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WARNING - Dual Bios & GIGAraid ITE Problems 8KNXP
Hello to all
Thought I might share my very unpleasant experience with thso looking at this board as it might help you to avoid the many long hours of frustration I had with this mobo. My main reasons for buying this board was to use the onboard ITE IDE RAID and the dual bios function. Both do not work properly so I will probably scrap thsi baord and buy something else, possibly the Aopen A4C Max. I have just spent a week setting up this board with an existing Promise RAID 0+1 from my old system onto this board. Lets say along the way trying to get the system to work I managed to screw up the first board and I am now onto the second board. This was mainly to try and get the blue screen stop errors on the ntfs.sys to stop occurring. The onboard ITE IDE RAID controller in my opinion is a dud. I mainly bought this board as I had 4 WD 80GB 8MB 7200 drives for my previous RAID which are IDE and wanted to keep using them. This was one of the few boards that had a RAID 0+1 IDE controller. I now regret buying this board and I am seriously thinking of changing to something else. I am now using it with my original Promise PCI Fasttrak TX2 RAID controller with version 33 bios and 34 driver under Windows XP Pro which so far is quite stable. I have many years experience with PC's and must say I think this board needs some serious BIOS work and driver upgrades if it is going to be useful. The Dual Bios managed to fail, again one of the main reasons for buying this board. The old version had a jumper on the board so you could force it to use the backup BIOS but this one uses software after the pre-BIOS boot. The BIOS EPROM's are also surface mounted so cannot be removed for easy reflashing via an external provider so the board became unbootable after I flashed to version f6e which was mentioned here and thought might fix some of the instability problems. The BIOS failed at the prepost so I could not get into the BIOS to use the software to boot from the good backup or take the chips out and swap them so basically the board was screwed. Whoever thought that idea up certainly did not take all the possibilites into account. I noticed the Aopen A4C Max has two socketed BIOS chips with a jumper on the board to force the system to boot from the backup. Regards Mark |
#2
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Ive used the backup bios feature. Have had no prob booting off either main or backup bios. Main bios is f5 backup bios is f6e.I used in bios flashing utility to flash main bios to f6e. Ive got 2x seagate 160 gig sata drives in raid 0. Been great here. Havnt tried ide raid. Stable board here.
Ken Ken "Mark Taylor" wrote in message ... Hello to all Thought I might share my very unpleasant experience with thso looking at this board as it might help you to avoid the many long hours of frustration I had with this mobo. My main reasons for buying this board was to use the onboard ITE IDE RAID and the dual bios function. Both do not work properly so I will probably scrap thsi baord and buy something else, possibly the Aopen A4C Max. I have just spent a week setting up this board with an existing Promise RAID 0+1 from my old system onto this board. Lets say along the way trying to get the system to work I managed to screw up the first board and I am now onto the second board. This was mainly to try and get the blue screen stop errors on the ntfs.sys to stop occurring. The onboard ITE IDE RAID controller in my opinion is a dud. I mainly bought this board as I had 4 WD 80GB 8MB 7200 drives for my previous RAID which are IDE and wanted to keep using them. This was one of the few boards that had a RAID 0+1 IDE controller. I now regret buying this board and I am seriously thinking of changing to something else. I am now using it with my original Promise PCI Fasttrak TX2 RAID controller with version 33 bios and 34 driver under Windows XP Pro which so far is quite stable. I have many years experience with PC's and must say I think this board needs some serious BIOS work and driver upgrades if it is going to be useful. The Dual Bios managed to fail, again one of the main reasons for buying this board. The old version had a jumper on the board so you could force it to use the backup BIOS but this one uses software after the pre-BIOS boot. The BIOS EPROM's are also surface mounted so cannot be removed for easy reflashing via an external provider so the board became unbootable after I flashed to version f6e which was mentioned here and thought might fix some of the instability problems. The BIOS failed at the prepost so I could not get into the BIOS to use the software to boot from the good backup or take the chips out and swap them so basically the board was screwed. Whoever thought that idea up certainly did not take all the possibilites into account. I noticed the Aopen A4C Max has two socketed BIOS chips with a jumper on the board to force the system to boot from the backup. Regards Mark |
#3
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Hi Mark,
