Read GPT hard disk on Windows XP

[Dave-H]

Thanks very much @Andalu that's really useful!

Am I right in assuming that the ASMedia cards you refer to don't exist as PCI or PCI-X cards?

I have two PCI-E slots on the motherboard, but they both have graphics cards in them!
This is because of my multi-boot configuration.
One card is for Windows 98 and has no Windows 10 drivers, the other card is for Windows 10 and has no Windows 98 drivers!
I can use both of them in Windows XP.

There is another small slot on the board which Supermicro describe as a 'PCI-U' slot. This is intended for some sort of internal expansion card.
It's also a PCI-E x8 slot, and I'm using it for one of my Silicon Image cards.
Unfortunately the eSATA socket on the card is not physically accessible (I'm only using the SATA port on the card edge to connect my Blu-ray drive).

I might be able to fit an ASMedia card into that slot, but connecting my eSATA disk enclosure would be very difficult without a lot of physical surgery!

Am I also right in assuming that an ASMedia card would have no Windows 98 drivers?
That may not be a real problem, as the Silicon Image card in the PCI-E slot at the moment doesn't have Windows 98 drivers either.
If I'm only using it for the eSATA enclosure and the Blu-ray drive, that's not an issue as I wouldn't expect to use either of them on Windows 98 anyway.

Thanks again for the help!
Cheers, Dave.

[Andalu]

@Dave-H

I don't know if there are any ASM1061 cards in a different format than PCI-Express.

Regarding the driver for the ASMedia card, the oldest version that can be found on the net seems to be 1.1.7.110 for which the accompanying 'readme.txt' file clearly reports that Win98 is not supported. So that solution can't be applied.

You reported that the 3TB GPT disk is correctly recognized in XP by connecting it directly to a sata port on the motherboard (sata cable to sata port).

So what @jaclaz suggested seems to be the best solution: a bracket with an external eSATA port connected internally to the motherboard with a sata cable. This way you could connect your 3.5" HDD box with the eSATA cable to the eSATA port on the bracket without involving the Silicon Image card.

Is this a practicable solution? Or have I misunderstood or skipped some steps?

Edited January 17 by Andalu

[jaclaz]

14 hours ago, Andalu said:

So what @jaclaz suggested seems to be the best solution: a bracket with an external eSATA port connected internally to the motherboard with a sata cable. This way you could connect your 3.5" HDD box with the eSATA cable to the eSATA port on the bracket without involving the Silicon Image card.

Yep, though still we don't know if the issue is there or it is in the controller inside the external case.

Dave-H is known for having in the past managed to find the least compatible to anything external case , JFYI:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/173265-formatting-an-external-drive-using-different-interfaces/

https://msfn.org/board/topic/173642-mkprilog-batch-to-access-a-same-disk-under-two-different-interfaces/

maybe he is trying to set a new record... (besides, he is already the forum champion in "let's find the laptop with the least supported touchpad ever", but that's another story ...)

jaclaz

[Dave-H]

LOL @jaclaz  yes, happy days!

The external enclosure I'm now using thankfully does not have the same problems as the one I was using.
Normal disks work fine on the eSATA connection and the USB connection, with no compatibility issues.

I do now have a cable to connect the enclosure to a port on the motherboard, bypassing the interface card.
It works fine, but of course I'm losing all the hot-plugging advantages of an eSATA connection.
I don't want to have the enclosure powered up all the time, and I used to be able to just power it up and the connection would be recognised and the disk mounted.
Now I have to reboot, which is annoying.
I guess you can't have everything in this world though!

[jaclaz]

Maybe HotSwap would be useful?

http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

jaclaz-

[Dave-H]

Thanks @jaclaz.

I actually already use Hotswap! and have been doing so for many years!
I use it to unmount the drive in the enclosure before I de-power the enclosure.

With a SATA connection instead of an eSATA connection, it does still work to unmount the drive, which is fine.
The problem is with starting to use it, I used to just power it up and the system would mount it.
Now that doesn't happen of course, I have to reboot for the drive to be recognised.

 

[jaclaz]

I thought that using "Scan for hardware changes" would have worked, maybe it depends on the controller or on the OS or on both.

jaclaz

[Dave-H]

I'll give that a try, but I don't hold out much hope.

I do think the problem is almost certainly the Silicon Image driver for the eSATA card.
The Windows 10 driver supports GPT disks of that size connected to the card, the XP driver doesn't.
It's still odd to me that the disk is being seen in Device Manager though.

As there seems to be no driver for XP later than the one I'm using, I guess I'm stuck.
I will have a search for a Vista driver for the card, if there's a chance that can work on XP it might be an answer.

 

[D.Draker]

3 hours ago, Dave-H said:

I will have a search for a Vista driver for the card

Driver Model: Silicon Image SiI 3512 SATALink Controller

Driver Provider: Silicon Image

Version: 1.3.71.1

Version Date: 4/22/2009

Description: Silicon Image Storage software released in April, 2009 Architecture: X86 Classification: Drivers Supported products: Windows 7 / Vista. It also says "5.1" in the inf! Link: https://catalog.s.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/driver/drvs/2013/01/20283760_f5b2c70f014b3eac5f532ba27cd86fddbd8e9bbc.cab   pci\ven_1095&dev_3512&subsys_3512109 LinkL

[Dave-H]

@D.Draker

Thanks, but that is the driver I'm already using.
v1.3.71.1.

@jaclaz

I take it that I'm right in saying that it's the physical size of the disk as a whole which is the problem.
It would make no difference if it was formatted into two partitions which were less than 2TB?

[jaclaz]

It could (or it could not) be.

The disk is seen (directly or indirectly) as SCSI.

There is *something* in the SCSI commands that was limited to 32 bit in older implementations, but no idea if it is connected/applies to your case.

Since the disk is not seen in Disk Manager you may be right, or maybe not, I don't really know.

jaclaz

[Dave-H]

@jaclaz

Thanks again.

I guess the only way to find out is to shrink the existing partition on the disk to 2TB, and see if it's then miraculously seen by XP Disk Management.
I've already transferred my archive onto the single partition, many tens of thousands of files, so I really don't want to re-format it!

I can certainly shrink the partition to below 2TB though, as there isn't 2TB of data there.
If that smaller partition is seen by XP, I can then try making another partition in the now-unallocated space and see if that gets seen as well.

Actually a 2TB partition that can be seen in XP would do fine for me, it doesn't really matter if the other partition can only be seen in Windows 10.

I really, really want this to work as an eSATA connected disk, having a usually unpowered disk enclosure connected directly to the motherboard is an absolute PITA.
Not only physically, in terms of having a lead running out of the case to it, but having to shut down and restart (twice!) every time I want to use it for it to work reliably without corruption.

EDIT: Actually looking back in the thread, I think I already tried a smaller partition on the disk, and that didn't work either. 

[Dixel]

This board has a firmware update available. Could the issue be the reason for such an update?

Silicon Image SiI3512 BIOS v.3.06

https://driverscollection.com/?file_cid=42198874113f2f2009758fd609b

[Dave-H]

Thanks @Dixel but it looks as if the BIOS on my card is already a later version than that, 4.3.53.

 

[Dixel]

3 hours ago, Dave-H said:

Thanks @Dixel but it looks as if the BIOS on my card is already a later version than that, 4.3.53.

 

You're welcome Dave! Despite what the version number says, the BIOS files inside are newer, they are dated as of late 2010. It's some sort of a BIOS update with the same chip, but manufactured by Acer. I extracted the update, it's much newer than yours from 2004.