SATA HDD Question

I'm building a new system using a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 as the main system HDD. My question mainly concerns the initial startup as I haven't any previous experience with SATA equipment. I've heard that when installing a new SATA HDD you are suppose to press f6 or something during windows installation to install the SATA/RAID drivers??
Would the same be true for the very first start up to install windows? Or would the board automatically detect the HDD like it would an IDE drive?

Does a SATA HDD have to be setup in RAID?

Also what is the difference between RAID 0,1, dual RAID setups, I've attempted to read about this, but the explaination has eluded me...

If it helps at all, the board I'm using is an A8V-Deluxe, which has onboard SATA plugs.

Firstly, you can't set up a single drive as a raid array. By definition an array means more than one. However, if you enable the raid controller (rather than just the SATA controller) you may have to go into the raid config utility to tell it that the single drive is present but not part of a raid array.

In general I wouldn't advise home users to even consider a raid setup, for the following reasons:

Raid 0 supposedly allows all drives to be read at the same time, but the actual performance increase this brings is minimal, and the downside of total data loss in the event of a single drive failure means reliability is halved. You can also only move the drives to an identical setup if the board fails and you want to retain the data. Minimum 2 drives.

Raid 1 gives the benefit of much higher reliability by having the same data on more than one drive, but at the cost of an extra drive with no performance benefits. Minimum 2 drives, always in pairs.

Raid 0+1 gives the (small) performance increase with the reliability improvements, but at high cost. Minimum 4 drives, always in pairs.

If you enable the raid controller, you will HAVE to install the controller driver during windows installation. But if you just enable the SATA controller it may appear to windows as an ordinary IDE drive so you may not need a driver; if installation fails try again with the controller driver disk, it shouldn't take more than an extra couple of minutes.

Some boards won't install windows if you try to use the raid controller drivers without enabling the raid controller, so the best option is to try the SATA controller on its own first, with no drivers, if that fails try it with the drivers, if it still fails enable the raid controller and use the drivers.

Did your board come with a floppy containing SATA drivers?
If not, chances are good that you will not need to learn the F6 trick.

Proceed with your install as normal and if Windows can see your disk to format/install, then you're home free.
If you get the message that "Windows was unable to detect a HDD" then you'll have to F6 spoonfeed the SATA driver to it.

Interesting to see if SATA drivers are in the driver.cab of XP 64 bit Edition.

Thank you both for the prompt reply. That was the best explaination I have heard yet Lynx, I thank you greatly.

Nope, the board didn't come with a floppy of drivers, however it does have a CD with the chipset drivers. I doubt that it has the driver that I need.

So the f6 trick has SATA drivers, as well as RAID drivers than?

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Originally Posted by Lynx

But if you just enable the SATA controller it may appear to windows as an ordinary IDE drive so you may not need a driver;

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If it reads as an IDE, would the performance be the same, or slowed down to IDE speeds? And would it interfer with any other IDE device, such as my DVD burner?

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Originally Posted by Damnatory

If it reads as an IDE, would the performance be the same, or slowed down to IDE speeds? And would it interfer with any other IDE device, such as my DVD burner?

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It doesn't default to IDE speed, Windows is being deceived.
If you make it to format screen then you'll only need to load RAID drivers should you desire, but the SATA has already been handled.

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Originally Posted by clocker

It doesn't default to IDE speed, Windows is being deceived.
If you make it to format screen then you'll only need to load RAID drivers should you desire, but the SATA has already been handled.

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Ok, thanks alot!

BTW Clocker, nice setup you built, very similar to the one I'm building.

Sprocket is blushing. :blushing:

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Originally Posted by lynx

Firstly, you can't set up a single drive as a raid array. By definition an array means more than one. However, if you enable the raid controller (rather than just the SATA controller) you may have to go into the raid config utility to tell it that the single drive is present but not part of a raid array.

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That's weird 'cos I just had to set up a striped array with only one disc, 'cos that was the only way this one mobo would recognize the disc.

'twas on a msi kt4 ultra, yesterday. With a seagate 7200.8.

Checked some msi forums, and that was the way you were supposed to do it.

I did try to do it without setting up the array, but windows didn't even find it then. Still working on it though*.

Put another drive just like it on an epox board earlier this week, that one didn't require it to be set up in an array, but the sata controller on that board still required me to install the raid drivers for the controller to work.
These two identical drives did make for some interesting experiments for me as I had never tried setting up a raid array before. Too bad they had to be put in different machines :(

When it comes to raid though, I'm buying a promise controller card if I'm ever setting up something like it again. The via controller on the epox board wasn't half as good, or easy to work with IMO.

Btw, on the epox board the drive was identified as a scsi drive, and on the msi board all I can see from windows is the (currently one disc) raid array.

You might, if your chipset isn't recent enough, have to do the f6 thing to install drivers for the controller, for seagate drives discwizard might also come in handy.

Used the windows version to add the disc on the epox board (take note of the model number before putting the disc in if you are to use that), whereas the msi board had a promise controller and only needed the raid drivers for the drive to work in windows.


