Newbie help

[MrNobody]

I recently bought a MSI K9A2 Platinum AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard.

I came DOA, everything worked except a few SATA connections.

I am looking at a DFI LP DK 790FXB-M2RSH AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard

I like these two boards basically the seem to have a lot of flexability and no on board video. I am running a AMD 9950 phenom. HELP me please.

Also, I was looking into going with a raid 0+1 setup. I had some 500gb seagate HDD, but they should up DOA. I am not having a lot of luck thus far. Yes, I make that I am grouneded. Any thoughts?

Thanks in Advance,

Mr. N

 

[505090]

did you enable all the sata ports in bios before declaring this MB DOA. Also the odds of four hard drives and a motherboad showing up DOA are about as good as me beating tiger woods on the PGA. So what makes you think the drives are bad?

 

[rdb]

I agree with 505090. I think you will find that you are doing something wrong. That many things dont show up DOA unless you are buying from Billy Bob's Discount. On the HD. , did you partition and format the drives? On the motherboard I would make sure you have read the manuel and everything is wired right and BIOS is setup correct.

 

[MrNobody]

I bought everything from newegg. I had two hdds, I put them into my other computer and they didn't even detect. I never heard them spin or anything. When I had my card reader DVD drive hooked up it detected those just fine. It read one of the HDD once, but that was it. I read everything and talked to MSI, they had stated that the 3 of the 6 SATA ports were bad.

Also with my initial start up the BIOS detected a "hardware problem" The only time that message went away is when the HDDs were unplugged.

 

[505090]

I have spent thousands at newegg and only received one DOA part. A no name dvd burner go figure

To clarify:
You already had two 500GB seagate drives
You ordered two more 500GB seagate drives (same models i hope) and a motherboard. And you believe that all three of the parts you ordered are defective.

I do not know what a card reader has to do with this as they are USB devices. Where as your hard drives are going to be either IDE or SATA

As far as your "hardware problem" message were you in control panel or the BIOS? BIOS is the blue screen with white letters, no mouse no pictures, old school dos style menus.

Are these drives sata or ide

 

[MrNobody]

Ok it was loading the BIOS, while scanning and came up with that message. Everything I bought was SATA. Multi-card was USB (sorry for that), but the point was it read everything except for the HDD. I only had the two HDDs that I bought from newegg. Im sorry sometimes I can't type as fast as I think...

The only time I could get the "fast build" to show up is when I had no hard drives plugged in. I pulled my son's hard drive to see if I could get anything to boot and it did just fine. I plugged both new HDDs into sons computer and got nothing. I put them into an enclosure and same result. I really do have a "black cloud" flowing me.

I understand that you have spent thousands with newegg, and I am not blaming them, but it is what it is.

Thanks in advance.

Mr. N

 

[505090]

K so we have two identical sata drives from newegg and no other drives, right. And if that is correct you can't implement raid 10 as that requires 4 identical drives.

First thing we have to get the bios to see the drive. Go to a functional computer and hook one of the drives up to a sata channel that you know and have verified works. When the computer boots go into the bios and make sure its there. Once you have done all that you let windows load. Now your not going to see the drive in windows because it isn't formated. To format the new drive we got to: admin tools > computer management > disk management, select our drive and format it. And now windows see your new freshly formated drive.

And its' not that i want to defend newegg if they screwed so be it, it's just that the odds of it happening are pretty slim.

 

[MrNobody]

Tell me about it. I defy all odds.

When I was talkin gabout 0+1 raid, I was contempating on going to (4)320 drives. I also have an extra 250gb drive that maybe I can just use as a back up.

I can't goto disk management, because I can't get my "working" computer to reconize the new HDDs.

The main thing is do I go back to the MSI board and try again or should I try the new DFI board. Worse comes to worse I will get one drive and call it a day. But I really like the idea of RAID 0+1 because I run a small business and really need performance as well as reliability. Let me know if I am nuts.

Mr. N

 

[505090]

If your working computer that can see a sata device on a channel x can't see the new drives in bios on same channel then the drive is bad.

regardless of the new drives you should be able to get into disk management and see whatever drives are functional on the computer.

raid is overrated performance gains in real world apps are marginal and the reliability gains are negated by the mb if you have 4 mirrored drives and you lose the controller all four copies of the info are unreadable. you can get a cheap external drive and back up to that.

raid does have it's uses in specific applications but it brings with it added complexity and based on your questions here thats a complexity you may not be ready for

 

[MrNobody]

Got new board and new hard drives works just fine. Have raid 0 with a 250gb back up drive right now. The only thing is that 64 bit windows vista has a few driver bugs, but we all know that don't we.

 

[aevm]

LOL, so you only had one thing defect after all, not all of them. That makes more sense. Just curious, did you get another K9A2 Platinum, or the DFI?

If you're seeing driver bugs check Seagate's Web site for updates. Vista is not really that bad, but some companies have crappy drivers for it and that ruins the fun.

 

[505090]

Vista's not that bad, vast majority of probs were fixed with SP1. Just make sure you get the latest drivers from each devices manufacturer and you'll be fine.

 

[MrNobody]

The only problem I have is with Linksys...come to find out the only wireless adapter they have is the USB...and I'm not to crazy about it yet...

 

[505090]

What are you talking about linksys has several cards for vista there is even one that works on vista 64.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833124297

 

[MrNobody]

Trust me...I talked with Linksys...the only 64bit adapter is the USB drive. I went through three other linksys that were "vista certified" until I called them. I kept getting a code 6 and code 10.

 

[505090]

Linksys, A Division of Cisco Systems, Inc.

Product: WMP110

Classification: Driver Release History

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last Released Date: 04/ 28 / 07

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last Driver version: 6.0.3.120 (Windows XP and 2000)
7.3.1.127 (Windows Vista)
7.3.1.127 (Windows Vista x64)
Last Setup Wizard version: 1.0.00
Last WLAN Monitor version: 1.0.00


==================================================================================
Last Driver version: 6.0.3.120 (Windows XP and 2000)
7.3.1.127 (Windows Vista)
7.3.1.127 (Windows Vista x64)

- First Released.
- The Setup Wizard and Wireless Network Monitor version are v1.0.00