Via 6420 Raid Chip

Trying to do some homework while anxiously awaiting the release of the 865PE-PFISR mobo. Fortunately MSI allow me to download the manual w/o having to first buy the board .
What attracts me to this mobo is the large number of IDE connectors, IDE1,2 and IDE3 for PATA units, SATA1,2 and SATA 3,4 for SATA units. Nice. Now we know we can only put one SATA unit on each SATA channel, that makes 4 SATA drives. But I can put 2 PATA units on each IDE channel, right ? SO that makes 6 PATA units, ie a total of 10 ATA units. Check me:
IDE1 Primary + Optional Slave, HDD or optical, max 2
IDE2 Primary + Optional Slave, HDD or optical, max 2
IDE3 Primary + Optional Slave, HDD only max 2
SATA1 HDD Only Max 1
SATA2 HDD Only Max 1
SATA3 HDD Only Max 1
SATA4 HDD Only Max 1
Ok so here's two questions, any bright ideas welcome to satisfy my stupidity appreciated please:
1) The BIOS in the Standard CMOS setup area (P 3-6) allows for the setup of FOUR IDE devices and their slaves, ie a total of 8 units. I know this does not include any possible RAID setup (separate). But what are these 4 channels physically referring to ? Would guess IDE1,2,3 and SATA 1 + 2 where SATA 2 is identified as a "slave" to SATA 1 ? That leaves SATA 3 and 4 for the RAID controller, but doesnt explain what controls IDE3...
2) Appendix C1 says this "1. Support two SATA + two PATA, 2. Only SATA supports RAID". Right, so if this is the case then I can only use SATA disks for RAID. Means I can use SATA 1,2 for one array (2HDD) and SATA 3,4 for another array (2 more HDD). So IDE3 I cannot use for RAID.
Right, so what controls IDE3, seems the RAID chip to me, but if this is the case how can the standard BIOS allow for the setp of 4 x channels each with master and slave capability ?
See my confusion ? I am used to the old Promise 100 on my K7T266Pro2-RU (direct control over IDE3 and 4 only) and I really want to know what channels this VIA 6420 chip actually controls, and what the standard non-RAID SATA/PATA controllers actually control....

Thats a Good question, and I will go to the Via site to find out, as you know right now all the Intel Based P-4 Mo-Bo's ICH5 support only 2 S-ATA Devices, and the rest are supported by the Third Party IDE Controler (Promise or Silicon Images, VIA) as you know that the Promise Controler that is on Both the i875 and i865 Supports 2 S-ATA HDD and 2 P-ATA HDD on IDE-3......Now my ABIT Supports 6 S-ATA altogether the intel ICH5 = 2 and the Silicon Images Supports 4 S-ATA (But the ABIT does not have the P-ATA IDE-3)...I was just reading the i865PE-PSIF2R Manual and this Via Chip is limited to 2 S-ATA and 2 P-ATA just like the Promise Chip that MSI used to use...I went to the VIA site and the 6420 Chip does NOT support more than 2+2, so it's not like MSI told them to hold Back...I also read at VIA's site that thier new Controler (due out in the Spring) will support 4+2 so yep I think that MSI Should stick with VIA for the Extra Onboard IDE Solutions, since they already sell the VIA Based Motherboard thats what they should do (Get rid of Promise)..And the Best thing that MSI Could do as far as VIA is Concerned, is to Get VIA to supply MSI (us) with those beautiful VIA Sound Chip Called the "Envy 24-PT" 24-Bit 7.1 onboard sound with 96KHz Digital Sampling that all those Lucky MSI PT880 Owners now have !! OK mabe thats asking for to much..I'll settle for the VIA-VT1617 Sound Chip, as this has 20 Bit 7.1 Sound too...Time to get rid of the "C-Media" sound.............Sean REILLY875

