CD-ROM not detected when using SATA RAID (ASUS M3A78-CM)
I came across a problem with my AMD 780V / SB700 based ASUS M3A78-CM Motherboard today.
With the bios version it shipped with (1201), I set up a RAID-1 (though I'll bet this issue presents its self in RAID-0 or JBOD as well) and once I had the SATA CDROM was no longer detected in BIOS nor would it boot my installation CD.
With the system set to the standard non-RAID SATA configuration the CDROM is detected.
After some reading I found that the motherboard indicates that SATA ports 5 and 6 do not work in the standard SATA mode. But to make matters more annoying, it does happen to specifically state that they do work in SATA or AHCI mode. Well, this appears to be a bad mistake on the technical writer's part. (I reread the sentence five times just to make sure I wasn't crazy)
The opposite is what appears to be true in my testing. RAID ports 5 and 6 works just fine in the standard mode, but RAID can only use ports 1 through 4. So this includes my SATA CDROM which had been sitting on port 6.
Simply move it over two slots and it's fixed! Still I can't say I'm thrilled about this particular "feature" of the motherboard or perhapse, chipset would be more accurate. If you give me six plugs, give me six plugs!!!
To be fair, I should also say that this MoBo is pretty killer. It did all sorts of other things right, for instance, it calculated the fastest possible speed for the memory I put in. rated for 1066mhz at CAS 5, it deftly decided to run it at 900-something mhz at CAS4 for an overall boost in memory bandwidth. Kudos to AMD and ASUS for that much.
Anyone interested in tryding other BIOS versions my look here: ASUS Downloads
However there is only one BIOS version newer than the one I am using and the changelog does not indicate anything regarding RAID. All AM3 fixes mostly.
With the bios version it shipped with (1201), I set up a RAID-1 (though I'll bet this issue presents its self in RAID-0 or JBOD as well) and once I had the SATA CDROM was no longer detected in BIOS nor would it boot my installation CD.
With the system set to the standard non-RAID SATA configuration the CDROM is detected.
After some reading I found that the motherboard indicates that SATA ports 5 and 6 do not work in the standard SATA mode. But to make matters more annoying, it does happen to specifically state that they do work in SATA or AHCI mode. Well, this appears to be a bad mistake on the technical writer's part. (I reread the sentence five times just to make sure I wasn't crazy)
The opposite is what appears to be true in my testing. RAID ports 5 and 6 works just fine in the standard mode, but RAID can only use ports 1 through 4. So this includes my SATA CDROM which had been sitting on port 6.
Simply move it over two slots and it's fixed! Still I can't say I'm thrilled about this particular "feature" of the motherboard or perhapse, chipset would be more accurate. If you give me six plugs, give me six plugs!!!
To be fair, I should also say that this MoBo is pretty killer. It did all sorts of other things right, for instance, it calculated the fastest possible speed for the memory I put in. rated for 1066mhz at CAS 5, it deftly decided to run it at 900-something mhz at CAS4 for an overall boost in memory bandwidth. Kudos to AMD and ASUS for that much.
Anyone interested in tryding other BIOS versions my look here: ASUS Downloads
However there is only one BIOS version newer than the one I am using and the changelog does not indicate anything regarding RAID. All AM3 fixes mostly.
posted by Rob Lynch | 10:48 AM
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