Gigabyte GA-8IK1100 SATA problem

[mariam]

GA-8IK1100 has very good quality. Stability, compatibility, extra features and overclocking options are all strong points of this board. Unfortunately the board has one big downside. It doesn't let you boot up the system from SATA. If you have SATA hard drive like myself you are out of luck. Obviously you would like to put an operating system on this hard drive and boot from it. Of course you can do it but in this case the drive has to be configured as a regular IDE drive (for example: primary master). The drive doesn't get any slower because of that but takes two additional spaces. One space is already taken because the drive is connected to SATA controller. Two other spaces are taken as well because the drive is configured as a regular IDE drive. So unfortunately the drive will take three spaces. You won't be able to connect any device to this IDE controller. If you connect one or two devices to this controller none of them will work. For example if it is IDE1 your only option is to use IDE2.

I spent hours to figure it out. Also I send E-mail to Gigabyte regarding this problem. I got this answer: "About the issue you mentioned in the mail, we are sorry that it's impossible to configure your hard drive as SATA0 or SATA1 to boot up the system".

What is the solution?

You can buy another SATA hard drive and make RAID configuration. It will let you boot up the system from both SATA controllers. In this case you can use IDE1 and IDE2 for other devices.

I chose a different solution but it cost me extra money without getting more hard drive space. I have bought Highpoint 1520 RocketRAID Serial ATA/150 Controller and put it into PCI slot. I connected my SATA drive to this controller and now the system boots up from SATA on this PCI card.

My second hard drive is a regular IDE one. If you use SATA drive and configure it as IDE1 to boot up the system from it don't even try to connect second regular IDE drive to IDE1 or IDE2. As I said IDE1 is already taken by SATA drive. Connecting second drive to IDE2 will result with installing all the drivers from scratch (including system, video, sound, USB, fireware, sound drivers) despite the fact that they were already installed. Optical devices connected to IDE controller don't cause this problem. To avoid such a mess I have also bought a parallel to SATA converter Highpoint RocketHead 100 and I connected my second IDE drive through this adapter to SATA controller. It doesn't matter if it is SATA on PCI SATA controller or integrated motherboard SATA (the drive connected to SATA and configured as SATA works properly if you don't boot up the system from it).

My advice: If you haven't bought your board yet go for Gigabyte GA-8KNXP which has extra Silicon Image SATA controller and extra GigaRAID IDE RAID controller. Even though the controller anomaly applies to this board as well you can use other controllers. So in this case it would not be a problem.

If you have already bought Gigabyte GA-8IK1100 motherboard apply one of two solutions described above.

 

[mechBgon]

Welcome to the Forums mariam

That is an interesting situation. Let me ask this: if you go into the SATA BIOS to define your array, would you be able to define a RAID1 array that consists of just one drive? Ordinarily RAID1 is made of two mirrored drives, but if one drive fails, the system should still boot, right? Otherwise RAID1 would be useless. If you feel like trying this, I'd be interested to hear the result.

 

[mariam]

I can try to do this test at a later time because even the latest BIOS of the board doesn't support RAID1 yet. Right now only RAID0 is supported.

 

[mechBgon]

RAID0 only? :disgust: You're right, that's a disappointment. 8KNXP for sure, then.

 

[grapetoy]

You can boot from the SATA device! I have a 120GB Seagate SATA HD and can boot to it. I set up the ICH5R Raid function and it will boot to my HD, this is the only HD in my system. However when I restart it will not detect the HD, I must power down in order for the system to detect the HD.

 

[grapetoy]

I too have the same problem. However I only have one SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200, 8MB cache and 120GB capacity. I was going to purchase another identical HD, thinking the RAID function was pissed because I only had one drive hooked up. I am glad I have read this and didn't spend another $200. Any help for me and PAP123 would be greatly appreciated. I have contacted Gigabyte, they told me that I was the 1st one to have this problem. So PAP123 give them a call at 626-854-9338 ext. 216 the guys name is Leo Wang. Lets light a fire under some Gigabyte butt!!!

Thanks to all

Grapetoy

 

[AbRASiON]

The problem is that if you have a SATA C: and a PATA D: - then it won't work that's the REAL problem

It's very very annoying, it makes me quite upset.

Has anyone solved it - say a 36gb raptor as C: and a 200gb JB WD as the D: on normal PATA?

What a bloody mess - disgraceful.

 

[VSEKH]

I installed the OS on the SATA drive with the PATA disconnected. Then, I connected the PATA drive. Now the SATA drives show up first.

 

[AbRASiON]

This last post just can't be correct.

The problem as far as I'm aware is a bios / limitation / PC archictecture limitation.
The PC doesn't like making the "disk #1" or the "C:" a sata drive - it just doesn't work.

Well it will work, but only if you don't have a PATA drive installed as well - it's stupid and frustrating.

It's not about C: (lettering) in XP as this can fiddle with the default.
It's about supporting boot order and legacy dos stuff.

We need the ability to make the SATA drive come up as C: even in DOS 6.22 damnit - or Win98 SE -
oldschool stuff - there's still a lot of it under the hood of our pc's and THIS is why it's not working.

The second we get the SATA drive (WITH PATA ATTACHED) to come up as "C:" on the system from a 98SE bootdisk (www.bootdisk.com) then it will work fine with the right ATA drivers for the card.

Period.

 

[VSEKH]

My SATA drive shows C:\ drive. I have 5 partitions on this drive, C to G. On the PATA drive, the letters are H to N.

 

[AbRASiON]

Maybe his post is correct!

Let this been known ANYONE out there having problems read this post - IT DOES WORK FINE.

(keywords for people searching sata serial ata boot windows xp letter drive gigabyte 8ik1100 8ik 1100 pata boot order)
(that ought to cover it)

UNLIKE my darn Epox AMD board (UGH, never again)
Just do this

set boot order to "SCSI" first and make sure you download the intel floppy creation f6 thingo (it's on intel.com under 875p drivers)
PRESS f6 when first installing XP

works a charm

for anyone out there who wants to ghost from a PATA disk - > sata AND get it working fine, let me know i'll help you out too.

- AbRASiON