My New System Build

[Shamus MacNoob]

Maybe you should see he was trying to connect to the nvraid controller ... and using one sata drive he was unable to do anything , see above where he says he cant add any drives, after all this time he was able at one point to figure out he needed to use the Silicon Image raid connectors and the proper drivers on a floppy after that not sure what happened , could be when you started talking about partitions you changed somthing , maybe you used partition magic from floppy's ? Went in and moved your partitons around and off set something, who knows but hey seeing as now I am the blunt end of your "hot shot" I will leave you to your troubles .


ps: If you move your drive from one connector to another you need to make sure in the bios you are set to boot to the proper drive yet again seems you moved it so did you also make the proper changes in the bios to reflect the new position of the hard drive?

 

[Steevo]

RAID is just a OPTION for the 4 SATA ports on the Nvidia SATA controller. And the Silicon Image is just a SATA controller too, with a RAID option.


Brad, this honestly sounds like you have a defective board, and or needs a BIOS update, and or some adjustments.

What is your RAM running at in voltage? And what is the Nforce running at?

 

[Brad]

I have everything at stock voltages....I can tell you what those are in a couple hours when I get home. Right now I am at the in-laws. The thing is....is that it did work, and then I did a reboot, and it says tha the drive cannot be recognized or something to that affect. I really dont want to have to RMA the board, but I guess if I have to, I will.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

He can only use the SI controller for JBOD the Nvidia controller "DOES NOT" do a single drive or if you prefere JBOD

SO that means there is nothing wrong with the NV raid controller as he stated above he felt there was a problem with it, the problem is he does not have 2 or more drives to use as a RAID setup, seems simple really ... Now he did get to work on the SI controller and that should be fine if he sets it to JBOD and boots to that drive, why after a reboot he has lost his drive ? I am not sure but he said he was looking into partitioning the large drive, either way I am sure the problem is not the board but it is a given our friend knows little about RAID and this is what is causing the heartache , no insult intended but if you read the manual for that board it tells you that you can only use JBOD with the SI controller so without further a do ... I say try putting the single drive back where it was a check to make sure you are set to boot to that drive in the BIOS .. the manual explains it all in very simple english.

 

[Brad]

Drive was accessed fine after the partitioning was done. Then, I rebooted. Boom. No more drive.

 

[Brad]

He can only use the SI controller for JBOD the Nvidia controller "DOES NOT" do a single drive or if you prefere JBOD

.. the manual explains it all in very simple english.

So....this plain english part, are you referring to where it says in the manual and I QUOTE under section 5.5.2 (NVIDIA RAID Configurations)

"The motherboard includes a high performance IDE RAID controller integrated in the NVIDIA SLI southbridge chipset. It supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID1+0, and JBOD with four independend Serial ATA channels"

To insist that I have not done my research is both idiotic and asinine.

 

[kcnychief]

Guys -

Creative differences/opinions are one thing, but please try to keep negativity out of the forums. If you have issues with another member, take it up with them via PM or send a message to an Admin/Mod.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

Well when you went into the bios you saw the JBOD options in the advanced section in the SI controller , and when you were in the Nvidia controller you were unable to add any drives ( thats because you cant make a raid setp with a single drive using the Nvidia controller ) The fact you got the single drive working on the SI is because you can use JBOD with the silicon image controller .. you read right your system can do raid and jbod but not on one controller it uses 2 controllers and one of them does JBOD and one deos not, the fact remains unchanged.

 

[Brad]

So, then why after the reboot, did everything change? The computer is still able to access the drive as I have done the following:

Format
Partition
Burn In

But when I go to install Windows, it can't find it. This is after loading the correct drivers.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

If you read from page sections 5-25 to 5-30 your goin to see the places were one it shows you the 4 types of raid arrays possible with the Nvidia controller and they are Mirror , Stripe , Stripe Mirror, and Spanning all of which need more then one drive, and further down you will see the 6 options offered by the Silicon Image controller and they are Raid 0, RAID 1 , RAID 5, RAID 10 , SPARE DRIVE and the FAMOUS JBOD ... I rest my case . Good luck , all I did all along was research and try and help in any way to be insulted for my efforts ( hot shot? ) hey you need to read the manual not the feature highlights.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

Ok how did you have the drive set when you formatted , I mean with what did you format the drive? And when and how did you partition , I mean with what tool did you partition?

 

[Brad]

I formatted (and partitioned) the drive with NTFS in Windows. There might be something wrong with the motherboard, because now it is allowing me to access the drive. It seems to be an intermittent problem.

