This weekend I built an unRAID server out of a bunch of spare IDE drives and new (but somewhat old) Intel DQ965GF motherboard.  This board is based on the ICH8 chipset and has 6 SATA (3Gps) ports and one IDE port, plus a pair of PCI sockets, a PCIe 1x and a PCIe16x for further expansion.  I had a PCI card with two IDE ports based on the SiL0680 chip which was gathering dust, so I installed it to bring the total number of IDE drives I could have to 6.

 

There is one problem (I'm using unRAID 4.3.3 basic, waiting for my Pro key) I have found:  I cannot get unRAID to see the IDE port on the motherboard.  It works fine with drives on the PCI IDE expansion card, but if I hook up a drive to the mother board IDE then unRAID does not appear to see it. 

 

The drive is seen by the motherboard's BIOS and I have even done two test installs (from a CDROM on the motherboard IDE to a drive on the motherboard IDE) of Windows XP and Ubuntu (7.04) Linux without any problems.  So it appears to be an unRAID issue.

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

 

 

Issue might be similar to this: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2561.0

Check your bios settings.

 

Joe L.

Issue might be similar to this: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2561.0

Check your bios settings.

 

Joe L.

 

I thought that it might be a BIOS issue, which is why I went to the lengths of doing a test install of both XP and Ubuntu. But as both of these worked I'm a bit puzzled. I also updated to the most recent BIOS, but that didn't fix it.

 

In the BIOS there is the "AHCI/RAID/IDE" setting, I have tried this set to:

 

- AHCI,  in this mode unRAID boots and recognizes the drives on the PCI IDE card but does not see drives attached to the motherboard IDE connector.  This is the mode I am running it in right now.  This is also the mode I did the Windows XP and Linux installed successfully with.  This also appears to be the mode that gets mentioned in the forum as being most likely to work.

 

- IDE, in this mode unRAID boots but does not work properly because it cannot find the UNRAID flash disk, so I don't know if it actually finds any disks on the motherboard IDE

 

- RAID, I have not tried this mode.

 

Note: I do not have any SATA disks connected at the moment, but will in the future.

 

Stephen

 

Those modes only apply to the SATA ports, not the IDE ports.  AHCI is only for SATA, and the IDE mentioned there is for making the SATA ports look like they are IDE drives.  There should be a separate setting for the real IDE connectors.

 

One other possibility, you tested with a CD drive on the motherboard IDE connector.  CD drives only need a 40-wire cable.  For the drives, make sure you use a good 80-wire ribbon cable, and make sure that you have set the drive jumpers correctly, master and slave or CS if supported.

Those modes only apply to the SATA ports, not the IDE ports.  AHCI is only for SATA, and the IDE mentioned there is for making the SATA ports look like they are IDE drives. 

 

That's what I was guessing. The label on this is "Configure SATA as:".

 

 

There should be a separate setting for the real IDE connectors.

 

There is a setting labeled: "ATA/IDE Mode:" it can be set to "Native" or "Legacy", I have been running all tests with it set to "Native" because when the "Configure SATA as" is set to "AHCI" it forces the "ATA/IDE mode" to "Native".  If you change "Configure SATA as" to "IDE" then you can change to "Legacy" at which point the "Configure SATA as" disappears completely.

 

 

One other possibility, you tested with a CD drive on the motherboard IDE connector.  CD drives only need a 40-wire cable.  For the drives, make sure you use a good 80-wire ribbon cable, and make sure that you have set the drive jumpers correctly, master and slave or CS if supported.

 

When I tested with the CD drive (a one year old DVD burner actually) and the 80G IDE drive the cable I attached them with was one of the 80 pin IDE cables I had been using for the drives in the unRAID array (so I know the drive cable was good). Both devices were set to cable select and the hard drive was at the end of the cable.  I also have tried this with a single drive or two drives and in all times, even though the BIOS sees the drives (they show in the list of drives in the boot order menu in the BIOS) unRAID does not.

 

Still puzzled.