P4C800E Deluxe Promise Controller?

[davex1]

yea i was hoping for the best. can you tell me why i was able to get in and rebuild without losing anything at first and now i cant. the book says control f is there some other way.

[davex1]

gotta run promised the family a movie.

[Skyhawk]

Originally Posted by PCBruiser

It supports either single drives or raid configurations. You just have to use the correct drivers - the single drive and raid ones are different.

Hello PCBruiser,

I have a P4C800E Deluxe mobo running two 120GB in non RAID off the Intel SATA ports. I'm going to install a 300GB SATA drive on one of the Promise SATA ports. If I just install the 300GB drive will WinXP Pro automatically load the single drive driver or do I have to download it from the Asus web site?

Thanks,
Skyhawk

[JoeBar]

Originally Posted by Skyhawk

Hello PCBruiser,

I have a P4C800E Deluxe mobo running two 120GB in non RAID off the Intel SATA ports. I'm going to install a 300GB SATA drive on one of the Promise SATA ports. If I just install the 300GB drive will WinXP Pro automatically load the single drive driver or do I have to download it from the Asus web site?

Thanks,
Skyhawk

U have to download it from asus site.

[Skyhawk]

Originally Posted by JoeBar

U have to download it from asus site.

I downloaded the following from the Asus site:

Version V1.00.1.30 2003/06/30update
OS Win98SE / WinME / WinNT / Win2K / WinXP
Description Promise FastTrak 378 ATA Driver V1.00.1.30
Promise FastTrak 378 ATA Driver V1.00.1.30 for Windows NT4.0/98/ME/2000/XP
File Size 961.07 (KBytes)
File name: 378ATA100130.zip

Unzipped the file but could not find instructions on how to install the driver. The file unzipped to several folders for various operating systems. The WinXP folder contains the following files:

ptipbm.dll
ULSATA.CAT
UlSata.inf
ulsata.sys
vssver.scc

What should I do to install the driver?

Thanks,
Skyhawk

[PCBruiser]

Right click on the .inf file, and choose Install in the context menu. If that doesn't work (it doesn't with some drivers), go up a folder level or two until you find a file called setup.exe, and run that.

[Skyhawk]

Originally Posted by PCBruiser

Right click on the .inf file, and choose Install in the context menu. If that doesn't work (it doesn't with some drivers), go up a folder level or two until you find a file called setup.exe, and run that.

PCBruiser,

There is no setup.exe or install.exe so I hope the right click .inf files works.

Thanks for the help,
Skyhawk

[feddup]

It's been a while but their used to be zipped versions of the IDE and raid drivers for the promise on the Asus site. When unzipped each driver, I believe, will have a makedisk utility that you click on and it will generate a floppy. For some strange reason XP "finds a raid controller" (sucks if you want IDE). If you want IDE insert the IDE driver and direct P to it. If this is on an OS install "press F6 for third party drivers" blah blah.

[Skyhawk]

Originally Posted by feddup

It's been a while but their used to be zipped versions of the IDE and raid drivers for the promise on the Asus site. When unzipped each driver, I believe, will have a makedisk utility that you click on and it will generate a floppy. For some strange reason XP "finds a raid controller" (sucks if you want IDE). If you want IDE insert the IDE driver and direct P to it. If this is on an OS install "press F6 for third party drivers" blah blah.

Yup, your memory is pretty good. Unzipping does have a makedisk utility that generates a floppy. I ran it but the data that ends up on the floppy is the same thing that is in the unzipped folder. As if one had dragged the data from the folder to the floppy. No setup or install exe files on the floppy either.

Thanks,
Skyhawk

[Skyhawk]

PCBruiser and JoeBar,

I got my new 300GB sata drive working on the P4C800E's Promise controller thanks to your advice. To help anyone else who might want to run 3 SATA drives in non RAID configuration, the following might be helpful:

I already had two 120GB sata drives on the Intel controller in non-raid. I installed the new 300GB sata drive on the upper Promise sata connector (the one closest to the intel sata connectors).

