can i have 3 HDs?

[carpeliam]

I'm running WinXP, with a motherboard with on-board RAID (Gigabyte GA-7DXR). it has 4 EIDE slots. there is a jumper on the motherboard to turn RAID on or off; i'm pretty sure it's set to off right now (that is, if i'm not looking at it upside down). on IDE1 I have two hard drives (one set to master and one set to slave); on IDE2 I have a CDRW and a DVDROM; on IDE3 I have one HD (set to slave). I thought it would recognize all three HDs in windows, but it only recognizes what's on IDE1.

Is there any way to get it to recognize all three HDs?

Liam Morley
lmorley@wpi.edu
"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.
light the world, and bring depth to the silence."

 

[southside]

If you want to use the Raid ports you need a minimum of 2 drives. If you want an extra single drive the best option will be to give up the DVD-Rom or go SCSI where a number of different drives can be added. You are limited to 4 drives on the IDE chain.

 

[paparazi]

It depends on model features but my older Gigabyte
GA7-VAXP was setup in exactly the same way and recognised the single drive on the raid.
This motherboard did have the option in the bios to switch between raid a normal ATA (use as either raid or ATA) so it could be used exactly as stated.
Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[Janc]

You sould have one master on every IDE-channel. If you switch the jumper on drive#3 to master, you should be up and running.

 

[carpeliam]

So I switched my third HD's jumpers to master, but it still wasn't recognized. I tried putting my cdroms on IDE3, in which case it recognized my single HD on IDE2, but the cdroms didn't show up. I'm running out of combinations to try. any other suggestions? <p>Liam Morley<br><A HREF="mailto:"></A><br>&quot;light the deep, and bring silence to the world.<br>light the world, and bring depth to the silence.&quot;

 

[danomac]

Silly question: did you install the drivers for the RAID chipset from the motherboard CD?

Windows won't recognize any devices on the RAID chipset if this isn't done.

I have a 7VAXP and once I installed the drivers, Windows recognized devices just fine.

D

 

[cdogg]

Here's my guess:
IDE3 and IDE4 are only active when RAID is active. That's because with RAID, you can have an extensive array such as 4 drives in RAID 0.

If you're not familiar with RAID, then that might not be the solution for you. Instead, you might want to look into purchasing a PCI IDE controller which will effectively give you one or two additional active IDE controllers in Windows. Then you can move your CDRW and DVDROM drives over to it freeing up your IDE2 controller on your mobo.

~cdogg
[tab]&quot;All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind&quot;
[tab][tab]- Aristotle

 

[jsauce]

If you want to be able to use more HDs but don't want to remove anything or activate RAID, go out and buy a PCI ATA EIDE expansion card. It will allow you to add up to 4 more EIDE devices.

John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator

 

[cdogg]

jsauce,
Perhaps we posted at the same time, but from my last post:

&quot;[blue]you might want to look into purchasing a PCI IDE controller which will effectively give you one or two additional active IDE controllers[/blue]&quot;

 

[jsauce]

Yeah sorry my bad, I didn't see it. We might have posted close to the sametime. In any case its good advice from both of us.

John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator

 

[carpeliam]

fixed it- turns out that the writing on the motherboard is upside-down, which means my jumper was the opposite of what it's supposed to be. it's fixed now, and all 3 drives are recognized. (i just wish it didn't have to inspect/autodetect the other IDEs every time as there's never a change, but ah well, what can you do.) <p>Liam Morley<br><A HREF="mailto:"></A><br>&quot;light the deep, and bring silence to the world.<br>light the world, and bring depth to the silence.&quot;