I may be wrong, but........ Am I right in guessing that you transferred an existing array from a Promise RAID controller to the ITE RAID controller on this new motherboard? Did you wipe the drives and re-create a NEW array from scratch? - AFAIK, There's no guarantee that an existing array will still work after moving it to a different controller chipset. I have also heard that in some cases, even a simple upgrade of a RAID controller's BIOS can sometimes render any existing arrays unusable. Did you do a clean install of Windows XP? - Again, usually a very good idea when changing the motherboard, especially when changing hard drive controllers. An existing install of XP will usually refuse to boot if the hard drive controller setup has been changed. Another thing, even on motherboards that use an onboard Promise RAID controller, the driver for the onboard Promise RAID is different to the one used for a PCI card Promise RAID controller. The PCI card RAID driver will not work for the onboard RAID chip, and vice-versa. I'm guessing that if you re-created the array from scratch and did a clean re-install of Windows using the ITE RAID drivers, that you probably wouldn't have had any problems. My apologies if I'm barking up the wrong tree with the above..... Regarding the Dual-Bios problem, I myself have been wondering about the effectiveness of the Gigabyte software based Dual-BIOS function. How is the Bios software going to determine that it is corrupt, if the Bios itself is so totally screwed up that the board can't boot at all. The Dual-Bios routines must be part of the Boot-Block BIOS that is normally not overwritten during a flash upgrade. I'm guessing that your upgrade flash must have somehow overwritten and corrupted the Boot-block portion of the Bios as well. I would have thought that a non-flashable fail-safe copy of the original shipping BIOS that is selected by a jumper might be better. That said, I have been exclusively using Dual-Bios Gigabyte boards for a few years now and haven't had a problem with it. On the few occasions that it has been needed, it has so far always managed to load the backup BIOS and rescue the board. John S. "Mark Taylor" wrote in message ... Hello to all Thought I might share my very unpleasant experience with thso looking at this board as it might help you to avoid the many long hours of frustration I had with this mobo. My main reasons for buying this board was to use the onboard ITE IDE RAID and the dual bios function. Both do not work properly so I will probably scrap thsi baord and buy something else, possibly the Aopen A4C Max. I have just spent a week setting up this board with an existing Promise RAID 0+1 from my old system onto this board. Lets say along the way trying to get the system to work I managed to screw up the first board and I am now onto the second board. This was mainly to try and get the blue screen stop errors on the ntfs.sys to stop occurring. The onboard ITE IDE RAID controller in my opinion is a dud. I mainly bought this board as I had 4 WD 80GB 8MB 7200 drives for my previous RAID which are IDE and wanted to keep using them. This was one of the few boards that had a RAID 0+1 IDE controller. I now regret buying this board and I am seriously thinking of changing to something else. I am now using it with my original Promise PCI Fasttrak TX2 RAID controller with version 33 bios and 34 driver under Windows XP Pro which so far is quite stable. I have many years experience with PC's and must say I think this board needs some serious BIOS work and driver upgrades if it is going to be useful. The Dual Bios managed to fail, again one of the main reasons for buying this board. The old version had a jumper on the board so you could force it to use the backup BIOS but this one uses software after the pre-BIOS boot. The BIOS EPROM's are also surface mounted so cannot be removed for easy reflashing via an external provider so the board became unbootable after I flashed to version f6e which was mentioned here and thought might fix some of the instability problems. The BIOS failed at the prepost so I could not get into the BIOS to use the software to boot from the good backup or take the chips out and swap them so basically the board was screwed. Whoever thought that idea up certainly did not take all the possibilites into account. I noticed the Aopen A4C Max has two socketed BIOS chips with a jumper on the board to force the system to boot from the backup. Regards Mark |
#4
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If what Muttley says is at least in part correct - that you have replaced
the m/b on an existing Windows XP system, at the very least you should run a repair so that XP setup will run throught the motions of re-detecting and configuring all h.w. Then install all drivers + updated drivers from the CD that came with the m/b, then - regardless - put XP SP 1 in (if you already had it in) just to be safe. Then recreate your raid array. I have read on one hand that raid configs are 'ubiquitous', interchangeable, bla bla bla. On the other hand I have read repeatedly 'this bios upgrade may break your raid configuration'. Don't believe either until 2010. Best option. fdisk the lot and start again - if you can. To run a repair for XP, insert the CD, run setup and follow the instructions - you don't want to go into the recovery console, it is the other option. Tim. "Muttley" wrote in message ... Hi Mark, I may be wrong, but........ Am I right in guessing that you transferred an existing array from a Promise RAID controller to the ITE RAID controller on this new motherboard? Did you wipe the drives and re-create a NEW array from scratch? - AFAIK, There's no guarantee that an existing array will still work after moving it to a different controller chipset. I have also heard that in some cases, even a simple upgrade of a RAID controller's BIOS can sometimes render any existing arrays unusable. Did you do a clean install of Windows XP? - Again, usually a very good idea when changing the motherboard, especially when changing hard drive controllers. An existing install of XP will usually refuse to boot if the hard drive controller setup has been changed. Another thing, even on motherboards that use an onboard Promise RAID controller, the driver for the onboard Promise RAID is different to the one used for a PCI card Promise RAID controller. The PCI card RAID driver will not work for the onboard RAID chip, and vice-versa. I'm guessing that if you re-created the array from scratch and did a clean re-install of Windows using the ITE RAID drivers, that you probably wouldn't have had any problems. My apologies if I'm barking up the wrong tree with the above..... Regarding the Dual-Bios problem, I myself have been wondering about the effectiveness of the Gigabyte software based Dual-BIOS function. How is the Bios software going to determine that it is corrupt, if the Bios itself is so totally screwed up that the board can't boot at all. The Dual-Bios routines must be part of the Boot-Block BIOS that is normally not overwritten during a flash upgrade. I'm guessing that your upgrade flash must have somehow overwritten and corrupted the Boot-block portion of the Bios as well. I would have thought that a non-flashable fail-safe copy of the original shipping BIOS that is selected by a jumper might be better. That said, I have been exclusively using Dual-Bios Gigabyte boards for a few years now and haven't had a problem with it. On the few occasions that it has been needed, it has so far always managed to load the backup BIOS and rescue the board. John S. "Mark Taylor" wrote in message ... Hello to all Thought I might share my very unpleasant experience with thso looking at this board as it might help you to avoid the many long hours of frustration I had with this mobo. My main reasons for buying this board was to use the onboard ITE IDE RAID and the dual bios function. Both do not work properly so I will probably scrap thsi baord and buy something else, possibly the Aopen A4C Max. I have just spent a week setting up this board with an existing Promise RAID 0+1 from my old system onto this board. Lets say along the way trying to get the system to work I managed to screw up the first board and I am now onto the second board. This was mainly to try and get the blue screen stop errors on the ntfs.sys to stop occurring. The onboard ITE IDE RAID controller in my opinion is a dud. I mainly bought this board as I had 4 WD 80GB 8MB 7200 drives for my previous RAID which are IDE and wanted to keep using them. This was one of the few boards that had a RAID 0+1 IDE controller. I now regret buying this board and I am seriously thinking of changing to something else. I am now using it with my original Promise PCI Fasttrak TX2 RAID controller with version 33 bios and 34 driver under Windows XP Pro which so far is quite stable. I have many years experience with PC's and must say I think this board needs some serious BIOS work and driver upgrades if it is going to be useful. The Dual Bios managed to fail, again one of the main reasons for buying this board. The old version had a jumper on the board so you could force it to use the backup BIOS but this one uses software after the pre-BIOS boot. The BIOS EPROM's are also surface mounted so cannot be removed for easy reflashing via an external provider so the board became unbootable after I flashed to version f6e which was mentioned here and thought might fix some of the instability problems. The BIOS failed at the prepost so I could not get into the BIOS to use the software to boot from the good backup or take the chips out and swap them so basically the board was screwed. Whoever thought that idea up certainly did not take all the possibilites into account. I noticed the Aopen A4C Max has two socketed BIOS chips with a jumper on the board to force the system to boot from the backup. Regards Mark |
#5
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I totally agree with you guys. When I upgraded my motherboard from an
Asus P4B533-E to the Gigabyte GA-8KNXP, I had to recreate my RAID and then reinstall WindowsXP. This new motherboard didn't even see my Promise array, and said the hard drives were "raw" - meaning they didn't have anything on them. Luckily I backed up my info prior to the upgrade in hardware. When you think about it, it actually makes sense. Why would a Promise RAID work on a Silicon Image or Intel RAID controller? It's just like DVD burners at present (DVD+RW or DVD-RW) - they both do the same job, and do fall under a DVD standard of some kind, but they are not compatible with each other (not 100% anyway). AFAIK, there is no RAID standard in that respect (they are not interchangable with other manufacturers). I wish there was a standard, like IDE, but you can only pray that the new controller will see your existing RAID. I wouldn't be surprised if a standard does appear over the next few years, since RAID is becoming more prominent in homes now - not just for businesses anymore. If what Muttley says is at least in part