Albatron PX915P-Pro's ATA133 raid problems

[djduece]

A few months ago I upgraded to an Albatron PX915P-Pro motherboard - and being that I only had one hard drive on hand, (80GB ATA-100 Seagate barracuda), I had to use that.
Anyone who's seen this motherboard will know that it only has one ata100 connector, and so I ended up having my dvdrom and hard drive on the same connector. It worked fine, and since I mainly use that computer for gaming it wasnt a problem.
last week, that hard drive died - so I ordered a new hard drive (Maxtor Diamondmax 200gb ata-133, the one with 16mb cache) - and plugged it into the yellow raid ide ata133 connector.
I only have one hard drive - although that's not supposed to be a problem, Albatron's manuals that come with the motherboard provide semi-clear instructions for running a single drive on the 'raid ide' ata133 connectors.

The problem is that when I try to run that single drive on the ata133, windows installation setup program won't recognize the hard drive.
-the raid setup program says if i configure it to 'normal' mode, it can use a single drive, and when i set it to 'normal' mode, it says "new array created", but it doesnt actually do anything - the list of arrays remains empty.

Anyone know wether these motherboards actually do have the capability to run a single ata133 drive, or did they lie when they wrote the manuals?
BTW, i have access to three of these motherboards, and have tried using the drive on all of them with the same results. The bios recognizes the hard drive, and the drive does spin up and gets a little warm when powered on, so i'm quite sure the drive isn't DOA.

[chris000001]

you may have to install the raid drivers when installin windows i do believe its the f6 button right when you get the blue setup screen. you probly have to do this since its running of the raid controller instead of a normal ide contoller(which windows uses its defaulf driver when installing windows)

[therealwesty]

Chris is correct. You will still need to install the SATA/RAID controller for the motherboard even thoughh you are using a single drive.

[djduece]

you may have to install the raid drivers when installin windows i do believe its the f6 button right when you get the blue setup screen. you probly have to do this since its running of the raid controller instead of a normal ide contoller(which windows uses its defaulf driver when installing windows)

boy do i feel like a dummy.... i'm so used to seeing that thing and not using it, it didnt even click. thanks!

[chris000001]

YAY...i feel good i helped someone!!!

[djduece]

well as much as i thought that would work, windows setup doesnt recognize the raid device, and asks me to insert the floppy disk with the raid driver on it - albatron doesn't include any sort of a floppy disk with this motherboard. I have a CD that supposedly contains the raid driver on it, however i'm quite sure it's far more data than will fit on a floppy disk - plus, i dont see any option to make it look for a CD with the driver on it. BTW, i am leaving that driver CD in the other drive when i'm doing all this, i dont think windows setup is even noticing it though.

EDIT: Colin, you wrote a review on this mobo - did you have any problems with the ata133?

[therealwesty]

The RAID controller driver should be on the CD. There is often a little executable program included that will automatically make the floppy disk for you. With WindowsXP the only way to load a 3rd party RAID driver is using the floppy disk. If you can't find the drivers or the tool to make the disk they should be available on the Albatron site.

[djduece]

yep, making a floppy now... BTW, I've got the thing up and running at least - a friend gave me an old 10gb western digital drive and i've got it running in place of one of the optical drives. I'd install the driver from here but Albatron decided not to make an executable to install the driver - the CD only has the instructions for installing it through device manager; however whenever i try to go into device manager, a bunch of errors pop up and i can't do it. that's fault of the windows installation on this drive though; i dont feel like fixing it so i'm just gonna make a floppy and do that.

[Austintatious]

im Haveing this same issue. PLEASE tell how you resolved this issue. I dont have a diskette to use with a windows install, and I cant boot the system to install the drivers in windows... I dont see how to make a diskette.

Can anyone help!

[therealwesty]

Welcome to the forums Austintatious!

The drivers for that board are available on the Albatron site here. (http://www.albatron.com.tw/english/it/mb/driver.asp?pro_id=122) Once you download the driver pack that you need there should be instructions for making the floppy disk you'll need to install the drivers.

[Austintatious]

thank you for the link.. I can find the drivers 5 times over but I do nto see anywhere instructions for makeing a diskette.

[Austintatious]

Ok for anyone else that may find this board with the same problem.. I found an executable that so far is working!!!

You can find it here. I twill make the diskette for you.

http://tastycomputers.com/support/download/ite_gigaraid.htm

Why this is not included with the board I will never know!

[therealwesty]

When there isn't a handy tool available you can just copy the folders over to a disk yourself.

One of the folders in the downloaded pack should contain a file called <b>oemsetup.txt</b>. Copy all the files (and folders) contained in this folder, including the oemsetup.txt, to the root of the floppy disk. The oemsetup.txt is actually the file Windows setup will be looking for to tell it what other driver files to use, and where on the disk they are located.

This is true for all motherboards and PCI SATA controllers.