Nforce 4 is definitely supposed to have integrated sata support, so you won't need any drivers there, though.




*It works just fine now, but I dunno' how easy it'll be to move over to another machine configured as it is if the owner ever wants to :unsure:

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Originally Posted by SnnY

That's weird 'cos I just had to set up a striped array with only one disc, 'cos that was the only way this one mobo would recognize the disc.

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If you don't want raid, it should be possible to install drives as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks), but that Promise controller is a weird one so I don't know if it is even an option.

If you need the Raid drivers on floppy, follow the instructions in section 5.7 of the manual.http://forum.emule-project.net/html/emoticons/RTFM.gif

Edit: Just re-read the manual myself. You can either use the Via controller (behind the floppy connector) and set the disk use as JBOD; or use the Promise controller and set operation mode to IDE mode.

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By default, the RAID connector is set as RAID. If you want to use it as an independent drive, set the Operation Mode to IDE Mode under the Advanced menu.

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Maybe that answers SnnY's problem too.

I don't think I had either of those options, but thanks for trying to help though.

I had to choose between striped or...striped. Mirrored wouldn't work with only the one drive.



Can't remember for sure now, but I don't think the controller even showed up in windows without having an array set up, and the only way I could get windows to find the drive at all was through the controller.

'tis an old board (relatively speaking) and sata wasn't quite what it is today, so I guess some manufacturers would employ unorthodox solutions back then, since they hadn't learned how to do it yet.


I do like the promise controller better than the via one on the other board though, as the promise controller was a piece of cake to set up (it pretty much configured itself once I let it), less work than the via controller.

The drive works excellently this way, I'm only worried about potential trouble if the owner (my brother) one day wants to move the drive to another system with the files on it intact.

Will a regular sata controller be able to read a drive that has previously been running as striped, even though it is only the one disc?



BTW, sorry for putting this in your thread, damnatory, it was just that that one comment of lynx's caught my attention, and it seemed stupid to start a thread to ask him about a post in this thread.

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Originally Posted by SnnY

BTW, sorry for putting this in your thread, damnatory, it was just that that one comment of lynx's caught my attention, and it seemed stupid to start a thread to ask him about a post in this thread.

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No worries, your problems ultimately end up being solutions to problems I am bound to run into. It was SATA related anyway, all the information I can get the better off I'll be. :p

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Originally Posted by SnnY

'tis an old board (relatively speaking) and sata wasn't quite what it is today, so I guess some manufacturers would employ unorthodox solutions back then, since they hadn't learned how to do it yet.

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Sorry, I assumed you were talking about setting it up with this board (or something like it).

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Originally Posted by SnnY

Will a regular sata controller be able to read a drive that has previously been running as striped, even though it is only the one disc?

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It probably depends on thether the raid controller needed to "prepare" the disk. If it did, then it is unlikely that another SATA controller will read the data. Even if it didn't there is a possibility that it isn't addressing the disk in the standard format. However, another RAID controller may read it, it depends on how much standardisation there is in raid formats these days, but there's no shortage of controllers now.

Edit: there's one thing that's for certain. If he loses his data YOU are going to get it in the neck. :P

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Originally Posted by lynx

Sorry, I assumed you were talking about setting it up with this board (or something like it).

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I started off wondering why I could set it up as a one-disc array at all, on any mobo, 'cos I'd heard the same thing you said before, and you do seem to have tried this a bit more than me. Sorry.

Might be the same thing with the promise controller on the Asus mobo, though.

At any rate this is very informative, so thanks for that.

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It probably depends on thether the raid controller needed to "prepare" the disk. If it did, then it is unlikely that another SATA controller will read the data. Even if it didn't there is a possibility that it isn't addressing the disk in the standard format. However, another RAID controller may read it, it depends on how much standardisation there is in raid formats these days, but there's no shortage of controllers now.

Edit: there's one thing that's for certain. If he loses his data YOU are going to get it in the neck. :P

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Not really, 'cos I told him I wanted to keep on trying another way, but he went and installed stuff on it, and now he won't let me try again 'cos it might spoil his precious data. Even though I told him it might not be good.

I don't think the controller had to write (much?) to, or do anything to the disc, the array was set up in a jiffy, no extra drivers were needed and there was absolutely zero waiting, and as far as I can tell the controller didn't use any space on the disc by itself.

When I activated it in windows however, it told me it was striped and wanted to partition and format it accordingly. So now it's set up as two "simple" partitions on a dynamic disc, whatever the hell that is.

[EDit: It even says the card allows for one-drive striped arrays in the (separate) sata manual for the mobo, so I think this may be the only way it's intended to work (at least I think it says that, bloody furriners is all I'm saying). But it's still odd though.]


Oh and damnatory, in case you missed it, you might want to get the discwizard thing I linked you to from my earlier post, that piece of software might be kinda' useful with the seagate drive in conjunction with the via controller. Just in case windows has trouble with it on its own.