Promise SATA300 TX4 issues...

[orintyie]

Just purchased two of these and both are giving me the same problem so I'm sure its a configuration issue but not sure where. Trying to communicate with Promise but that has been fruitful.

I get the following message when booting up with a drive plugged in:
Warning - The BIOS does not find proper hardware configuration, Please check your system again!

If no drive is there just says no device can be find and moves on. From the research I've done there are mentions of changing a setting in my system BIOS but haven't found any on the specific setting I should look for. When snooping through my BIOS I found nothing that could help me.

The computer is a old Compaq hardware running Windows Server 2003. Hoping to get the BIOS updated this week to see if that helps. Plugged the same card in to my desktop running WinXP though and the same thing happens with an updated BIOS. Again haven't found anything in the BIOS that would help.

 

[saltynay]

Just curious as to why you want the change to sata???

 

[orintyie]

Bought an eight-bay SATA enclosure with two MultiLane plugs on the backs (one per four drives). Those get plugged in to a MultiLane bracket which internally gets plugged into the two SATA controllers.

Enclosure I bought can swapped the drives out with no trays which is great and provides me the ability to now mirror my two 500 GB videos, my two 160 GB data drives, and then a fifth bay I back up to and swap the drive out on a schedule so that I can have off-site back up. Still leaving me with three bays to grow in to incase I want to ever up my RAID level.

 

[saltynay]

good it is a valid reason, thought you may just be upgrading because you thought ide was rubbish when it isn't, just the wires are thicker so slow down airflow within the case. Pci SATA cards do tend to cripple performance compared to onboard chips, perhaps using a different card and sending back the TX4 would be better most retailers allow you to return a product if its only 14 days with you no questions asked. Sorry not to give you a specialised answer but I have not had experience with that exact model.

 

[orintyie]

I hope I don't need to. Got these particular cards because they are the same exact ones a friend is using in a similar setup. If no one else here has any ideas by have to though.

 

[saltynay]

:s have you tried swapping them over to his system to see if its a card error??? did you include drivers for your windows install?

 

[orintyie]

No drivers needed during installation. The OS and system is running on IDE drives. Both cards have been used in two different computers with the same result. From what I can find I'm pretty sure its a BIOS setting some where. My friend running these same cards mentioned this and will be back from vacation Monday so if I don't get it resolved over the weekend I'll pick his brain on this.

Thanks for the ides.