Similar Messages

Neo2 BIOS 3.3 Disables VIA SATA Raid AND Promise IDE3 RESOLVED

I recently corrputed my VIA SATA Raid installation of Windows by overclocking my FSB. I have since read that you can't do this, and I definitely learned my lesson.
But in the process of attempting recovery, I upgraded my BIOS from 1.8 to 3.3. (I know, didn't really keep up on that =)
Now I have a strange problem. I can't have both the Promise controller ENABLED as well as the VIA SATA enabled. During boot, if the Promise controller is Enabled and has an IDE HDD plugged into it (important!) which was created by this Promise controller a few months ago, the VIA SATA section of BIOS boot does not show up. It will not even show the text where it is looking for attached drives. Herein lies the problem.
Here are a few scenarios. If I unplug all drives from the Promise IDE connector, but leave it enabled, it will proceed to the VIA section of BIOS boot right after the Realtek initialization. It will also show the VIA section of the BIOS boot if I disable the Promise in the Integrated Devices section of the BIOS.
But, if I leave a single drive connected to the Promise IDE connector, and have them both enabled in BIOS (VIA "On Board" is ENABLED and Promise is set to RAID) then the only boot options I see are the Promise section, where it will correctly identify the IDE drive connected to it (remember, it was made a drive by that very same controller chip a few months back) and then proceed to the Realtek initialization. After that, there is no VIA section at all.
Interestingly, if you hit DEL to go into setup anytime during the scenario where there is no VIA init section, the VIA SATA drives do not show up on the Boot Sequence at all. It is like it is not there at all, which I suspected since it wasn't showing up during BIOS boot.
SO. This leaves me with the unfortunate scenario of not being able to use one or the other. The only thing I can think of is that I updated my BIOS revision. Please, is someone able to duplicate this, or is there a known workaround? I would hate to lose half of the functionality of the mboard as far as additional controllers goes.
I will add my config below just in case that helps:
K8T Neo 2
AMD 3500+
2 x Kingston 3500 HyperX 512
Antec NeoPower 480w
2 x 36GB Raptors SATA (Drives I am attempting to run on VIA for boot)
2 x IDE drives (Maxtor 250GB and WD 160GB) on the Promise IDE 3 channel (sometimes anyway =)
2 x CD ROM on IDE 1
2 x IDE drives (WD 60GB and WD 120GB) on IDE 2 (I leave these unplugged during windows install and T/S'ing this problem)
ATI Radeon X800XTPE
I hope that is all you would need to know about the box.
Thanks for your ideas.

Quote from: Tiresmoke on 09-April-05, 22:52:31
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/bios/bos/spt_bos_detail.php?UID=608&kind=1
I trslly would suggest first though to do a Bios reset and then re-examine the problems if any and let's see if we can track and sort them out.
The first thing I found odd is that you claimed to have updated the Bios from 1.8 and there is no version 1.8 for the Neo2's. Their Bios range starts at 3.0 and that is the lowest number you should have been at.
Second let's take a look at your Bios settings. Typically when you flash a Bios you have to go back and reset the bios again to what is needed for your rig. Otherwise the default settings may not allow you to run your system at all properly.
I appreciate your looking at this with me Tiresmoke. You must be right on the previous BIOS version. It is my original Neo that I am thinking of for 1.8. Now that you mention that, I don't know what the previous BIOS version is, but I am now going to assume it was the original.
Tracking through it though has been strange. Another change I noticed is that my RAM would no longer run at DDR400. It was stuck at DDR333 no matter what I did. I had to move the Kingston 3500 that I had from 1/2 to 1/3 to get it to work. Something must have changed in the BIOS update to make that happen, as it was running fine before that, and differences in operation at that level have nothing to do with whether I corrupted my RAID based windows install.
The boot order is as follows:
1) Promise Controller (Press CTRL + F)
2) Realtek LAN Boot (Press SHIFT + F10)
>
3) VIA RAID Controller.
It is #3 that will not show up if there is a drive attached to the Promise controller. This has got me completely stumped. Is there a direction we can go with T/S'ing this?
Thx.

Where is there a Fan on the VIA K8t 800 Chip

I was woundering why do they have in the new manuel for the K8T Master Far 2 a Fan on the VIA K8T 800 Chip. For one is it help performens? And where would I get one? I would like to keep the chip cool becase my is geting cover by all the stuff in the PCI and AGP I was woundering what you all thought about this ?
And why are there so many more people with the FX Chipset why would everyone want a Opteron there just so much more powerful of a proeccor?

The FX and the Opteron are the same, only the FX is an unlocked Opteron for single CPU use.
As for the fan, I have the same board here and it also has no fan.
I run that board for over a year now without any problems at all.

