Maximum PC

AMD Athlon 1400
512MB SDRAM
GeForce 2 (AGP)
42 GB Maxor IDE
2x 160GB Samsung SATA drives
Pioneer 16x Dual Layer DVD Burner
SI Sata Controller
3Com 10/100 NIC

XP Pro, SP2

Windows sees the Controller card and I can get into the cards BIOS and tool around with low-level formatting and such on the card. But Windows will not see the drives. I have tried Samsungs website, their software blows. Seagates wont touch the drives. Wester Digitals software let me format each drive. Tried the full 160 gb no luck. So now the drives are set up as 102 gig and 57 gig partitions in that order.

I can tool around with them all I want from the BIOS on the card and DOS, but windows does NOT see them, only the controller card.

Please advise?

Have you tried to use the volume manager to see if the raw drives are listed? It is also known as the disk management snap-in (start --> run type "diskmgmt.msc" <enter>) you should see the drives there and should be able to create a partition by right clicking. Remove the "foreign" partitions that the crappy software created first before using them.

If you don't see any of the sata drives then confirm you have the card drivers loaded under the device manager (start > run > devmgmt.msc <enter>) should be listed under "SCSI and RAID controllers".

The disks will be listed as SCSI under "disk devices" defined as "SI RAID device" or similiar.

I have an ITE8212 device for ATA/IDE disks is very similiar to the SI chip - you can try windows update under hardware updates, worked for mine if not then to the manufacturer site to get the driver.

The onboard IDE raid shows up, as well as the SI controller in the device manager, but NO drives. They don't show up in the disk managment at all. I tried windows update, and apparently I have the newests driver. I will try again... but I am getting quite frustraited.

Samsungs website blows...

What mobo are you using?

Asus A7V

http://usa.asus.com/mb/socketa/a7v/overview.htm

I was about to put a hole in my apartment wall lastnight. no matter what I did those stupid drives would NOT show up. I even limited them to 137 gb and nothing.

Everything else works FLAWLESSLY. Although, when I try to create the RAID set from the controller's BIOS it lets me go through all of the options, but never really creates the RAID set (as when I try to go in later and delete it, just to see if it took, it says that there isnt one.)

I really hate Asus- The server is currently unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try one of these alternate ASUS support sites.

I went there looking to see what Bios they offerred or downloads just in case. Oh well.


Next, I googled, I found someone else that has the same problem on an Abit, be he never posted back. I also found this if you read down to Installation and Performance:- *note-


I then found this, which gives a few tips.

Post the model # of the SI card. May be able to dig something up that way. I'm also wondering if it's an XP sp2 incompatability?

Sata Controller

Syba's Site

SYBA PCI 4-Channel Serial-ATA controller card With RAID model SD-SATA-4P Retail

Model# SD-SATA-4P
Item # N82E16815124020

The card is currently in the middle PCI slot. Windows recognizes it fine and it says it is good for all versions of windows (except for 2003 server, even though it showed the controller card when installed under server).

I can load the cards bios, which is odd, but it doesnt seem to work correctly. There is also an icon in the control pannel for the card, but you can't do anything with-in it. I might try loading 2000 tonight, but I don't think that is a problem. I tried the drivers from the website (SI site), from windows update, and the cd that came with the card. The ones from the website were actually not compatable.

I'll come back to this once I'm done painting moulding.

To me, it reminds me of a freshly installed HD that hasn't been formatted, you know how you can see it but can't? Have you tried right clicking my computer, select manage, going into disk management & trying to make it a logical drive or formatting with Windows?

Do the drives have master / slave settings?

No, the only time the jumpers are used on the SATA drives are at the factory.

The drives do not show in windows at all, not explorer, device manager, disk management, nada...

I tried loading XP again and loading the drivers... BUT it said it couldnt load them, and I used the drivers from the CD!

::sigh:: I emailed both Syba and Samsung almost the entire contents of this thread, hoping that would be enough to explain the problem.

What I do not understand is I formated the drives... a couple times. although the format took less than 5 seconds with WD disk utility. I downloaded a fresh copy of the one from Samsung and I am going to try it again tonight. It should probably take 10 minutes or so to format those drives eh?

Found Samsungs disk manager... and it was able to format the drives as well, (and looked identical to WD and Seagates utilities).