In BIOS, enabled the Promise sata controller (was disabled) and changed the "RAID" selection to "IDE". On boot up the BIOS searched the Promise controller and found the new 300GB hdd. WinXP Pro found new hardware and I followed the prompts to install from a specific location which loaded the the promise driver that you pointed me to. It said the driver is not approved for WinXP but I installed it anyway.

In WinXP Pro, went to CONTROL PANEL > ADMISISTRATIVE TOOLS > COMPUTER MANAGEMENT > DISK MANAGEMENT and the 300GB drive was shown in the right window pane but was blank. Went through a series of right clicks on that drive and partitioned it as extended, assigned the drive letter, and a through format is in progress now.

Thanks for all the help,
Skyhawk

[Skyhawk]

Originally Posted by Skyhawk

PCBruiser and JoeBar,

I got my new 300GB sata drive working on the P4C800E's Promise controller thanks to your advice. To help anyone else who might want to run 3 SATA drives in non RAID configuration, the following might be helpful: ..... snip ..... Went through a series of right clicks on that drive and partitioned it as extended, assigned the drive letter, and a through format is in progress now.

I just noticed that the hard drive led is not flashing while the new 300GB hard drive is being formatted. Is there a way to get the led to show hdd activity when using the Promise controller? Mobo is the P4C800E Deluxe.

[my260bullfrogs]

i use the promise with one hd and it says promise 1+0 stripe/raid0 scsi disk .
i use it for backup
disk management says layout is simple typ dynamic file system is ntfs status heathy capacity at 232.88 gb

[CarlPo]

Originally Posted by my260bullfrogs

i use the promise with one hd and it says promise 1+0 stripe/raid0 scsi disk .
i use it for backup
disk management says layout is simple typ dynamic file system is ntfs status heathy capacity at 232.88 gb

my260bullfrogs, I had exactly the same results when I used the Promise RAID driver instead of the Promise ATA driver. The drive still worked fine on the RAID driver but I since switched to the Promise ATA driver.

[Dollar_abx]

I'm trying to install a 3rd SATA drive in a non-raid configuration and followed the suggestions in this thread. Plugged the drive into the upper Promise Sata raid connector and enabled the promise controller in ide mode. However, my system does not seem to see the promise controller.

Manually add the driver - add hardware...have disk...pick the UISata.inf from the Asus disk... pick WinXP Promise SATA378 IDE Controller.

Now device manager states: "This device cannot start (Code 10)". I've installed driver version 1.0.0.26. I don't see any promise drivers on the asus site. Is there a later version?

I'm running bios v1016.

Any suggestions?

[Skyhawk]

Originally Posted by Dollar

I'm trying to install a 3rd SATA drive in a non-raid configuration and followed the suggestions in this thread. Plugged the drive into the upper Promise Sata raid connector and enabled the promise controller in ide mode. However, my system does not seem to see the promise controller.

You need to see the Promise driver being loaded during the BIOS boot. During the black screen boot, right after the usual boot text scrolls, my system says something like paraphrasing "Searching for Promise Drivers ........." or something like that. It searches for about 2 seconds and then my hard drive type is displayed on screen for about a second and then the screen blacks out and then the blue Windows screen displays. If you're not seeing this, then I doubt that the drive will work in WinXP.

I downloaded the Promise driver from the Asus web site. It is named 378ATA100130.zip and is 939KB in size. Maybe try searching the Asus site using that name. The readme.txt file when I unzip says 1.0.0.26 so I believe it is the same version that you already have. But if you did not download yours from the Asus web site then I would delete it and get the one from the Asus web site to be sure it is not corrupt.

BTW, I'm running WinXP Pro with SP2 installed. Are you running a P4C800E Deluxe mobo? Is your WinXP (Home or Pro?) updated with SP2?

EDIT: Opps, SP2 is not required. On hind site I have a triple boot system. Boot-1 has WinXP Pro with SP2. Boot-2 and Boot-3 have WinXP Pro with SP1. All 3 boots work great with the 3rd SATA drive on the Promise controller.

Skyhawk