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[Hughv Profile]

ASUS A 8V Deluxe
2 GB DDR SDRAM
XP Home w/all updates
Windows installed on C: IDE drive
2 Maxtor 80 GB drives on SATA 2
1 80 GB Maxtor on SATA 1
This system recently slowed to a crawl, and I determined it was due to corruption on one of the SATA drives. I re-installed XP and ran chkdsk on the drive, which now runs OK.
However: I cannot get the Promise driver to install on SATA 1.
All BIOS settings are correct, drivers are up to date, and I know how to install drivers.
The Fast Trak controller and the drive are discovered on Boot, but I get a yellow mark in Control Panel and the drive doesn't appear in My Computer-or anywhere else.
I put in the Ubuntu 7.04 disk, and all drives are discovered and displayed with no problem, so I don't think this is a hardware problem.
This setup has worked in the past.
Does any one have a clue as to why the FastTrak 378 driver won't install?

[imnuts Profile Website]

I hated the Promise 378 controller. I had the same motherboard as you and eventually that controller died so I upgraded and sold off the old system. One thing you can try is uninstalling the driver for the promise controller. Find the driver file's actual location on the drive, and after uninstalling the device, delete the file. This will prevent windows from reinstalling it. Then restart and make sure that the system doesn't auto install the device. After that, insert the cd that came with the motherboard and install the promise driver package off of there. It may ask you to restart, but it should be good after that.

[Hughv Profile]

I have sort of solved this problem.
Being ignorant, I re-set the BIOS to RAID mode.
The RAID utility offered to set up RAID 1 + 0 on a single disk(?), so I took this option, re-booted, formatted, and I now have a functioning disk.
I haven't seen any info that states you can have RAID 1 + 0 on a single disk, but that seems to be what I have.
I'm sure there's a guru who can explain all this to me.
During all this, I started to get a SMART failure on another disk. It fails the SEA Tools tests, but seems to work OK. Should I worry? I've heard SMART is not all that reliable.
Thanks.

[imnuts Profile Website]

I would plug the drive into the VIA controller and redo the test. I had all sorts of issues when the controller started to go bad on me and it kept pointing towards the drive itself dying and not the controller. Eventually I figured it out by everything that was plugged into it seemed bad but fine on the VIA chipset.

[Hughv Profile]

I re-formatted this drive and plugged it back in, and the SMART utility tripped immediately. Ran the SEA Tools again and it failed.
Seagate has on online RMA page, and I have now returned this drive for a replacement.
Thanks.