SATA Drives and IDE?

[Superslinky]

Hi, I need some help with this setup. I have a Asus P4G800 mainboard and (2) S-ATA Seagate Barracuda 160gb drives. What I want to do is set up a server and have the drives be identical. Here is one of the problems, I can't seem to get the DVDRom to be seen when connected to either of the IDE ports. Also, I'm not sure on how to "see" both drives. I finally got the bios setup up so that when I put in a boot disk and than ran fdisk it did recognize one drive for sure but since I have it set up as a raid then did it fdisk both drives? I just need some help here and I'm not quite sure what direction to go. I am not a novice when it comes to any other type of system, I've just never worked with these types of drives and being fairly new, I can't seem to find the help I need. Thanks in advance to any that can help.

[glc]

Why are you using a bootdisk? 2K and XP install and do all drive prep from booting with the CD, fdisk is no longer used. You will need to press F6 when prompted right at the beginning to install the raid drivers from a floppy.

If your optical drive is not being seen, check the cable, jumpering, and bios settings.

[crjdriver]

From your post I gather that you want raid 1 [mirroring] as glc pointed out fdisk is no longer used. First connect the drives, and then you will enter the raid bios [not system bios] and create the array. Once the array is created, boot with the xp/win2k cd [cd set as first boot device] setup will partition and format the array for you. Note you will need to load the drivers for your sata by pressing F6 during the first part of setup [when you see the message to press F6] since you want the drives to be identical, I am assuming that you want mirroring. These are 160 gig drives so your array will be 160 in raid 1; 320 gig if you used raid 0 [stripe].

[Superslinky]

Hey guys, thanks a lot. Crjdriver, you are right as to what I am trying to accomplish. I have already ran fdisk on the drive, will that hurt anything? I just found that I need to load the raid drivers from floppy but how do I enter the raid bios and set up the array? Better yet, do you know where I can find a "how to" article so I don't have to keep bugging you guys. As of right now, I just got the CDRom to work and my drives are being detected and they are set to raid. Now, since a disk didn't come with my drives, do I need to go to Seagate website to download them and in doing that will that allow me to enter the raid bios? Thanks guys, I really appriciate this help!!!

[glc]

No, the driver you need is for the *controller* - it will be on the motherboard CD and must be copied to a floppy. The raid bios is part of the motherboard bios.

[Superslinky]

So when I check out the bios, I will find the raid bios settings in there? I have installed the raid drivers but after I had windows 2000 server installed. I'm trying to make this (I beleive) a raid1 system and to my knowledge that would make a mirror of the drive? I need a "how to" or step by step procedure for this. Apparently, I'm not very good with this type of setup. My mainboard is a Asus P4G800, I have (2) Seagate 160 sata hd's and I want them to be mirrored. I am also going to be using Win2003 Server instead of Win2000 Server. It also tells me something about "no drives connected to fasttrack. No bios installed" What does that mean? Guys, pleeeeease help!

[diver203_98]

Superslinky,

Are you, by any chance, refering to:
Promise Technologies Fasttrack S150 SX4 SATA Raid 5 adapter? When you say "no drives connected to fasttrack?

This is just a thought, and something that might help someone who knows more than I do about this matter.

www.promise.com is the link for this card.

[Superslinky]

No this is an on-board raid controller. I have no idea what I'm doing, I need to start from scratch and try to find a tutorial. the only thing I'm sure of is that I want to be able to use mirroring and I have 2 Seagate 160Gb SATA drive connected to an Asus P4G800 Deluxe MB and will eventually be using Win2003 Server.