IDE extender and loss of OS

[bonestonne]

ok, i have a Promise Technology ATA/66 Ultra IDE extender, and i was wondering how i could add more hard drives with it. i tried having a second strand of hard drives, but just a master, and when i booted, it said Operating System not found. is there something i have to do to make it so that i could use the card to its full potential, and be able to have 4 HDD's out of it? at the moment, i just plan on running the HDD's off of onboard IDE 1 & 2, and have the DVD+RW drive on the Ultra66, but if i wanted to add 2 more hard drives, how could i do that?

[LLXX]

Make sure you're booting from the drive that contains your OS...

[puntoMX]

Update your BIOS first I would say and see if "boot from add-on card" or so is listed, you have onboard SCSI so i think i will not work if you say "boot from SCSI" but you could give it a try .

btw: you can´t boot fom CD/DVD with that add-on card, it´s only for HDDs...

[bonestonne]

well, i don't want to boot of the CD drive, it'll be running the XP Pro HDD i have in my computer at home, i'll turn that PC into a spare, take out the RAM and give it all to the dual socket.

i'll see if i can update my bios when i get home, but im not sure why it wouldn't recognize the drive at all. it was like it was trying to boot off of it, but it failed to boot from it, saying that it was not supported, or couldnt recognize the bios, something like that.

i'll try it tonight.

[LiquidSage]

That card probably needs drivers for you to see it. If so, to boot off the drive you will need to install an OS using the F6 method or slipstream them into an install CD.

Also, in the bios or in windows the HD order may have changed. Check HD boot order in BIOS and check boot.ini in windows to make sure the right partition is used.

Use a partition manager program to see if the other drives are present. Have you formatted them yet?

If you want to max out your HD's ability you should get an ATA/133 card.

[bonestonne]

i do believe its ATA/133, but i don't have it here to check. when i get my computer running, which may be a while, im at a lack of my second hard drive, which will be the master for it, and mounts for the hard drives, which have been slow coming along, i also need to scare up about 16 L-Brackets for the sides, which i just need to find the time to get them out, i have a ton in a box somewhere.

but at the moment i'm ready to kill someone, because some person, whom i'm unsure of who but can place bets on, has dropped my sound card onto tile floors...while i went through a box of CDs i found 3 more jumpers and 3 DIODES that came right off. on top of that, some pins were bent, and unless i can figure out which diodes went where and replace them, i can't use it for anything. and it was a nice soundcard, with an ATA connector on it...i'd been looking around for one...now i have it, and can't get it fixed because its used with no warrantee....

[LiquidSage]

DO NOT use ata slots on sound card. They have a long history of performance issues and IRQ conflicts. Man... that card is probably ISA type. Your DVD-RW and HD's will not love you for doing that.

It sounds like you are using old PC parts. If so, that ata card probably is ATA/66.

Do yourself a favor and rethink this project. Even current low budget parts will be much faster, more reliable, and less likely to cause conflicts that plagued early P I-III days.

[bonestonne]

well, the sound card is now basically useless, as 4 diodes are off, and i'm still missing 3 jumpers from it...as for what im left with, well...not a whole lot...that custom computer is still gonna be made, but i'm short a power pack that works with it. the smaller one that i had to use doesn't even start, it just makes this faint ticking sound...not the friendliest i've heard.....

i need one with 20 pin ATX and 6 Pin Aux, at least 4 molex, one FDD..thats about all i need, but it can't be much over $20...if i could get one at the dump i'd be so happy...my only problem is being short one hard drive...i've got a 40 GB to use for it, but i want the 60+ that im supposed to get...i need it soon. this computer is going to triple boot XP/Linux/Darwin, but thats only if my darwin works....if not i'm stuck dual booting...but i don't want to, so i'll be testing it on a maxtor first to see if it works, because i don't want to mess this drive up...i've messed enough drives up, but i don't want to repeat that much more..

the ATA PCI card i have will just run the DVD drive, i don't want to go off the mobo if i can avoid it, because i want to have plenty of room to have hard drives...in enough time this computer will just have 4 hard drives, and no ODD's because it'll just boot OS's, the other computer i'm slowly building is going to do editing, and only boot XP Pro...but until i get a power pack for it, im stuck...600W seems too much, not only that, but my case can't fit that...guh. life.