VIA SATA RAID Drivers

I lost the floppy disk containing the VIA SATA raid drivers for Windows Installation. My M/B is the KT600 FISR. So I kinda need the drivers as I am setting up a SATA drive.
Can someone please say where I can get the drivers, or email me the attached drivers.
My email is:
[email protected]
Thanks,
Sam

I am worried my floppy drive controller or something on the motherboard is not working. I tried the floppy disk containing drivers and Windows Installer said still said "Please insert the manufactuer's disk", I took out the disc and got the same message.
Then I booted up Windows Installer with the same floppy disk in a different MSI motherboard (a P4 mobo I have) and it detected the drivers fine.
Tried all the updated drivers you specified, and the floppy drive reads fine from Windows and is brand new (same problem with old one which I replaced only to find the same problem :
The mobo is still under warranty, should I give MSI / dabs.com a call?
Sam

So...which is a faster raid chip?Promise or Intel?

lo there
just recieved my second 36gb 10000 sata raptor,and wanna set it up as RAID 0,what do u guys think?gonna probebly use 64 stripe -found that size as the fastest,but i aint sure which chip will give me better bench...the promis sata raid,or the Intel chip?
any ideas?tips?
cheers
Ofer

The Sandra hdd benchmark has NEVER worked properly for me. I could take 3 different tests and have results vary as much as 30%. If I set in the options "disable Windows Cache" I get a better score which common sense and the Sandra help files say should NOT be the case. I spent days playing with settings and moving hardware around trying to figure out if I was doing something wrong. I finally started using other programs that give consistent results that are repeatable.
Don't forget that the free version of PCMark only tests 1 of your system drives and you can't change it. Are you sure it's not measuring the Maxtor?
I'll tell ya what. I'll post a result from Sandra later if you try Aida32 and post a Random Read avg result. Get It Here
The drive tests are in the "plugin" menu.
You want the Sandra test with or without Windows Cache disabled?

VIA K8T800 RAID and Highpoint RocketRAID 1540 PCI card

I've had this old HighPoint SATA RocketRAID 1540 PCI card sitting around for awhile now and I thought I would maybe use it to beef up my system. I am currently running a RAID striping array with a pair of WD 74GB Raptors via the K8T800 chipset (no pun intended) on my MSI K8T Master2-FAR workstation and a pair of 80GB Western Digital drives (separate partitions) that I currently use for storing raw data/projects that can be used to rebuild my system in the event of an OS crash (striping array is a bit more risky so I like having this around). My idea is that I would put the WD 80GB drives on a mirroring array and use them for data storage. The catch is that this coming week I am going to reformat and install a dual WinXP/SuSE boot partition on my Raptor striping array, and I will need to make sure that the mirror'd backup drive is accessible by both WinXP and Linux.
Has anyone out there ever tried anything remotely like this?
Thanks!

I assume this Highpoint has it's own RAID-BIOS?
If it does, you could be in trouble, the K8T-Master isn't very happy with controllers that use 2 instances of a controller.
I have tried to get a lot of SCSI Raid controllers working, but no luck, they are the same pricipe.
I tested:
Ami MegaRaid 1600 Elite, windows saw it, but wasn't useable.
Adaptec (forgot the model very old one), board refused to even boot.
IBM Raid (very old as well) would boot, drivers would not install.
Several other have seen the same problems, it has to do with the INT19 (software IRQ) where the controller needs to hook into.
(At least I came to that conclusion)
It doesn't hook into that, but the controller does show up, but can't use the RAID-Processor/BIOS for anything.
A normal SCSI controller like the Adaptec 2940 or such are no problem, but they only use 1 instance.
The difference between a RAID and Non raid controller is that the Non-Raid uses only 1 IRQ and Address, RAID (intelligent ones) use 2 IRQ's and 2 Addresses, and for some reason, the Mobo's BIOS doesn't want to hook both during boot.
In Windows the drivers will load, sometimes, but when you try to access it, Windows is not able to communicate with the Raid-CPU and all sorts of nast things happen, if you even get that far.

