okay, i wanted to add a scsi hard drive to my computer, and my motherboard lacked the required hook-ups. so, based on recommendations from this site, i picked up this lil' goodie: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-102-014&depa=1 i followed the instructions in the quick start guide exactly. i installed the card, started the compie, and when the "new hardware found" window came up, i had it install the drivers from the floppy disk that came with the card. then i turned off the computer, and hooked up my current ide hard drive to the connection on the card, and started it. it lists a few details, something like "master ide enabled", upon startup, then the screen goes black and the underline-cursor flashes forever. never gets any further than that. so, i have played with the boot order a little bit (unsuccessful). currently, the hard drive is hooked back up as it was, and i'm stuck. is the card defective? did i screw up? i really wanted this to work, and if i have to return it to newegg i need to do it in a few days, so please help. thanks, all.
Hiya, First things first: The card you have is NOT a scsi card, it is a multi-purpose (S)ATA card... Your second problem is: Windows does not understand the controller card (no driver loaded at boot). When your pc boots it searches for bootable media, normally found on a hard drive. When bootable media is found the initial bootsectors are loaded which then vector to the relevant driver to continue the boot and load the windows environment. When you first installed windows you did so while the drive was connected to the standard controller on the motherboard, hence the detection phase wrote the standard IDE controller into the boot sequence. Now you have moved your hard drive to the pci controller. So, when the PC boots, it may find the boot sector (or may not). If it does find the bootsector, it then loads the code and attempts to execute it. As a result it expects to find the drive on the standard controller, but it cannot, therefore it hangs.... If you want to use hard drive bootable from the pci controller it will mean a re-install of Windows using the F6 option (add a mass storage controller). With that option the controller card driver is added as part of the boot sequence. Now I know you are going to say "but I have already put the driver into windows!!!!!" That may be so, but windows drivers are not initialised until the initial boot sequence has completed, and that sequence NEEDS the driver to complete. You can watch the progress with Windows 2000 - the white bar moving from left to right on the bottom of the screen BEFORE the pretty graphics load. This is not so easy with XP as the load sequence is in a different order - the pretty screen comes up quicker to give the impression of faster loading. The card is not faulty, it is just that your CURRENT installation of Windows does not have the correct initial driver installed. A re-install is the only RELIABLE way of achieving that. An important note: Installation from a restore set (as opposed to a real Windows disk) WILL NOT WORK, as the restore set is set-up to ONLY support installation to a standard controller and DOES NOT give the option of using F6 to install additional controllers. If you don't want to go down the re-install route, or you have a restore set, then you can use the card to add drives as data drives, you will not be able to boot from them though - you will have to keep your boot drive on the standard controller for that. Once Windows has initialised, it will load the Windows driver for the card and the drives will then be available. P.S. That is an EXPENSIVE card bearing in mind it only supports 2 SATA and NO RAID!! I am in the U.K. (expensive for most things) and I can buy an ATA raid controller for less than $27 http://www.dabs.com/uk/Search2/Product+Details.htm?quicklinx=21L1&searchphrase=raid controller or a SATA raid controller for less than $32 http://www.dabs.com/uk/Search2/Product+Details.htm?quicklinx=2PNS&searchphrase=raid controller Both cards support raid and non-raid configurations. This kind of stuff should be cheaper in the states. Hope this helps. _X_X_X_X_X_[small]Life is just more of the same:[/small]
thanks, that clears a lot up. i kinda go off on the wrong foot, eh? lol. just to make sure: so unless i want to reinstall windows, i can't boot from this card? however, when i get a SATA drive soon, i should be able to basically just hook it up to the card, and use it from that point? if that's so, can i use Norton Ghost or such-and-such to copy my original hard drive's data to the new one, and boot from the new one that way? with the new drive, the old one i'm using now will simply become a back-up drive. thanks again. p.s.: yeah, i meant "sata" when i said "scsi". my vocabulary has been failing me today. i seriously think it's because of all the Sharpie's i was around just about 2 hours ago. i feel really light-headed, lol. bedtime soon, however. _X_X_X_X_X_[small]if only i was half wolf... Antec SOHO II Server Case w/ 400w psu AMD Athlon 2600+ & Seagate 80GB HDD Windows XP and a few other goodies[/small]
That card is NOT A SCSI card, it is SATA - a big difference... As a data disk, yes, but you will not be able to boot from it without re-installing. NO. Ghost will duplicate your drive and you will have the same problem, no driver support.. If you want to boot from a drive connected to that card you MUST RE-INSTALL. Please read my first post again, it is explained there. Have Fun...
oh, one other thing: what's the "f6 option"? i'm not familiar with it, as my computer came with xp installed and i never had to reinstall it (i suppose that's relevent?). also, the instructions that came with the card say that it can be used with an existing windows xp installation. but it still can't be booted from that, correct? please forgive my ignorance. this type of computer-related material is relatively new to me. _X_X_X_X_X_[small]if only i was half wolf... Antec SOHO II Server Case w/ 400w psu AMD Athlon 2600+ & Seagate 80GB HDD Windows XP and a few other goodies[/small]
Microsoft Knowledgebase Entry: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;220845 That is correct, but not bootable unless you install as per the article above. Have Fun...
thanks, drchips. lol, again, sorry for sounding like such an idiot. i still blame those goddamn sharpies.
No worries, A tip for the Sharpies fumes... Smoke some weed then the Sharpies fumes won't affect you. !LOL!
*does the old china-man voice* waan mooorre ting: one i've installed xp on the new hard drive hooked up to the pci card, can i simply copy all the contents of my C drive over? will that screw up the drivers too? i'd really hate to burn all the contents of my hard drive to disk to transfer them. that'd bite, lol.
The old 2 harddrive trick eh? That's how I fix alot of virus crashes, or is it a patch crash? At any rate, I reinstall the 2nd drives OS, whichever, and presuming the file systems are the same, can then selectively copy the data that belongs on drive 1. I wouldn't try to copy the entire contents, *.*, but just do searches for *.txt or *.mp3 or whatever files you're looking for. It won't screw up the drivers until you start copying them into your system folders, something I don't recommend. If you have to copy the contents, put them in a special folder where you can reference them (search) later. Another handy feature is switching the 'boot device' in your cmos. This way you can have 2 (or more) bootable environments on 1 computer. Why, that's exactly how I hide my win98 banking environment from the world, it's on a harddrive with a different controller, and the drivers are not installed in this environement so it doesn't even see it! I like that. Restart and switch the boot device, and it comes up in win98 and I have all my confidential banking. Since win98 doesn't run NTFS, it can't even see the win2k drives, or any NTFS drive for that fact. Multiboot computers are alot of fun, and hard to crash. Hope that helps.