Sorry about getting offensive, I feel that I have been working at this for way too long. I admit that I am new to the technology and that I perhaps have not read what I should have. I apologize for getting up at arms.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

Ok so now you can setup windows? Have you look for a bios update for your motherboard ? Sometimes the default one that it is shipped with might have some problems, well all I am trying to do is help and if somehow you see something in my post that says anything more it is not anything meant to put you down, ok back to board go look for bios updates and see if there any..

 

[Brad]

I have already updated the BIOS. Windows installed on Drive G, and we all know that that is no good so now I am going to unplug the ATA drive and then setup Windows so that it is on C.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

Its not all that bad really I use the letter : i for windows there are a very few cases where I need it to be : C

If I really need C: I use the DOS command subst

Associates a path with a drive letter.
SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
SUBST drive1: /D
drive1: Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to assign a path.
[drive2:]path Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to
a virtual drive.
/D Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.
Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.
EXAMPLES
SUBST a: . Sets the directory you are in and subdirectories thereafter into the A: drive. So if you were to type A: after doing this command you would see everything in the directory that you typed this command in.​

If you were to reboot your computer this will clear the SUBST command and put your drives back to original letters (unless command placed into the autoexec.bat).
You cannot subst network drives.​

 

[Brad]

It is just my OCD. I have to have it correct, or it will drive me absolutely bonkers. Thanks for the info though.

 

[Steevo]

What is the difference between the two SATA controllers on A8N-SLI Deluxe?

Answer [FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]A8N-SLI Deluxe built in NVRAID SATA II controller which can support RAID 0[FONT=??]?[/FONT]RAID 1,[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=??][FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif] RAID 0+1 [/FONT][/FONT]and NCQ SATA HDD[/FONT][FONT=??][FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]?Besides,[/FONT] [/FONT]Silicon Sil3114 controller can support extra 4 Serial ATA ports to support RAID 0[FONT=??]?[/FONT]RAID 1[FONT=??]?[/FONT]RAID 10, JBOD and multiple RAID.[/FONT]

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

What is the difference between the two SATA controllers on A8N-SLI Deluxe?

Answer [FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]A8N-SLI Deluxe built in NVRAID SATA II controller which can support RAID 0[FONT=??]?[/FONT]RAID 1,[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=??][FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif] RAID 0+1 [/FONT][/FONT]and NCQ SATA HDD[/FONT][FONT=??][FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]?Besides,[/FONT] [/FONT]Silicon Sil3114 controller can support extra 4 Serial ATA ports to support RAID 0[FONT=??]?[/FONT]RAID 1[FONT=??]?[/FONT]RAID 10, JBOD and multiple RAID.[/FONT]

Thats exactly what I said the Nvidia cannot do single drive where the Silicon Image can.

NCQ = Native Command Queuing (NCQ) reduces wear and tear of disc drives in aggressive workload environments by streamlining the access and delivery of data.

 

[Steevo]

Thats exactly what I said the Nvidia cannot do single drive where the Silicon Image can.

NCQ = Native Command Queuing (NCQ) reduces wear and tear of disc drives in aggressive workload environments by streamlining the access and delivery of data.

Not to be insulting, but the Nvidia CAN do a single SATA drive. Or you can choose to put drives in multiple types of RAID.

I just read the entire manual on the drive configuration.

Thus the "[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]A8N-SLI Deluxe built in NVRAID SATA II controller which can support RAID 0[FONT=??]?[/FONT]RAID 1,[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=??][FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif] RAID 0+1 [/FONT][/FONT]and !!!!****NCQ SATA HDD*****[/FONT]!!!!"[/FONT]

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

Where do you see a single drive setup in that list you just posted? Which one of the configurations is single drive?

RAID Level 0 requires a minimum of 2 drives to implement.
RAID Level 1 requires a minimum of 2 drives to implement
RAID 0+1 configuration where multiple disks are striped together into sets

and as I said NCQ has nothing to do with the numbers but is what I stated above ... show me where it says the Nvidia controller does SPARE DRIVE or JBOD and then maybe you will have a point. But then again maybe if the raid is disabled in the bios he could have chosen a single drive solution but seems to me looking in the book it says JBOD and SPARE DRIVE are options only on the SI controller, I dont have that board so I dont know for sure, unless he wants to set his raid to disabled in all options and try and get the drive booted ... but either way he was able to get windows installed on the SI controller so thats all that matters now.