Another Raid Question

Hi All:
I may have missed this in one of the stickies, but please don't yell at me.
I am now running raid 0 via the Promise chip on my 865pe Neo2 FIS2R, (this was my first build and I didn't realize I could set up raid with the ICH5R chip).
My question is knowing that I would have to re-install my os and everthing else, would it be worth it in terms of a performance increase to go to the trouble of switching over to the ICH5R controller?
Thanks for any info you can share with me.
BigAL

Yes you would. But the good news is that the Promise controller appears to be the better performing one, so leave things just as they are

Weird Intel RAID problem

Here's the specs:
Processor: Intel 875k
Motherboard: MSI P55-GD80
Memory: Corsair Dominator 4x2GB (forget exact model, 1600mhz I believe, though)
Graphics: Diamond AMD HD5870 1gb
PSU: Antec TruePower Blue 750watt
HDD: 4xWD 500GB (WDC WD5001AALS-0) drives in raid 10(0+1 so says bios) mode
Sound: On-board Realtek
NIC: On-board Marvell
DVD: Cheap Lite-On thingy, connected via sata
I've spent a couple days trying to figure out what part went bad. At the bottom I'll list my entire debug procedure, but I'll get to the meat of the problem here. Rebooted this machine on sunday to find it took over an hour to boot up, no warnings in the logs about anything failing before hand, no updates, software, or drivers installed anytime recently. My testing actually shows that it seems to be the raid chip that’s gone slightly bad as well as windows drivers are failing on this hardware piece. I've run this machine from MiniXP, WinPE, Win7 Recovery Disc, ESET Recovery Disc. All have the same problem regardless of the raid driver I use- extremely slow access times and slow read speed. I decided to try a Linux distro, Knoppix, and, lo and behold, the drives run just like they're supposed to. Have a look-
(Well, it won't allow me to post the images)
Windows MiniXP and HD Tune 2.55
(remove the space after http:)http ://s29.postimg.org/3xrbepvfb/hdtune.png
On this one I’m not sure why it’s reading both volumes as 1, but its neither here nor there, as all windows kernel boots were the same speed, and the drives were accessible from windows explorer as separate, so the speed’s the important bit in that pic.
And Knoppix palimpsest
(remove the space after http:)http ://s9.postimg.org/ezoqocr1r/linux_hdd_test.png
Now I can only figure the raid chip did die, at least a little, but somehow the Linux drivers are bypassing whatever function did fail. I may have missed something, but I'm unsure what, and I'd love some feedback to figuring this one out.
The motherboard is literally 6 months out of warranty so RMA is out of the question. I don't know much about compiling my own drivers, so this kind of problem is quite beyond me. I'd love to save the board since I wasn't quite ready for an upgrade yet.
And the boring part, my testing:
First reboot, ran SpyBot, nothing wrong, antivirus timed out and would not load because drive access was too slow
Made an ESET antivirus rescue disk, which runs from WinPE, set it to scan, cancelled after 19 hours and only about 20% of the drive scanned, no errors.
Swapped sata cables, no change, swapped ports, no change, SMART scan, no problems.
Fiddled bios settings a bunch, no difference
Did a BIOS update from 1.0a to 1.0c, no change
Made a Knoppix USB flash drive, found that a 51.5gb transfer was taking near the normal amount of time. Installed bit defender, scanned full drive, nothing suspicious.
Made a MiniXP flash, retested the drive, still snail slow on a windows kernel. Ran HD Tune 2.55, recorded results, then loaded back up Knoppix for palimpsest, and recorded those.
Additional info:
I have also tried with and without the DVD drive in when I was swapping ports
Drivers I’ve tried: MSI: 8.9.0.1023; 12.0.0.49974
Intel: 12.9.0.1001; 8.9.0.1023; 12.0.0.49974; 10.1.0.1008

All right, went more into the SMART testing, turns out it was a harddrive. First SMART test passed, but went back and ran it again, and Data Lifeguard froze 5 times in a row trying to test it. Unplugged that drive and windows boots and everything works great. I wonder if Windows and Linux might be using different of the mirrored drives for reading? Interesting, but at least it's solved.

Xserve RAID Admin Tool 1.5.1 not quite working

I have an Xserve RAID that's currently at firmware 1.3.2/1.26a according to Xserve RAID Admin Tool 1.5.1. However, when I try to upgrade the firmware to 1.5.1 via the RAID Admin Tool 1.5.1, it just doesn't do anything--it accepts the .xfb file and then...nothing. Quitting out of the the Admin Tool and restarting still shows the firmware at 1.3.2/1.26a. Same thing if I shut down and restart the Xserve RAID from the RAID Admin tool. Any tips? There's nothing stored on the RAID system yet (the array hasn't even been created--it's a blank system) and nothing is attached to it either (I've just plugged in the ethernet links to format it first before I start attaching an Xserve G5 to it). Also, even though the lower controller is showing green and I have an ethernet cable plugged into it, I can't get any info out of it nor can I configure it with an IP address. Only the top controller seems to allow some configuration such as IP address.

