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Hardware and Windows Vista Hardware issues in relation to Windows Vista. (microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices) |
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Re-detect PM-HDD
My system was working perfectly, but I disconnected and removed my
HDDs to clean them and then re-installed them. I have an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard. The last time I installed Windows Vista on my system it went to my new SATA HDD installed through the SATA1_RAID socket on the motherboard and not to my primary IDE harddrive. After I re-installed all my HDDs, the system boots correctly, but my primary harddrive doen't appear in Windows Explorer, nor in the Computer Manager's Disk Management window. The primary harddrive does, however; show up in the BIOS, just not in Windows. I would like to access this HDD and my data stored on it. Why did I loose the connection to it and what's the solution? I reconnected the same harddrives as I had connected before. I've posted this in the ASUS Tech Support Forum and I haven't gotten an answer; so I think this might be a Windows Vista problem. http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?...Language=en-us Thanks, PC |
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Re-detect PM-HDD
When you re-installed the drives was each one re-installed to the same MOBO
SATA connection and power connector connections from your PSU? "PC User" wrote in message ... My system was working perfectly, but I disconnected and removed my HDDs to clean them and then re-installed them. I have an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard. The last time I installed Windows Vista on my system it went to my new SATA HDD installed through the SATA1_RAID socket on the motherboard and not to my primary IDE harddrive. After I re-installed all my HDDs, the system boots correctly, but my primary harddrive doen't appear in Windows Explorer, nor in the Computer Manager's Disk Management window. The primary harddrive does, however; show up in the BIOS, just not in Windows. I would like to access this HDD and my data stored on it. Why did I loose the connection to it and what's the solution? I reconnected the same harddrives as I had connected before. I've posted this in the ASUS Tech Support Forum and I haven't gotten an answer; so I think this might be a Windows Vista problem. http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?...Language=en-us Thanks, PC |
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Re-detect PM-HDD
In message
PC User was claimed to have wrote: My system was working perfectly, but I disconnected and removed my HDDs to clean them and then re-installed them. I have an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard. The last time I installed Windows Vista on my system it went to my new SATA HDD installed through the SATA1_RAID socket on the motherboard and not to my primary IDE harddrive. After I re-installed all my HDDs, the system boots correctly, but my primary harddrive doen't appear in Windows Explorer, nor in the Computer Manager's Disk Management window. The primary harddrive does, however; show up in the BIOS, just not in Windows. I would like to access this HDD and my data stored on it. Why did I loose the connection to it and what's the solution? I reconnected the same harddrives as I had connected before. I've posted this in the ASUS Tech Support Forum and I haven't gotten an answer; so I think this might be a Windows Vista problem. http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?...Language=en-us With this particular motherboard there are as many as three possible SATA controllers/configurations, mostly identified by colour but it's not 100% reliable, make sure that your primary drive is connected to exactly the same port as you started out. Most drives can roam from port to port and/or controller to controller easily enough unless you're using RAID (in which case you need to stay on the right controller), but if you're using the "zero-configuration RAID" ports at the far edge of the board, these drives must be kept consistent, even swapping the two disks could cause corruption. In addition, despite these two "zero-configuration" ports being RAID-1 (mirror) capable, you're not actually warned if a drive fails, nor is there any documented way to resolve a failed drive situation, so in short, I'd highly recommend not relying on this particular RAID mode at all, use the Si RAID chipset instead. I like a lot about that particular board, but if you're one of the unlucky ones that gets lockups during the BIOS phase of the bootup, pull the wifi card off the motherboard (there is a little horizontal screw that is accessible if you remove any PCIe cards) and throw it in the garbage, plus unhook any iPods during bootup and your system should start rebooting more gracefully. |
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Re-detect PM-HDD
I admire your knowledge of this motherboard. Thanks for your reply.
