Cant boot xp from rocket 620

[WalterA99]

I have a OCZ Vertex2 90GB SSD that I want to use to replace my RAID 0 Raptors as my boot drive on my Asus A8N SLI premium motherboard. The Raptors are on the MB Silicon Image SATA ports. Since the MB only has SATA 1 ports (as far as I can tell) and doesn't support AHCI, I bought a Highpoint Rocket 620 Sata controller. This is based on the Marvell 91xx series chipset and is the non-RAID version of the RocketRaid 620. Installing the board and drive was no problem and its BIOS comes up at boot and finds the drive. I also have full access to the drive under Win XP SP3 after loading the drivers from the Highpoint website. I was able to use diskpar to set the first partition with a 1024 sector offset. I added two more primary partitions under XP Disk Manager and formatted all partitions NTFS. I can read from and write to the drive from XP. However, after trying for about two weeks I can't find any way to enable AHCI or to boot from the Highpoint controller.

Basically, I created a slipstreamed boot disk with the correct drivers for my hardware including the Highpoint. XP install finds the drive but won't let me install the OS. I ultimately switched the drive to a MB nVidia SATA port and I could install XP. I can boot from the SSD when it's connected to the MB SATA, but if I switch it back to the Highpoint, it is there, but will not boot. I have gone through the MB Bios and tried every combination I could without success. When I try to boot from the Highpoint, I have the Silicon Image chipset disabled to prevent any possible conflicts. Turning on the SI chipset causes the system to boot off the Raptors. Regardless of the port, I can always access the OCZ drive from XP. This leads me to conclude this is an issue with the controller and driver and not an issue with the OCZ.

I have submitted requests to Highpoint Tech Support with no response since January 15, and have not been able to find a solution online. However, from some of the posts, the board should be bootable.

MB BIOS is 1008, Rocket 620 BIOS is 1.1. I'm using the Marvell Miniport drivers 1.0.0.1027-WHQL-. This file also contains a console driver, but I can't see any way of loading it. The drivers in the Miniport/floppy32 folder loaded fine, but as I said, do not seem to provide the ability to enable AHCI. I did find some later drivers online as well as a BIOS update, but no instructions on how to perform the BIOS update. I'm reluctant to try that without further documentation, since it is not from Highpoint.

Summary: 1. Can't get the MB or Win XP Install to recognize the Highpoint as a bootable device.
2. Can't enable AHCI in the driver. '


Anybody have any ideas?

 

[WalterA99]

No bootable add in card listed in Bios. I can see the OCZ drive in the BIOS and can change its position in the boot order, but that made no difference. I later found that by switching the rocket card to another PCIe slot, I could get Windows to start the install process on the drive, meaning it will boot. Unfortunately, once the install loads the basic files to the disk and starts to boot from it I get BSOD. The error codes indicate a disk read error. This is the type of error people have gotten when changing their boot drive from IDE to AHCI. I'm guessing this is a driver issue and access method has changed since the beginning of the install. I switched to MB SATA port and was able to do an install and boot the machine. My concern is that without AHCI, I won't be able to run the cleaning utilities needed to keep the drive running fast.

 

[WalterA99]

I have made some progress on this issue. To get the card to be seen as a bootable controller was a matter of switching the PCIe slot that it was plugged into. I tried faster slots first, but finally got it to work on a 1X slot. Unfortunately, I still could not successfully install XP. It failed on the first re-boot. Switching the drive to a MB controller, windows installed. I then swapped the drive to the Rocket 620 and was able to boot from it (after making the appropriate changes in the MB BIOS). The fact that I could boot XP after installing from a non-AHCI controller indicates the Rocket 620 is not operating in AHCI mode.

So issue 1 was partially solved. XP boots reliably from the Rocket 620, I just couldn't do an install from that controller. The second issue about the AHCI is unresolved. I have the drivers from Highpoint installed and working, but can find no way to enable them for AHCI. Device Manager shows all devices are working properly. Any ideas?