ATA100 + ABIT KT7 RAID + 2 Maxtors in RAID0

[[PhoeniX] 0]

Hello

 

I have a real problem with my system, so lets see if someone of you

could help me

 

I've bought two new Maxtor [40.0GB 5T040H4 U/DMA100 7200u/min] drives,

since I have that HPT370 RAID controller on-board (BIOS v1.0.3b), I decided to strip those drivers (RAID0). I have used two 80-wires IDE-cables, so they are both MASTER. Of course the newest ABIT KT7 BIOS is installed (dated: 11th May 2001) ...

 

Sounds good doesn't it?

 

Well, it all WORKS, WHEN I set ATA66/DMA4 in that HPT370 BIOS ...

I can install Win2000 Prof. and do whatever I want ...

 

When I set BOTH drives to ATA100/DMA5 (still stripped) it will refuse

booting the OS, right after that screen where it shows all that IRQs, drives, RAM, CPU whatever ... So that menu where I could choose between WinME/Win2000 for example wouldn't appear ...

But I can see that it loads something from the HDDs, just 1-2 seconds long...

 

I have played around with my system, like connecting those 2 drives on ONE 80-wires cable (Master+Slave) and used that Maxtor Utility where you can change DMA mode for you hard disk (which I am not sure really worked since it seems supposed for some other Maxtor hard disks, but it said: "DMA Mode 5 set").

 

That all didn't work, and when booting each time I saw _sometimes_ the OS trying to boot, the Win2000 Boot-menu appeared! (sometimes),

well but thats it, after pressing Enter it ****ed up, sometimes just stopped, sometimes, showed some strange error messages or whatever.

It never showed me that colored Windows 2000 logo-screen with the blue satus bar...

 

So I decided to reinstall all that, btw I have used FDISK and FAT32:

C: 4 GB, D: 4 GB, E: 68 GB - that all worked, and I have succesfully formatted them (that seems working using ATA66 AND ATA100), but as soon as I try to install Win2000 Prof. (using newest HPT370 drivers on installation startup) it copies all that files etc. and then it wants to reboot - same **** happens, it won't boot, not using ATA100!

 

Well so all I can do now, is setting both drives to ATA66/DMA4, what I really don't want, since those stripped hard disks are fast enough to reach more than 66 MB/s in my opinion ...

 

I can't say if the Maxtor drive will work non-stripped, since I don't want to loose all my data ...

 

I wonder which DMA mode Windows 2000 is running them, shouldn't be higher than I set in the RAID Controller BIOS?

 

Any ideas what I could do to fix that, or how I could figure out which DMA mode Windows 2000 is running them? That's all somehow wired... And btw. my USB doesn't work as well, at least not the attached device, but that's again another story

 

 

Bah that's a long post hehe

 

many thanks and regards [PhoeniX]

[ThC 129 0]

Well try the latest USB filter driver from VIAhardware for USB. Also are you using W2k SP2? I know there are issues with UDMA 100 and Non-SP2 releases of w2k. Im sure if you sent me your HD and mobo I could get it working though on return the merchandise might have to be 'misplaced' try those and see if that helps any.

[[PhoeniX] 0]

Heya,

 

I doubt you would get it working hehe

 

Yes I am running SP2 (german btw.), thats not the problem in my eyes... Since it doesn't matter much what OS I install, it refuses to boot like WinME too, it won't come as far to load drivers and stuff, freezes before Just right before the logo-screen, as I said.

 

I hope this new HPT370 RAID BIOS (v1.11.0402) will help, but I can't install it yet, since its released only for PCI Cards, and I need to wait when ABIT includes it into their BIOS ...

 

However, my USB problem seems really fixed, wooohooo This time I managed to install them properly. However VIAUSB.SYS which is contained in the USB Filter 1.08 Installation (in Win2k folder) won't

be copied to one of the WinNT system directory, I tried it not once,

which I don't care much since its working now, but I wonder why

 

 

Btw., my system isn't overclocked at all.

 

thanx & bye