correct - that you have replaced the m/b on an existing Windows XP system, at the very least you should run a repair so that XP setup will run throught the motions of re-detecting and configuring all h.w. Then install all drivers + updated drivers from the CD that came with the m/b, then - regardless - put XP SP 1 in (if you already had it in) just to be safe. Then recreate your raid array. I have read on one hand that raid configs are 'ubiquitous', interchangeable, bla bla bla. On the other hand I have read repeatedly 'this bios upgrade may break your raid configuration'. Don't believe either until 2010. Best option. fdisk the lot and start again - if you can. To run a repair for XP, insert the CD, run setup and follow the instructions - you don't want to go into the recovery console, it is the other option. Tim. "Muttley" wrote in message .. . Hi Mark, I may be wrong, but........ Am I right in guessing that you transferred an existing array from a Promise RAID controller to the ITE RAID controller on this new motherboard? Did you wipe the drives and re-create a NEW array from scratch? - AFAIK, There's no guarantee that an existing array will still work after moving it to a different controller chipset. I have also heard that in some cases, even a simple upgrade of a RAID controller's BIOS can sometimes render any existing arrays unusable. Did you do a clean install of Windows XP? - Again, usually a very good idea when changing the motherboard, especially when changing hard drive controllers. An existing install of XP will usually refuse to boot if the hard drive controller setup has been changed. Another thing, even on motherboards that use an onboard Promise RAID controller, the driver for the onboard Promise RAID is different to the one used for a PCI card Promise RAID controller. The PCI card RAID driver will not work for the onboard RAID chip, and vice-versa. I'm guessing that if you re-created the array from scratch and did a clean re-install of Windows using the ITE RAID drivers, that you probably wouldn't have had any problems. My apologies if I'm barking up the wrong tree with the above..... Regarding the Dual-Bios problem, I myself have been wondering about the effectiveness of the Gigabyte software based Dual-BIOS function. How is the Bios software going to determine that it is corrupt, if the Bios itself is so totally screwed up that the board can't boot at all. The Dual-Bios routines must be part of the Boot-Block BIOS that is normally not overwritten during a flash upgrade. I'm guessing that your upgrade flash must have somehow overwritten and corrupted the Boot-block portion of the Bios as well. I would have thought that a non-flashable fail-safe copy of the original shipping BIOS that is selected by a jumper might be better. That said, I have been exclusively using Dual-Bios Gigabyte boards for a few years now and haven't had a problem with it. On the few occasions that it has been needed, it has so far always managed to load the backup BIOS and rescue the board. John S. "Mark Taylor" wrote in message ... Hello to all Thought I might share my very unpleasant experience with thso looking at this board as it might help you to avoid the many long hours of frustration I had with this mobo. My main reasons for buying this board was to use the onboard ITE IDE RAID and the dual bios function. Both do not work properly so I will probably scrap thsi baord and buy something else, possibly the Aopen A4C Max. I have just spent a week setting up this board with an existing Promise RAID 0+1 from my old system onto this board. Lets say along the way trying to get the system to work I managed to screw up the first board and I am now onto the second board. This was mainly to try and get the blue screen stop errors on the ntfs.sys to stop occurring. The onboard ITE IDE RAID controller in my opinion is a dud. I mainly bought this board as I had 4 WD 80GB 8MB 7200 drives for my previous RAID which are IDE and wanted to keep using them. This was one of the few boards that had a RAID 0+1 IDE controller. I now regret buying this board and I am seriously thinking of changing to something else. I am now using it with my original Promise PCI Fasttrak TX2 RAID controller with version 33 bios and 34 driver under Windows XP Pro which so far is quite stable. I have many years experience with PC's and must say I think this board needs some serious BIOS work and driver upgrades if it is going to be useful. The Dual Bios managed to fail, again one of the main reasons for buying this board. The old version had a jumper on the board so you could force it to use the backup BIOS but this one uses software after the pre-BIOS boot. The BIOS EPROM's are also surface mounted so cannot be removed for easy reflashing via an external provider so the board became unbootable after I flashed to version f6e which was mentioned here and thought might fix some of the instability problems. The BIOS failed at the prepost so I could not get into the BIOS to use the software to boot from the good backup or take the chips out and swap them so basically the board was screwed. Whoever thought that idea up certainly did not take all the possibilites into account. I noticed the Aopen A4C Max has two socketed BIOS chips with a jumper on the board to force the system to boot from the backup. Regards Mark |
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