Still no luck with getting windows to see the drives. I do NOT think it is a controller issue... it has to be a problem with the hard drives... but I do not understand how it can be viewed in the BIOS area, and NOT in winwdows... that makes no sense... so it cant be a hardware problem then? It HAS to be software?

My thought was that some how maybe your board doesn't support it or that you needed to update something before it worked. I also wonder about an SP2 incompatability. Have you checked MS to make sure all of them are listed to be compatable with sp2?

What are the chances both drives have proiblems?

don't rip your hair out yet, it will get figured out.

Exactly what are you doing to confirm if they're being seen in windows or not??

I am wondering if you have an IRQ conflict, after reading about the scsi boot order thing...
In your manual <download link>, section 3.7.2 has a very cool chart of each PCI slot and what IRQ is shared. here is a summary:

slot 1 & AGP
slot 2 & Promise 100
slot 3 & onboard audio
slot 4 & slot 5 & onboard USB

So if you are in the middle slot (3) try disabling your on-board sound. You could also disable both COM and LPT ports to see if that helps. Make sure all the IRQs and DMAs are not excluded for legacy devices ("no / ICU" option in BIOS) and if you are not using the Promise 100 IDE connectors (tertiary and quadinary IDE channels lol) why not disable it. Disable the USB as well since it is the only thing left unless you have the on-board scsi or the modem riser.

Hope it works for you!

Drives do not show in Explorer, Device Manager, or Disk Managment

It was in slot 2, but I had the promise 100 disabled.... hmm..

I moved it to slot 3, and my board doesnt have onboard audio. It should be disabled anyway.

Correction, it is a A7V133 (makes little difference, they are basically the same board) I tried to update the bios, but it seems that it is already the most current.

I will report back in a few, re-installing Win2003 as I downloaded the newest drivers from SI and it supports 2003 server.

and you're saying the promise card is showing as working too??

I'm with whoever said this is IRQ conflict...but I would add, this may be better defined as a resource condlict...meaning not necessarily IRQ.

I seem to remember a firmware update of the card solved some things like this with certain boards (namely VIA), although I'd be unsure if yours requires this.

Nothing is on the Promise controller though. I have again disabled it in the device manager.

Disabled parallel port (caused 2K3 to throw an error on loading the parallel driver, duh... lol) checked all of the IRQ/DMAs, all set to no / ICU

The Promise board is disabled in the bios....

I have a bios update for the card from SI, I am going to look into that... i am afraid of toasting the card though.

My Bios revision on the mobo is 1007 I believe, which is the most current version for that board.


EDIT:

::sigh::

NO luck, disabled COM ports...

I am wondering if my controller is just bunk? It is hard to tell either way, but something would have to have given by now. With the way everybody talked about it in the reviews, it seemed pretty straight forward. Maybe after work tomorrow I will swing by best buy and make use of their 30 day return policy to see if a different card will work. If I like it, i can always keep it and RMA the Syba card... or I can take it back, RMA the Syba card for a working one. I dont think it is a conflict, becuase there just arent any that I can find. I will take some screen shots and post them before I head to bed here in the next few minutes.

Sorry..I meant to say SI...

...the firmware was something I remembered from a similar problem a while ago. I would suspect that there might be a similar issue here...although probably not correctable by a firmware update.

You are saying that you have the Raid disabled, which is good. If it wasn't, I'd put money down that's where you conflict is coming from.

Things i've done in the past with add-on cards, have been installing the VIA stuff first, physically installing the card, then the drivers.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v729/ ... SERVER.jpg

I am not sure... I don't think it is a conflict. I might try removing the card (and drivers) and then re-install the card tomorrow. But I think it is going to be at trip to Best Buy to see what card they have and see if that works. I think they carry Adaptec products... so we shall see?

<-- EDIT -->
Bleh, this Best Buy doesnt have the card... go figure. Anyway, i am going to travel to CompUSA tonight and try another card from them. I was hoping to not have to go that far (even though it really isnt that far away)

w00t!!!!!!!!!!!! I went on a 2.5 hour journy to a Best Buy that actually carried an adaptect controller card... I bought it... installed the drivers (which oddly enough were not digitally signed by windows as Syba's were) and magically the drives appeared!

Weird, I was signed up for notifications of this post but haven't gotten any.

Glad you got it working. Now I'll wonder why it didn't work in the 1st place.