hard drives not recognized in Bios.

[mrcolella]

My hard drives are not seen on the "Main" page of the bios setup. I've got a WD 74GB raptor on First SATA master and two 160Gb Hitachi HD's on Second and Third SATA masters. The Hitachi's are Raid 0. If I look in "My Computer". I see both hard hards. 70 GB and 306 GB Drive. However if "right click" on either of these drives and select properties they appear as Nvidia striped drives. Normally I would have expected to see the make and model of the drives, WD raptor etc. Windows in functioning ok. ( Win XP, SP2) No boot problems. However, I can't see the hard drives in the bios.

My Bios set up is:

Main Tab:

Legacy disk 1.44M 3.5"
Secondary IDE Master: Pioneer DVD RW
First SATA Master: None
Second SATA Master: None
Third SATA Master: None
Forth SATA Master: None

If I highlight "none" and hit enter it moves to the "extended IDE drive" choices. These are set to "Auto".

Advanced tab:

-Onboard Device configuration
-IDE function setup
-On chip IDE channel 0: Disabled
-All others enabled.
I've tried to "enable" the IDE Channel 0 but this did not have any effect

-Nvidia Raid Config:
-Raid: Enabled
- IDE Primary master and slave: Disabled
- IDE Secondary Master and slave: Disabled
-First, Second and Third SATA masters: Enabled
-Forth SATA Master: Disabled

During the POST, I see "Detecting array"
0 306GB Healthy
1 70GB Healthy

Control panel:
-Device mgr:
-Disk Drives
- Nvidia Stripe; 70 GB
- Nvidia Stripe: 306GB

Have tried both Phoenix Award BIOS versions 1.09 and 1.11. No change in results.

MB is Asus A8N SLI premium. 2GB of OCZ pc 3200 RAM( 2 sticks). Video Card is Geforce 7800GT.

Does anyone have ideas on how to get the BIOS to recognize the hard drives?
Is there a problem long term if the Bios doesn't recognized them

 

[Crashman]

If you have them in RAID mode, main BIOS probably won't see them, you'd have to use RAID BIOS to see them. RAID BIOS normally shows after the main BIOS screen disappears.

Windows should show any RAIDed drives labeled by the controller rather than the drive type. In order to get Windows to access the array, you have to set up a partition on it, using Disk Manager. Right click on "My Computer, Manage, and choose Disk Management. Then creat a new partition on the RAID array, which should show up as a single drive in disk managment.

 

[mrcolella]

Crashman:

Thanks. I believe that is what's happening on my unit. I do not see either the WD raptor which has WinXP on it or the two Hitachi 160 GB hard drives which I've got paired in a striped Raid 0 array. During the POST, I see two array's show on the screen. 70 GB and 306 GB. Both listed as "healthy". WinXP then boots up normally.

In "My Computer" the drives are listed as local C and local E. When I right click on either of these and choose "properties", they show up as "Nvidia Striped. 70GB and 306GB.

Does this seem right to you? Can a single drive operate in a Raid 0 array?
Any long term issues with this set up? Is it normal for Raid 0 arrays not to show up in a standard bios? I've tried to "disable" the first SATA master raid where the Raptor is located. However when I do this the system will not boot to WinXP.

Thanks for the help.
Mike

 

[Crashman]

Well, it's a funny thing. The controller is set to RAID mode, so now Windows sees the controller rather than the drive. The RAID controller presents Windows a "RAID 0" for a single drive because...it has to show something on the RAID controller to represent the drive. The other two drives really are striped, so they show up as 306GB.

And you make your partition normally for the 306GB stripe, in Disk Management.

Now, as for your other BIOS settings, I'd have to guess. If you can remove the single drive from RAID mode by disabling first SATA Master RAID in main BIOS, then the drive should show up in main BIOS. And if the drive does show up in main BIOS but you can't boot off it, the boot order is probably screwed up in BIOS. And you know how to fix the boot order.