I eventually did not use a direct approach to the problem, but instead an indirect solution by using the system restore to a point before the time I tampered with the harddrives. This worked and I recovered my lost connection to the IDE primary harddrive. Your reply is very informative about the three possible SATA controllers/configurations. I use two SATA HDs configured as a raid in the SATA1 & SATA3 ports and one SATA HD by itself as a non-raid HD in the SATA_RAID1 port. I just purchased a 1Tb HD which plan to use as a non-raid HD in the (EZ_RAID1 port). From your reply, this seems to be a correct use of the EZ_RAID1 port; in that I can use it directly without having to do any configurations. If I understand you correctly, all I have to do is "plug & play." Is this correct? Also should I use the SATA4 port or the EZ_RAID1 port? Thanks very much, PC |
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Re-detect PM-HDD
In message
PC User was claimed to have wrote: I admire your knowledge of this motherboard. Thanks for your reply. I eventually did not use a direct approach to the problem, but instead an indirect solution by using the system restore to a point before the time I tampered with the harddrives. This worked and I recovered my lost connection to the IDE primary harddrive. Your reply is very informative about the three possible SATA controllers/configurations. I use two SATA HDs configured as a raid in the SATA1 & SATA3 ports and one SATA HD by itself as a non-raid HD in the SATA_RAID1 port. I just purchased a 1Tb HD which plan to use as a non-raid HD in the (EZ_RAID1 port). From your reply, this seems to be a correct use of the EZ_RAID1 port; in that I can use it directly without having to do any configurations. If I understand you correctly, all I have to do is "plug & play." Is this correct? Also should I use the SATA4 port or the EZ_RAID1 port? To be honest, I'd stay as far away from the EZ_RAID ports as possible unless you have no other choice. rant In RAID-0 mode (which should give you performance) they don't really perform all that well, although they do let you combine space from two disks). In RAID-1 mode (which should give you redundancy) there is no monitoring, so at some point both drives will fail and you'll still lose your data. Based on this rather poor implementation, I flat out don't trust them. /rant I'm honestly not sure if you can use just a single drive on the EZ_RAID ports or not, I'd guess that "probably yes" is the answer, although you'll definitely lose SMART capabilities. If you have another SATA port available, I'd just use that instead and not worry about it. Myself, I bought a PCI-E 8-port SATA RAID controller use that for everything but boot, but going that route is most likely overkill for your needs. |
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Re-detect PM-HDD
Since I use two SATA HDs configured as a raid in the SATA1 & SATA3
ports and the SATA4 port is right next to them, is the SATA4 port one that I can use? It's not clear how the SATA1, SATA3 and SATA4 ports are related. It's confusing that this motherboard doesn't have a SATA2 for some reason. |
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Re-detect PM-HDD
You are quite correct on that. I documented my harddrives (HD) by
their model number and serial number then matching them to their assigned drive letter. That's how I identified the HD that failed to appear in Windows Vista. The HD clearly showed up in the BIOS when I was booting up, so I figured that the issue must be with Vista. Going though a diagnosis was such a headache that I decided to try a system recovery. In fact, I decided to include a few digits of the HD's serial number in the HD's name and the partition's name when it shows up next to the drive letter in Windows explorer. This way when I have multiple HDs in my system, I can identify where my data has be stored. Now my issue is how I can have two SATA HDs in a RAID configuration and two other SATA HDs in a non-raid configuration. This starts with finding out which ports to plug them into. If someone can answer this or give me a link to instructions on how to do this, I would appreciate it. Thank for your participation, PC |
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Re-detect PM-HDD
Hi, PC.
Always assign a name, or label, to each volume (primary partition or logical drive) on your HDDs. Disk Management lets us do this in the Properties screen. Like you, I have a 2-disk RAID 1 mirror plus 2 non-RAID drives, one Maxtor and 3 Seagates, all SATA II. The RAID mirror is for my data volumes - sort of an automatic backup, although my really important data is on a separate backup outside the computer. This is my first RAID, so I don't know much about them. Mine lets me know when the two mirrors don't match, a boot-up message in RED tells me that the RAID is "degraded". At first I panicked at this and replaced the brand-new "bad" second drive, but then I learned that the error message disappears on its own after the RAID has had time to rebuild and resynchronize the mirror. Since I do some beta testing, several volumes hold different versions or builds of WinXP, Vista and Win7, and I often delete a volume and reformat it for a new OS. (My nice orderly first C:, then D:, then E:... pattern got hopelessly scrambled years ago.) But "Win7x64" always has the same name, even if I one OS sees it as Drive F: and another as Drive X:, or if those letters change tomorrow. I don't know if it matters which SATA port is used for which HDD. My 2-year-old mobo is an EPoX MF570sli, and has 6 onboard SATA II ports, plus a couple of so-far-unused eSATA. EPoX has since gone out of business, but this is my 3rd EPoX mobo and it is still performing very well. Its onboard NVIDIA nForce RAID controller is what I'm using. RC -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX Microsoft Windows MVP Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100 "PC User" wrote in message ... You are quite correct on that. I documented my harddrives (HD) by their model number and serial number then matching them to their assigned drive letter. That's how I identified the HD that failed to appear in Windows Vista. The HD clearly showed up in the BIOS when I was booting up, so I figured that the issue must be with Vista. Going though a diagnosis was such a headache that I decided to try a system recovery. In fact, I decided to include a few digits of the HD's serial number in the HD's name and the partition's name when it shows up next to the drive letter in Windows explorer. This way when I have multiple HDs in my system, I can identify where my data has be stored. Now my issue is how I can have two SATA HDs in a RAID configuration and two other SATA HDs in a non-raid configuration. This starts with finding out which ports to plug them into. If someone can answer this or give me a link to instructions on how to do this, I would appreciate it. Thank for your participation, PC |