HELP installing RAID array

[mighty bonobo]

Hi,

I am currently struggling trying to enable RAID 01 on my compaq presario 5725 running windows 2000. I installed a silicon image 680 RAID card and am trying to set up the raid thru its bios. The problem is that the raid bios does not appear during startup. I have updated the firmware on the card and the drivers (and there are no errors in the hardware manager). I tried changing the startup order on the computer thru the compaq bios but the computer only provides me the option of changing the order from floppy, cd drive, and hard drive. There is another screen for PCI IRQ but I am not sure what that does. Has anyone had any luck with this issue?

Might Bonobo

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

What do the instructions say about getting into the RAID bios?

Do you see the Raid controller in the dev manager?

And not to be insulting at all, but are you sure its a Raid card and not just an ATA 133 controller card? cuz I see the 680 can also just be a controller (non raid) card.

JP

[John Prophet]

Also...this page may be of some help... http://12.24.47.40/display/2/index.a...=2&r=0.7983972

Is the card a certain brand or is it actually a SIS brand? Cuz they always say on the sis site "sis doesnt make cards, we only make chipsets" etc

Ok, and see this one http://12.24.47.40/display/2/index.a...=2&r=0.7983972 about booting into the raid bios....it says set it to cdrom first? anyway..see if this helps...it looks to be describing a fresh install but will probably help you either way

JP

Ok, and one other possible issue, which I think I have seen before...is that the card says it needs PCI 2.2 standard.....I see that presario has a slot A motherboard...and its possible it is only pci 2.1....just a possibility that could be an issue

[John Prophet]

ok, sorry, I see those links didnt work....you can just "enter the portal" and search for "680"..thats all I did and u get 3 links from there.

Ill post what the one link said



To create a RAID boot disk (fresh OS installation), do the following:
Once board is installed in an available PCI slot, turn on power.
Set system bios to boot from CD-ROM as first priority boot device.
During boot, press F3 when requested to open the BIOS RAID management utility.
Press F2 to create a RAID set and select F1-F3 depending on the desired RAID set. (stripe=F1, mirror=F2, mirrored-stripe=F3)
For example if a mirrored set is desired, select F2 and select automatic setup.
When "Auto-Rebuild enabled" query is displayed, select Y or yes.
When "Are you sure" query is shown, select "Y".
As soon as the operating system begins to install, the message "Press F6 if you need a third party SCSI or RAID driver" is displayed. Note that you must press F6 at this time. If you fail to do this, you will have to re-install the OS.
Press "S" when RAID driver is requested and insert the floppy disk with the 680 RAID drivers. The OS should locate the driver and state "Silicon Image Ultra-133 ATA RAID controller".
When setup screen returns, press "Enter".
Your PC will now copy installation files and then reboot.
After reboot, create a partition of the desired size when requested. Format using the NTFS file system.
All files will now be copied to the RAID set boot disk.


And this from the t-shooting page



If you have installed the latest drivers, followed the installation instructions and you are still having problems, try your card/setup in another PC with a different brand/model of motherboard. It is entirely possible for a card to work perfectly fine on one motherboard but not another due to variations in layout, core-logic chipset operation, PCI timing, system BIOS, etc.

We have tested our reference design extensively in our labs with many different motherboards with different processors and chipsets and the drivers are Microsoft logo-certified. However, due to the vast number of motherboard manufacturers, designs, models, BIOS versions and layouts, it is impossible to verify operation in every one.

Most times when you have a system hang during boot, or drives are not visible in BIOS and/or the OS, it has to do with an incompatibility between the system and add-in board BIOS. You can download the latest BIOS and flash utility from this website. You may also want to check your motherboard manufacturer’s website to see if there are any system BIOS updates as well.

Comments/Special Instructions:
When updating your card’s BIOS, please read the articles on this support site regarding this process. The SiI0680 does support flash BIOS, but it is up to the card maker to use it. If your card maker is using EPROM BIOS to save cost, the flash utility will not work.

Please note that Silicon Image does not manufacture or sell any storage add-in cards to the retail market. All IDE/RAID cards that are available on the internet or other retailers are manufactured, assembled and sold by third-party board manufacturers. Silicon Image provides these manufacturers with chips, driver & BIOS software, reference designs, and documentation. However, we are not able to guarantee that they will actually follow our recommendations.

[mighty bonobo]

Howdy,

The card does show up on the device manager as a RAID Card (plus I installed the RAID drivers to make sure). The instructions say that at startup the system will pause and say press f3 to enter RAID bios. Unfortunately that instruction does not appear at startup. I have read in other forums, for a different RAID card, that similar issues can be addressed changing the startup order (SCSI should be 1st). I don't have that option in the compaq setup program (bios). Does the PCI IRQ address this at all? By the way, the card is not SIS brand, just has the 680 chip. Thanks for the info.

[Siliconjunkie]

There is a key you have to hit on Compaqs to see the messages. I forget what it is. Try enter or space. I will look on my work PC on monday, on the deskpros and workstations it tells you at boot.

[John Prophet]

dumb question....but have you tried hitting f3 anyway?

Is there an option to boot from "other device"?

Is there a compaq "splash screen" (logo etc)....if that is an issue I think you just hit esc to get rid of the splash screen and see the bios messages (I dont think that is what you are saying though, I think you are seeing the bios messages, just not one for the raid card itself..correct?)

JP

[Siliconjunkie]

YES

"Press ESC To View Option ROMS"

I think, but thats the message. You wont see SCSI,array controller bios messages without doing it.

[mighty bonobo]

Darn.. No luck. The ESC button did not do anything (during and after splash screen). I have also tried F3 with no luck. Unfortunately there is no option to boot from other device. The system literaly lists floppy, CD, and Hard drive. My only option is to change the order among the three items. The only Bios message I see is for my graphics card right at the begining of power up (before splash screen).