Okay, I've solved the problem.
Basically, the issue was that the lower controller wasn't seated right despite it showing a green light in RAID Admin. When I went to visually inspect it, I noticed that despite what RAID Admin 1.5.1 claimed, its light wasn't even on, let alone green. And since the lower controller handles slots 8-14 of an Xserve RAID and my slots 8-14 are totally unpopulated (empty) at the moment, it was never noticed. Now that I've reseated the lower controller, everything is visually showing green across the board and the firmware upgrade is proceeding as expected and it has upgraded the firmware from 1.3.2/1.26a to 1.5.1/1.5.1c complete with autorestart of both upper and lower controller modules.
Basic lesson learned: RAID Admin lies. If possible, visually inspect the box itself!
Thanks to all who responded.

How do I set up a RAID array with an external hard drive?

Im trying to backup my hard drive onto a 250 GB external hard drive (connected by Firewire) via a RAID 1 configuration. What is the best way to do this?
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.6) Intel-based, Windows XP Pro is installed via Boot Camp

There are times when a mirror is fine. SoftRAID in their example of uses, has a situation with someone who doesn't backup, has a laptop (where failures seem higher) and might also want to be able to take the external mirror and take it with them.
One backup is never enough. What if something goes wrong during the backup? power failure or crash? the backup is now corrupt.
Having a mirror and a 2nd copy would be fine. And you can do that. I find DVDs have been too small and slow in the past to use regularly, I use disks, and burn a DVD of important stuff on a 3 month or longer basis, and some stuff is even less.
so while there is always going to be "mirror raid is not a true backup mantra" it is still useful for what it does. Even if it is instant and copies the good and bad. Just don't rely on it as your ONLY backup, you should have another disk drive as well (and DVDs).
Also, FW400 is not a speed daemon - 35MB/sec or less is not uncommon.

Raid 0 problem 890gxm-G65

Hello, I've been trying things with my pc for hours but I still don't know what is going wrong.
-I've 2 identical hdd's in sata slots
-I didn't get any option to ctrl + f, so i downloaded: (32 bit) ATI SB7xx/SB8xx RAID Driver from msi
-I put the drivers on my USB stick, booted from it and it installed?? (to where?) a program: raid option rom version 3.2.1540.6 (i downloaded the 32 bit version... my guess now that my usb flashed the bios for raid drivers? but I flashed the wrong bit version, I want to use 64 bit. though it seems strange to me that drivers in Bios are 32 / 64 bit related? since bios flash downloads aren't.)
-I put the 64 bit ATI SB7xx/SB8xx RAID Driver on my USB stick to see if it installed automatically, to bad... it didn't it says (find another boot device or something like that)
-I made an LD works all fine, it says Functional 1.999 TB or something.
-Booting windows installation, can't find the logical drive array, I think: ''no problem I have the drivers.''
-Installed the driver (load driver option) that came with ATI SB7xx/SB8xx RAID Driver [AMD AHCI Compatible RAID Controller (D:\ahcix64s.inf) (x64), but still no recognition.
Is all this going wrong due to a wrong bios update? Or whatever I did with the 32 bit?? Driver software that made the raid array?
My option in the bios AHCI/RAID/IDE = Raid
Raid chip = enabled
While losing my mind hehe, I thought the software should be stored in the bios, with formatted harddisks where else could they be? So I
-flashed the bios to version 1.9 with a fat32 flash function in the bios (n-flash i think)
but I still have that stupid ''raid option rom version 3.2.1540.6'' (32 bit download) Which I expect is the problem here, but I'm raid noob lol.
-Windows does recognize my harddrives when I do IDE instead of RAID in bios.
Questions: Why doesn't Windows 7 recognize my raid array after installing 64 bit raid drivers? Is it due to wrong bios software [raid option rom version 3.2.1540.6]? How can I fix this?
I'm totally lost please help me...
Greetings,
Sten

