Sil 0680 – HDD controller

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Welcome to the Lounge!

Please specify how your IDE drives are attached (to the same controller or to different controllers) and which jumper setting (Master/Slave/CS/Standalone) is on each drive. If you have IDE CD/DVD drive connected also, please specify the same for this drive.

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The 60 Gb HD is jumpered down to 32 Gb (the bios limitation) set to master to run off the board’s IDE1, with a 10 Gb HD (unrecognised) set to slave hooked up to Primary on the Sil 0680. I’ve tried switching them to the Controller as Primary master/slave; Primary master, Secondary slave; even the full combo of masters on Primary/Secondary, then slaves on Primary/Secondary. If I boot into them from the CDROM doing a fresh install then Windows (and Debian (2.4 kernel) – see my desperation!) sees the lot. But when I change the bios order to boot from SCSI … they’re gone. BTW I have the latest drivers (v. 1.2.26.0). Phew, eh?

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Robert,
>>>The 60 Gb HD is jumpered down to 32 Gb

How did you accomplish that?

What am I missing here?
Why not just format and partition it to the max BIOS limit and then partition the rest as a logical secondary drive?

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Robert,
Where does the SCSI come into the equation?

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Apologies to you all ….I haven’t explained very well.
My bios won’t accept a HDD above 37Gb, so I’m running the 60Gb drive as a 32Gb master (the drive has jumper settings to allow this) because at least then I’ve got a working OS to play with (XP Pro). If I then attach my 10Gb HDD (in any permutation) the board’s bios (I assume) doesn’t see it and the Sil 0680’s own bios isn’t getting around that. The card is supposed to overcome such bios limitations and that’s why I bought it.
As for the SCSI setting; I read somewhere that if I pointed the board bios to the card by using the SCSI as boot then everything would be solved. It isn’t, and it wasn’t when the boot order was the normal C – and there’s only the usual settings in the list anyway.
In reply to your question, KaplinB, I don’t hook up the CDROm to the Controller, it runs from the board’s Secondary IDE as master.
At least I can save money on a ticket to Wit’s End, eh?

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Sorry, I did not understand your computer configuration. I thought that your motherboard does not have IDE controllers, that’s why you must use RAID adapter.
If you do not use RAID (in other words, use RAID0), why did you install RAID adapter?
Anyway, did you try to connect second hard drive (10 GB) as slave to the same controller (ribbon cable) where your CD-ROM is?

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Kaplin B
Yep, tried tying the 10 Gb as slave but not recognised. Maybe mistakenly, I installed an IDE controller containing its own bios to get around the onboard bios limitation on HDD size. (See http://www.spcug.org/reviews/bl0107.htm%5B/url%5D and other such sites/forums).Can’t even get as far as setting Raid0.
There are no settings in the bios (or I don’t understand which ones) to switch over to the card’s bios. Have even disabled bios detection of HHDs with the same negative result – drives not seen.

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What can I say…

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Ah well, many thanks for trying. ‘Fraid the manual is a bit sparse on the non-RAID setup. I thought it was meant to be as simple as plugging it in. If I crack it I’ll post the solution (or my oversight) here.
Thanks to you all.

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FYI, RAID0 is a striped array, which requires (at least) 2 disks on that controller, which you don’t appear to have.
I am now completely confused as to your setup! You have jumpered one HD down to comply with the BIOS limitation; I’m OK with that. Given that your second HD is only 10GB, why can’t you just plug it in? The BIOS limitation is per HD, not in total.
Also, have you checked to ensure that the manufacturer of your motherboard does not have a BIOS update which would allow it to see larger disks? [Edit: just noticed you mentioned up to date BIOS in the first post, so ignore this!]

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Your close questionings and combined incredulity did the trick. If I didn’t get it and you didn’t get it …. So, I borrowed Occam’s Razor and cut a path to the local computer fair. I’ve installed an ITE IT8182 as a replacement IDE/RAID controller and lo and behold! Now I have my two disks powering along. Might also take up the suggestion to stripe them (RAID 0), or span the two drives, neither of which had been in my initial plan. Knew there was a reason for dropping by the Lounge. Regards to all.

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Glad you got it sorted out! I wouldn’t bother with the RAID setup unless you have a particular requirement for it – it’s just one more thing to go wrong (trying to install an OS onto a RAID array can be very trying, believe me!)

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