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Thread: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

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    ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    Sorry I couldn't come up with a better title, but it would of been too long.

    Situation: New build;
    ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB,
    Will be running Win7,
    Two drives transfered over from nForce 570 MB as is,
    New SSD & 1TB HDD, neither formatted,
    All drives SATA,
    MB is set for AHCI for all ports.

    Questions;
    1. Can individual SATA ports be disabled?
    2. In the UEFI interface (BIOS) under Storage, there is a external eSATA port option to enabler or disable the SATA ESP for each of the six SATA ports. What is that suppose to mean?
    3. I enabled the "AMD AHCI BIOS ROM" option, but I see no difference during boot.?
    4. Is there the ability to use a conventional old school BIOS?

    Now here is the kicker;
    When I connect either to ports 7 or 8 which uses a Marvell controller, both have been able to boot into XP by themselves. I though this was impossible unless you radically modify them to do so. But when I switch either over to ports 1-6, the BIOS sees them, but both produce a BSOD as expected (until now on the other controller). How can this happen??
    Last edited by videobruce; 08-09-2013 at 05:34 PM.

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    Re: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    nice board

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    Re: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    But, that didn't answer any of the questions which by now I have had answered.
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
    Think of someone else instead of just yourself. There is far more to it than your utility bill.

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    Re: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    I don't know the specific board in question, but the questions are fairly generic anyway.

    1. Depends on the individual implementation of the BIOS. Have a trawl through the BIOS and you should stumble across it if the page is there.

    2. The eSATA port will share the same logic space in the controller with one of the normal onboard SATA ports. If you choose to enable the eSATA port, you disable one of the standard ones. Your BIOS is offering you the choice of which internal port to replace.

    3. AHCI enables certain advanced features of SATA ports such as hot-swapping or support for SSDs. Particularly to Windows XP, the controller effectively appears as a different device to the OS which requires a different driver. If your installation on the existing boot drive has the right driver already installed, then the drive should boot. If you have connected the boot drive to the controller still configured as IDE-mode then you won't see much boot-up difference. In theory, once into Windows, the OS will 'discover' a new device and try to install the right drivers. If the OS doesn't have the right drivers when you connect the boot drive to an AHCI-enabled port, then you will see the usual BSOD.

    4. Some recent BIOS versions will offer the option to switch to conventional - I don't know about yours in particular.

    You say that when you connect your boot drive to a port on the Marvell controller and it boots successfully. That suggests that your Windows installation has the Marvell drivers built-in. The BIOS does not need drivers in the same way and so 'sees' the connected drives, but when the OS gets past the basic initial parts of the boot-loader process, it doesn't have the right drivers to know how to talk to the other controller so gives up with a BSOD.

    If you can boot the drive into Windows via a port on the Marvell controller while the BIOS has the other controller set to AHCI, then you should get the opportunity to install the AHCI drivers for the controller (if you don't see a prompt, then check Device Manager for an Unknown Device). Once the OS is happy, then you should be able to swap the SATA connection over to one on the main controller without getting the dreaded BSOD.

    You will probably find that the Marvell controller was intended to support older SATA devices such as CDROM drives and doesn't actually have an AHCI mode. Therefore it allows your current config to boot up.

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    Re: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    2. The eSATA port will share the same logic space in the controller with one of the normal onboard SATA ports. If you choose to enable the eSATA port, you disable one of the standard ones. Your BIOS is offering you the choice of which internal port to replace.
    Does that mean you can only choose one even though it allows all of them to be switched?

    .
    In theory, once into Windows, the OS will 'discover' a new device and try to install the right drivers. If the OS doesn't have the right drivers when you connect the boot drive to an AHCI-enabled port, then you will see the usual BSOD.
    The BSOD seems to appear much earlier than one would think. The system seems to reject the setup way before it gets a chance to load drivers.

    .
    4. Some recent BIOS versions will offer the option to switch to conventional - I don't know about yours in particular.
    I see no such option unless it is labeled differently. How are they usually labeled?
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
    Think of someone else instead of just yourself. There is far more to it than your utility bill.

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    Re: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    2. You will only have one (or rarely 2) eSATA ports while you will usually have 6 or more internal ports.

    Modern BIOSes will frequently allow comprehensive flexibility including which SATA port to boot from. It means you can have several bootable HDDs setup, including an eSATA one and switch between then via the BIOS or boot manager without having to swap cables in the way you used to have to do with the old PATA drives.

    When the computer starts to boot, it necessarily begins with the drivers for the storage media otherwise it won't be able to locate the rest of the OS. Therefore if the required drivers for the SATA controller are absent, then the bootup sequence will fail at the beginning.

    If you can boot the drive via the secondary SATA controller, then check Device Manager. You should find the primary SATA controller listed as having a problem, and probably listed as Unknown Device. If you install the current version of the AHCI driver, then you should find that you can reconnect the drive to the primary controller and boot up without the BSOD.

    I have had a quick read through the motherboard manual ( ftp://europe.asrock.com/manual/990FX%20Extreme4.pdf ) and see no obvious references to a classic BIOS, so ASRock may not have bothered to provide one.

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    Re: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    The "ESP" stands for external serial port? It seems more like 'extra sensory perception'.
    If you enable every port, will every port exhibit that condition?
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
    Think of someone else instead of just yourself. There is far more to it than your utility bill.

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    Re: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    The motherboard manual mentions nothing about ESP and even strongly suggests that the eSATA port is mapped to a single specific internal port on the Marvell controller.

    Either the manual is wrong or else it refers to a different version of the firmware.

    Do you have the manual that came with the board?

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    Re: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    Yes I have the manual that came with the board and one I printed out before purchase which I always do.
    .
    When the computer starts to boot, it necessarily begins with the drivers for the storage media otherwise it won't be able to locate the rest of the OS. Therefore if the required drivers for the SATA controller are absent, then the bootup sequence will fail at the beginning.
    Not to get OT, but does this have something to do with installing Win7 to a GPT which I have been unable to do?
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
    Think of someone else instead of just yourself. There is far more to it than your utility bill.

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    Re: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    Setting up a drive with a GPT will need the controller to be set to AHCI.

    If this is a fresh OS installation then you just need to set the correct (AHCI) option in the BIOS and to pass the right controller driver to Windows during the DVD bootup.

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    Re: ASRock 990FX Ext 4 MB owners; questions

    I had it that way from day one and Win7 will not install in GPT mode not matter what. Period.
    My conclusion is between the optical drive(s) and/or the MB's BIOS, is preventing it.
    When not in use, turn off the juice.
    Think of someone else instead of just yourself. There is far more to it than your utility bill.

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