Quote from: Sabbath on 20-July-11, 23:41:24
Ok,
So if the 64bit driver I linked is seen during your windows install and at that time correctly accepted, as w7 continues its install till its complete, I don't understand why there is a 32 bit pop up.
That is why I suggested starting over being you did install at some point a 32 bit driver.
Does your msi resource CD have a raid driver on it?
When I did my msi raid, I installed my raid driver from msi's site during install and after I was in windows I needed to complete it by installing a raid driver off the CD.
This removed all yellow flags in device manager concerning my raid.
It is accepted, i suppose it's complete. But the 64 bit driver installs 4 times quicker than the 32 bit version. So maybe W7 doesn't install the 64 bit driver good enough? I can't install w7 at all since it can't find any harddrives to install on. I would like to start over, but I don't know how to delete the 32 bit driver... Formatting harddrives doesn't delete the driver, and bringing bios settings to default neither. I flashed the bios to 1.9 which didn't help aswell. If I mark the button ''shows only hardware compatible drivers'' my original msi cd doesn't give any drivers. Though there are drivers on it, but they aren't compatible... Should I flash my bios back to 1.0? Hopefully it will delete all its extra features like raid array. And then I install it with the correct 64 bit driver. But it seems weird that the problem is there... Since it seems logical to me that the bios doesn't work on 32bit / 64 bit programms.
Are there risks concerning flashing the bios back to version 1.0? Would it help? I would like to know where the driver is located... where does it get installed? Did I accidently indeed flashed my bios by booting with the driver usb, how can it be deleteD? And is that the problem? Meh! Thanks for your help Sabbath, appreciated ^^ Isn't there a moderator or technician from MSI on these forums that can help me?

Confused with Raid Sata drivers

Sata,Raid
Should I install these Drivers?
Which one.
Do I need a raid card?
Building Computer for my wife.Ready to install OS.
I got a floppy with MB.Says drivers for VIA sata raid.
Floppy has two folders Pide and Raid.
Checked with manual but still not sure if I must install
these drivers when installing XP.MB has Integrated dual channel native Serial ATA/RAID controller that will supply 150MB/s and support RAID 0, RAID 1.
AMD Sempron 3000+ 1.8GHz Socket 754 64-Bit Processor Retail
MSI K8MM-V MS-7142 Motherboard,VIA K8M800-CE + VT8237R Chipset
Western Digital Caviar SE Sata WD-1600JS 160gb 8m-S2JS
ASUS G-Force N6200 128 mb AGP Video Card
DVD-RW DL LightScribe
512 DDR 400 Ram
Have WinXP 64 bit "no legal serial"
Installing WinXP Pro SP2 32 bit "Legal"

Didn't even clic in what raid was about.Duh. In the bios on this board it had to be set as IDE.Under sata I had two settings Raid or IDE.I thought noway its IDE so I went raid.So thanks it worked right away.Didnt even have to install sata drivers at the OS XP install.I just went with it and it worked.This is what I got in device manager.
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers:
Primary IDE Channel 5.1.2600.2180
Primary IDE Channel 5.1.2600.2180
Secondary IDE Channel 5.1.2600.2180
Secondary IDE Channel 5.1.2600.2180
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller 5.1.2600.2180
VIA Bus Master IDE Controller 5.1.2600.2180
A little confusing but it works great.It also recognized my 160gig HDD.The full 160.I was surprised.

Problems with using 3tb drives in RAID 1

I'm using an MSi 870A-G54 mainboard
Without going into major specifics at this moment here is the basic scenario:
Added 2 new seagate baracuda 3tb drives in RAID 1 mode
Updated the bios (AMI) to 7.20
Updated windows 7 64 with the latest drivers.
Updated RAID Xpert to the lastest version
Everything worked. Added my data (movies and music), all was well with the world
Then, after a reboot windows no longer recognizes the drives, nor does RAID Xpert, however within the RAID config (BIOS) the drives are showing as being just fine and the RAID configuration is configured correctly.
Anyone have any idea how I can retrieve my data from these drives (most important) and get it working again (important, but less than just getting the data recovered)?
Thus far I haven't a clue what changed. There were no Windows, BIOS, configuration or other updates.
oh what fun it is!!!

