Trying to run an IDE drive from a RAID port

[sandraj]

I am trying to add a 3rd IDE harddrive to my Asus A7V8X motherboard (w/Athlon XP 2000+, 1.5 Gb) via the RAID port, but WinXp (Pro) is not recognizing it correctly. Before I made any changes, I had a WD IDE 120 Gb (master) and a WD IDE 80 Gb drive (slave) on the primary IDE port. I also have a CD-RW (master) & DVD-RW (slave) on the secondary IDE port.

I disconnected the 80 Gb drive (which contains backup data) and installed a new WD IDE 160 Gb drive in it's place (it works fine). What I want to do is connect the 80 Gb drive through the RAID port (as an IDE drive) so I can transfer all of the data to the new backup drive (160 Gb). I have the 80 Gb drive connected to the black (master) connector on the IDE cable that came with the new drive, and the jumper is in the CS position (although I have tried it without the jumper, and with the jumper in the master position). I ended up installing the RAID driver because Device Manager showed the RAID controller with an "!" with the "no driver installed" message. So, device manager sees the RAID controller as "WinXP Promise FastTrak 376 controller." Device manager DOES see the 3rd harddrive, BUT doesn't know what size it is and thinks it's a "SCSI disk drive."

According to the Asus manual, I should be able to connect additional IDE devices through the RAID port (however, it doesn't show "how"). The manual states "by default, the drives you connect to the PRI_RAID connector follow the ATA 133/100/66/33 protocol as independent drives, not as a disk array." So doesn't that imply I should be able to plug it in and it will default as an IDE drive? I read another post that you should be able to set the RAID port to IDE (or auto) in the BIOS, but I wasn't able to find anything in the BIOS to configure the RAID port.

I've also read that I might be able to configure a single disk RAID array in order to access the 3rd drive. I am not at all familiar with how RAID works...my primary concern is the fact that this drive contains data -- would I be able to do this without harming (reformatting) the drive?

If anyone has any suggestions, I would GREATLY appreciate your assistance.
Thanks!
Sandy

[docrichards]

I don't know about your particular mboard, but I have a Soyo that has the same capabilities. On my board there is a switch in the bios that turns on or off the raid function allowing it to act as a regular IDE port. It is very well hidden in the bios menu, so I would suggest that this is where you need to start to look. You also might try looking at the online mboard manual on the asus website. might be more help.

docrichards