ASUS A7V Bios does not detect C drive

[mike wood]

I always wonder why my drives are seemingly invisible. I tried running reset configuration in the BIOS, but it still "sees" nothing. have I got them hooked up wrong? They are a new western digital 20g 7200, and a year old IBM 12g 7200. Jumpers correctly set.

the board has two spots for them, Ultra ATA100 IDE and IDE (primary and secondary for each)

They are at the Ultra ATA 100 IDE spots.

Thanks,

Mike

[canit]

I don't have an A7V so maybe a member with one will answer soon and with more precise help but in the meantime is your pc running master on ATA66? Did you install the drivers for the ATA100 controller? Did you go into your bios and set your IDE(primary master/slave, secondary master/slave, and ATA100) to auto? If your hard disk type is not matched or listed, you can use manual to define your own drive type manually. If you select manual enter the information provided with the drive from the vendor/manufacturer.

[This message has been edited by canit (edited 12-07-2000).]

[thxmanu]

More than likely, the ATA/100 controller is defined as SCSI in the BIOS. The drives won't show up in the IDE section unless they are attached to the standard IDE controllers.

[otheos]

drives hooked at the ATA100 connectors are detected during the second screen of booting when the Promise BIOS loads. They will not show up anywhere in the normal BIOS. Do they show up in windows?

What BIOS do you use?

[mike wood]

I just used the bios that came with the board; I'll have to check for the number. I installed the promise comtroller, and all the other stuff that came on the CD with the board. I have the BIOS set on auto, default.

The drives are at the Ultra ATA spot, not IDE. IS there a preformance hit at IDE?

Would IDE be better? The floppy shows up there in BIOS, and the CD-ROM. I know those can be seen after the second screen appears, anyway. They do appear when I open "My Computer" after booting also.

Thanks for sharing your knowlege!

mike

[mike wood]

ChriSB:

Could you tell me the boot settings you use in the SCSI? Also, do I understand that you had better results with your HDD on the upper, IDE spot? You don't have it at the ATA 100 spot. Better performance. Is this the case?

Thanks,

mike

[peddler]

Hi,
Had the same problem when I bought my new board.
Asus A7V
T-Bird 900
2 – 20G Maxtor (7200)

When I used the ATA 100 connectors, SiSoft recorded lower HD bench scores than the IDE connectors. Ended up using the Primary in the ATA100 for one drive (secondary ATA100 empty) and my other drive in the IDE connector as primary. My CD writer and cdrom went in the secondary IDE connector.

The benchmark increased from 16600 to 20049 with this setup. Of course, the Promise drivers need to be loaded.
Paul

[mike wood]

So, you have your C down below in the ATA primary, and your D above at the IDE primary, with the CD next to it as secondary?

If I have this right, let me know to confirm.

I'm a novice and a bit nervous about making mistakes!

Thanks,

mike

[peddler]

Hi Mike,

Ok, I just changed things a little and it still works well.

Using the ribbon cable you got from Asus with the blue ends on it…connect one end to the ATA100 connector (primary) on your MB and plug the connector at the other end of the same cable into your main HD (set to master...this will be C). Connect your other HD (set to slave)to the connector that is midway in the cable and this will be D.

Your cdrom and CD burner can be connected to the IDE primary connector using the ribbon cable with the black ends, one being master and the other being slave.

If you have the Promise drivers installed, it will work.

Paul

[This message has been edited by peddler (edited 12-07-2000).]

[This message has been edited by peddler (edited 12-07-2000).]

[chrisB]

I have the same board and had the same problem. you have to enable the scsi bios and set the boot options. the scsi bios enable is on a different screen in cmos...however, when i got it to boot using the ata100 with my maxtor 10 gig 7200rpm the benchmarks in sysoft sandra were considerably lower than the eide controller.
i was 16200 with eide and 9600 with ata100. running a 750 duron on the a7v with 128mb of cas3 pc133 ram
good luck

[mike wood]

Thanks to all who posted replies. I will experiment with the changes.

Much appreciated,

mike

[mike wood]

Hey, I tried experimentally hooking up my HDD drive cable to IDE, and it booted very slowly. Seems to work though.

So it seems the general feeling is that The "Ultra ATA100" is the best spot for the drives. My promise controllers were loaded from the disk that came with the board.Oh, maybe I should be SURE that the DMA is selected in that! Will installing again on top of it be ok?

IS the fact that the harddrives do not appear in the BIOS a problem in any way?

Like, when you try to set the boot order, under HDD, ther is "none"!

It does boot faster at the ATA100, that is for sure though. When set up at the IDE plugin, the BIOS looks for the ATA stuff for a while when first booting, the cursor doing a little dance, then says "Ultra ATA Bios not loading, no drives detected". It hangs for 2 minutes at the final screen before the desktop.

For some reason, I'm still not sure what it all means, but I thank you for the advice.

mike

[peddler]

Mike,
If you have the drives hooked up “correctly”, you will not see the “Ultra ATA Bios not loading, no drives detected” on the startup. This message will disappear if things are right. You may need to reload the Promise drivers. You are correct in that you will see “none” for hd detected in the bios when the ATA 100 is working correctly.

Paul