IDE Controller

[kimzo]

I have now bought an IDE controller card (Promise Ultra133 TX2). I've got 2 IDE hard drives which work perfectly fine when plugged in as default into the motherboard's hard disk controller. When I instead put the IDE cable to my newly bought controller card, the card's bios tells me that no disks were found.

What can you miss in these situations?
* The manual said something about inserting the system case's LED connector into the card. Do they mean the HDD LED or the Power LED? And whichever I choose, doesn't my motherboard need these connectors for othere drives?
* The manual says a lot about installing drivers etc for different operating systems. But don't I have to deal with my first mentioned problem first?

 

[kimzo]

I've now tried different cables, different IDE drives (including dvd drive), various cmos settings (playing around with bus frequency), jumpers etc. All this without any results. The controller card doesn't seem to be able to find anything it all. It says "BIOS not installed because no drives were found".

Plugging the cable into the mobo works fine but when switching it to the controller card - nothing!

It's like it doesnt matter what I put in the controller card - it makes no difference.

HELP!

 

[_WW_]

Try a different PCI slot and install the drivers. If that doesn't work I think I would return the card. I had the exact same card and it went bad after four months. It would freeze the machine between BIOS and Windows when ever I hooked HDDs to it.

I'm now using a Silicon Image SiI 0680 Ultra-ATA/133 with the same drives that were giving the Promise card problems and so far everything is working fine.

....WW (5.0)

 

[kimzo]

Also tried different PCI slots, still same result. But where do you mean I should install the drivers? It will do no good installing the drivers on a hard drive unless it's identified by the controller card.

 

[_WW_]

Are you putting your operating system drive on the controller?

If not, boot up with nothing hooked up to the controller. Then go into device manager, locate the controller, right click on it and update/reinstall/install the drivers from the floppy Promise sent with the card. Restart and confirm the driver installation. Then shut down and install your drives...things should be working now.

If you are trying to boot from a drive on the controller you will have to select that option in BIOS if it is available. But I would still install the drivers first while your OS drive is connected to the Primary IDE of your motherboard.

....WW (5.0)

 

[kimzo]

Well, the problem isn't the booting up process. The controller card can't identify my drives. That's a problem I have to deal with before drivers and stuff, cause this is before any kind of loading of OS. I borrowed a different controller card from a local store just to see and it identified my drives immediately. So either the card has some internal errors (how that now could happen since it loads up correctly), or it requires some kind of unknown settings from my computer. However, I will give this card back to the store and demand another brand or something. This is not just working.

 

[folken]

Yea, sounds like that card is hosed. Promise usually makes good stuff, I guess you were lucky enough to get a faulty one.
Give adaptec or highpoint a try, they too make fairly good hard drive controllers. If you have a very high budget get a 3ware card, that is aboslute top of the line.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[kimzo]

I'm glad to hear this cause I returned the card to the store yesterday and they're gonna test it on their equipment. If it works okay I will be charged a service fee So I really hope there was something wrong with it. Then I'll try with Highpoint or something...