Thanks for the info.. but...
The motherboard recognized the drives (after upgrading the BIOS to 17.20)
I managed to get it working (again!) last night. :-D
I had to do some major upgrading by way of AMD (upgraded RAID drivers, chipset drivers, and AMD RAID Xpert) that were not available via the MSi site, but are directly compatible with the chipset I'm using. .. or ... so far appear to be. Too early to tell.
So far, everything seems stable..
Odds are I tripped over something, or missed a step during the initial set-up, when I was figuring out what needed to be done to get the drives recognized by the MB, and then then the RAID, and then the OS.
Right now I'm backing up all my data and, after verfiying that each drive in fact contains data, I'm planning on breaking the mirror via RAID Xpert, then see if I need to break it as well via the RAID console (this would provide confirmation that the windows based utility in fact has, or has not, correct connectivity and control to the MB RAID config). Then, do a low-level format of the drives and start over. ....
By the way.. just so anyone reading this knows... the Live Update 5 utility is weak... very very weak. I pity the person that has minimal PC experience to try and figure out what it's doing (or not doing) and ... done..
I'll post the final results of this adventure when I finalize the entire setup in about a month. :-D

Can't access XP PRO on Via SATA with Promise SATA enabled......

Here's the deal.....I just bought a WD 250GB SATA drive. I currently have 2 WD raptors on VIA in RAID 0(dual boot w/win XP PRO). I installed new SATA using Promise controller and set it up as 1 disk RAID. This works fine with my IDE harddrive(Dual boot w/XP home), however, when I try to boot for the Raptors(VIA sata) I get can't start windows missing or corrupt file (windows root)/system32/hal.dll. Now, when I disable the Promise RAID, XP PRO on VIA RAID boots fine. Do these 2 controllers not work together? or am I just missing something??? Your help is appreciated....

When you enable the Promise controller, you're no longer able to boot from the VIA Raid. You need to use the Promise RAID/SATA to boot from, or an IDE device. Windows will see the VIA RAID controller, so you can setup a data-storage partition (or something like that) on the VIA.
Now, you probably want to move your Raptors to the Promise controller, just to make use of both controllers and to boot from your Raptors. If so, you can try the following.
1. Backup your disks - there's a 50/50% chance that this will not work, but it's worth a try and I managed to do it several times;
2. Now, boot up your system and install the Promise drivers (you have to play with this a bit, I don't know anymore how I did it last time. I think you have to enable the Promise controller in BIOS without connecting any drive. You'll still be able to boot from the VIA controller);
3. Shut down Windows and PC;
4. Connect drives from VIA controller to Promise controller;
5. Start system and enter Promise RAID Setup utility (watch your screen to see what keys to use - I'm at work now, and cannot check it for you);
6. Setup a RAID-array (exactly like you had it on the VIA - you may want to check using VIA config tool in Windows for block size, etc.);
7. When you setup this raid, the Promise uitl will give you a choice, how to proceed. One of these choices is to only initialize the array. Choose that one. The other option will destroy your data;
8. exit and reboot and hope that it will work. somethimes it does, sometimes it does not.

[915 Series] How do I enable the IDE raid Slots (the yellow ones)

On the Bios there is an option to enable the onboard raid slots, but whem I
enable it, noting happens, and in the next restart, this item doen't show in
the bios menu.
I read on the forum that this problem appened to other owners of this
motherboard, but I couldn't find any solution.
I've already installed the Via IDE Raid Drivers in "»Windows install »F6."
When I tried to install the upgrade of this drivers form the Drives&
utilities CD, a message apeard saying that it could't find the hardware, so I
installed them anyway from a floppy disk in "»Windows install »F6."
I have connected to the blue IDE slot one IDE drive and one DVD drive, and
in the second slot(yellow), another IDE drive.I've tried to exange the drive
positions but the drives on the raid slots where never recognized.
I know from the forums that others have solved this problem, so I think this
is not a mainboard mailfunction.
Please someone help me in this issue.
Thank you.

Tanks everyone
I also tried that procedure but I thik i have a problem in Bios or in the motherboard.
When I enable The raid controler in Bios this Item just disapears form the options, next time I restart.
Strange, no?
No mater I took the computer to the shop where I bought the Moterboard and monday, I hope I have good News.
At that time I'll give you notice of what's happening.
See you
"My Gear: Motherboard MSI 915G Neo2 Platinum
Pentium 4 3.0GHz 630
1024 Mb of ram oem
Graphic card Nvidia Geforce 6200
HDD Hitachi IDE 80Gb 7200 133
HDD SCSI II 37Gb and PCI Controler Adaptec
Drive DVD Recorder LG GSA 4163B
Drive DVD Player Toshiba
Sound Card Digidesign Digi 001

Via 6420 Raid Chip

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