up and running. Still never figured out
why I get a "No Valid Device" when there are single drives hooked up to
the 3114 but it works.
Thanks for the help!

[ctre...@gmail.com]

Two things I noticed through this whole thing:
1. The card I have doesn't have a JBOD but it has SII Concatenation.
Which I think is the same thing.

2. Disabling the onboard SATA Controller will not make you lose all of
the data on the raid.

[old man]

Well glad its OK
PS A good SCSI......... well my Adaptec card retails at $350 and Tec support
states if you change the card the array cannot be rebuilt and a clean
rebuild is required (Well maybe it can & they are just covering themselves?)

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