Promise Fasttrak SX4000 IDE Raid Card

[Goreblast]

Got a new Raid card as detailed in the title of this thread a few days ago. Got round to testing it last night. Not good.

Card was fitting with 256mb Crucial PC100 Ram and installed into an oldish Dell Pentium 3 1gig system which has been acting as my file server. It has a 10gb boot drive and 4 western digital 200gb disks which I was planning on using as a Raid 5 array with one hot spare. This will be a back up for all important data etc that I have on my considerable home network.

Everything was installed as stated in the (rather good) manual and all drives connected as Master (via jumpers) using the single-ended supplied cables. For some reason only channels 2,3,4 show as having drives connected. Maybe the drive one IDE1 is no working me thinks so I attach the boot drive, remember you go into the Raid card bios before system boot so as a diagnostic measure this is fine. Still only 3 drives.

Well after much mucking about - tried MSI Neo2 powered by OCZ520 PSU and Soltek Athlon board powered by 380W PSU and on NO occassion could I get 4 drives seen. Mostly 3 and once only 1 (!!!) despite 4 being attached and powered. Duringthe course of this diagnostic I used 3 different motherboard/cpu/PSU combinations and 6 different harddrives. The RAM in the card definately works - was taken out of a working system that is folding 24/7 (was one of two 256mb modules in it) and put into card.

I have emailled Scan regarding this and requesting an RAM - only posting here to have a chat about it over the holidays.

Faulty card? Me thinks so.

PS- I was a bit strange that this was supplied without a box - everything wrapped in bubblewrap - was supposed to be a retail product; no mention on OEM anywhere.

Kieron

[Steve]

I've got the SX4000's SATA sister. You should hit the promise website and download their memory testing program just be sure the RAM works OK in the card - they recommend this regardless of whether the RAM works as system memory in any machine. Also check for a BIOS update.

[Goreblast]

Kez
Downloaded the RAM thing and tested my RAM and it works. Flashed bios of card to latest one and then had a flash of inspiration. I had changed all the drives to MASTER using the jumpers. I changed them all to Cable Select and it works!!!!!
Damned if I know why this should make a difference, but it does.
Thanks for the help.

[Steve]

Glad you got it sorted.

[Steve A]

Thanks Kez !