crowcuss wrote:
I have Asus A7V266-E MB and am running Windows XP service pack 3. The board has a RAID controller chip from Promise technology which I hadn't used until now. I was trying to install RAID 1 with two new hard drives but they idenitfied as 128 gB. I flashed the MB BIOS from floppy which allowed the MB to see the drives as 150gB but the raid controller still read them as 131. I downloaded the RAID and Ultra 100 updates for the Promise controller but Windows said they were not an improvement for the drivers already in use. I forced Windows to load these drivers anyway in spite of Windows warning that they were not signed off by MS. With the new ASUS drivers the RAID controller still reads the drives as 131 gb. When switched to RAID; Windows will not boot, but hangs and restarts. I hoped the ASUS program could do better, but I can't use it unless maybe I shut down Norton and reinstall the program.
That is a really old motherboard and BIOS -- the latter sounds like mine on my K8N mobo which also is build 1011 ....
The problem may be that you have hit the old ATA protocol limit. This limits the maximum hard drive size to 137 GB. To get over this limit you need 48 bit LBA mode working to be supported...
Check for this in your BIOS Setup (remember that there are gigabytes and gigabytes depending on whether the result is based on 1012 or 1000 .... and the ratio of those two would give just about what you say it sees.
You can download the manual from the Download site for your mobo That is a link to the Taiwan site and not the US one since the latter timed out and even Taiwan is sluggish -- heaven help us on Thursday when everyone and their brother will be trying to download Windows 7 .....
I know that in my K8N bios there is a setting for the 48 bit LBA but don't know exactly what they call it or where it is located and I can't look now because I'm writing this on that PC.
Or it may just be that the Promise controller does not handle the larger size drives. You do have a XP Service Pack beyond SP1 which is also necessary.
If all else fails it's new PC time or at least a new motherboard, CPU and memory also probably -- at least you have the two new drives!
Let me know if that helps.
You might want to check the Promise website
For example this page there:
http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productID=11&category=all&os=100
which I found by googling on the Promise controller description on the ASUS download page without the versions number does refer to specific BIOS version numbers and says you need a specific WIndows driver (which might be what the SP1 brings)
I also came across this message while googling:
If I am not mistaken, the bios for the Promise Controller is built in to the bios for the mobo.
Check here as it has been the most informative site I have used when dealing with the ASUS A7V:
www.a7vtroubleshooting.com
You can find just about every BIOS file made for that board and then some other modified ones.
Bighead, everything is correct as you posted. You have installed DRIVER version build 18, and your promise bios shows build 43. Bios version 1011 for the mobo comes with promise bios build 43, which is independent of the driver you use. Check out the site I posted since it seems that most people are having better luck with promise bios build 35, which can only be attained if you use bios 1009. Sorry if this is confusing but the site will clear things up for you. Just check out the BIOS pages.
I don't know if that makes any sense and I'm not sufficiently technical in this sphere to say but it may give you something to follow up.
Check that your BIOS is uptodate and the the 48 LBA is set to ON/Enabled and see what happens
If not solved then perhaps try the Promise downloads but that's at your risk!
Message Edited by huwyngr on 10-20-2009 01:24 PM
Hugh
