Re: P4PE - not seeing SATA drives or network card.
- From: Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:34:55 -0500
GS wrote:
Paul wrote:GS wrote:DaveW wrote:The P4PE, which I used to own, is an older motherboard whose BIOS can only recognize up to 137 GB harddrives. Secondly you have to install the motherboard's SATA controller drivers from the motherboard's installation CD before the board will see SATA harddrives.
Is there any way I can find out the exact model of the MB and download the iso or needed programs so that I can enable the SATA? I have no cd with this PC.
p4pe
P4pe2-x
p4pe-bp
p4pe-x
p4pe-x/se
p4pe-x/te
Two different LAN chips were used. One option was
gigabit lan BCM5702. Another was 10/100BT lan BCM4401.
You can look at the board and see which one you got.
Check the white lettering on the motherboard for a
motherboard name. You can also use a utility to try to ID the
board. This is the download page, and you'd type the name in
there, to get to the driver files.
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us
CPUZ is a pretty small program, and will display a name for the motherboard.
There are other utilities as well, but some install more unnecessary
software than others. This program is pretty lightweight.
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
In terms of getting a SATA driver to install, most of this
fine tuning of motherboard name is not necessary. The download
is eventually going to lead to this directory.
ftp://ftp.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/ide/pdc20376/
The small files are three different versions of INF based
driver files. pdc20376_15.zip is 349KB. You would copy the
contents of the "Promise" folder (but not the Promise folder
itself), to a floppy, such that txtsetup.oem was at the top
level of the floppy. That makes the floppy suitable for
pressing F6 during a Windows install, so that you have an
opportunity to install a RAID driver and install the OS on
the SATA disk(s) in a RAID mode.
If you go to Device Manager, you could also use the contents
of that ZIP, to satisfy a driver update operation for the
PDC20376. That would prepare the PDC20376 for the connection
of a data disk (using Lars's recommended fake RAID setup, of
using a single drive and declaring it as some kind of RAID).
You'd shut down, connect the disk, enter the BIOS and press
control-F to enter the Fasttrak BIOS screen, set up the single
disk RAID, save and exit, then boot into Windows and use
Disk Management (in one of the Control Panels) to finish
preparing the disk for data storage.
The other thing in that FTP directory, is the PAM file. It
is larger than the driver files. PAM stands for Promise
Array Management, and is a program that runs in Windows.
You use it for monitoring the status of RAID arrays. For
the operation of a single disk RAID, it would be a pretty
useless program, but you can download it and play with it
anyway.
HTH,
Paul
Thanks - that helps a lot. If I get time over the next day or so I'll try it. I have two identical 250GB SATA drives, ideally I'd like to leave the OS on the 60GB IDE drive, (perhaps also load a linux partition on it) and have the two 250GB drives for data, if I have to arrange these in a RAID array of sorts thats ok too, in fact mirroring the data drive would be a good idea if thats possible. I guess the other factor here though is if this board has a 137GB ceiling for HDD's like Dave said then I am going to have to find another machine for these drives.
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tp/137gb.pdf
"The inaugural SATA interface coincides with ATA-6 and is therefore
equivalent with regards to 48-bit Addressing. SATA devices are ready
to support greater than 137GB at the hardware and BIOS levels. However,
since native operating system ATA device drivers can communicate with
either type of interface, OS limitations may still apply."
So what that tells you, is at the physical interface level, there is
not an issue with the SATA connectors. And Windows shouldn't have a
problem with a RAID controller (SCSI emulation).
Where your P4PE might have had a problem, would be with the
IDE interfaces on the Southbridge. As far as Asus is concerned,
the initial BIOS release 1001 was ready for 48 bit LBA on the P4PE
Southbridge interfaces. (My assumption is this document only
addresses the Southbridge on the board, as there is no detail
given about separate RAID controllers.)
http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/technicaldocuments_content.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&NO=501
Not a problem in any case, as long as you have good backups.
I like to test these theories, by filling the drive or array
with data, until you get past the 137GB point, without the
file system being instantly corrupted. I don't know if there
is a nice status flag that can guarantee there is not going to
be a problem.
Paul
.
- References:
- P4PE - not seeing SATA drives or network card.
- From: GS
- Re: P4PE - not seeing SATA drives or network card.
- From: DaveW
- Re: P4PE - not seeing SATA drives or network card.
- From: GS
- Re: P4PE - not seeing SATA drives or network card.
- From: Paul
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