HPT370 / HPT372 Help

I have two Abit BX133 RAID motherboards and one Abit BX6-2 motherboard. All very stable and nice motherboards and on par with my Asus mb's in the office.
I have a question about the HPT370 onboard controller on the BX133 RAID and how it recognizes and configures to be recognized in windows.
We purchased the BX133RAID motherboards because we have a lot of hard drives because we keep upgrading and with the HPT370 and standard IDE ports you can have up to 8 IDE devices and use some hard drives for files that would just lay around doing nothing.
Since the BX133RAID has the HPT370 onboard I took two hard drives that were running off of a standard IDE connector (UDMA33) and placed them on the HPT controller. I setup the bios for the system to be booted off of the ATA100 controller. On bootup, I pressed CTRL H which brings up the HotPoint configuration menu and the drives were correctly identified and speeds at UDMA 4 and UDMA 5 which was correct as one was a ATA66 7200 rpm drive and the other a ATA100 5400 rpm drive. They were on the Primary Master and Secondary Master of the HPT370 controller. - - When going into win98SE everything works fine, however, the drives are not working at ATA66 and ATA100 and the HotPoint controller is not shown in the device manager where it is supposed to be under SCSI devices. The HotPoint Utility shows a picture of the HPT370 controller IDE3 and IDE4 Master and Slave and shows no connection to either, but obviously they are working off of that controller. The HotPoint drivers have been installed and of course we are using the 80 conductor ribbon cables.
So, the bottom line is this. Do you have to have a RAID Array created to access the Hotpoint Controller UDMA in Windows ?? Because, if this is the case, creating the array wipes the hard disk and we would have to re-install all software. I am confused here because I thought the HPT370 would support ATA66 and ATA100 UDMA drives through windows without an array being setup ?? Since they are properly auto selected in the bios as UDMA 4 and UDMA 5 the controller is certainly working although no recognition in windows.
Any help appreciated. No response back from Abit or HighPoint Technology. I keep calling HPT HotPoint so forgive me if I said that earlier.
Sincerely;
Dennis

1. RE: HPT370 / HPT372 Help
lbyard Feb-21-02 10:56 AM
In response to message 0

I don't see where you have stated what version of Windows is installed; e.g.,
Does BX133 RAID finction support Windows 95 opeerating system ?
No,the BX133 RAID finction doesn'tsupport Windows 95 opeerating system.
Larry

2. RE: HPT370 / HPT372 Help
Dennis Feb-21-02 11:44 AM
In response to message 1

The operating system that is installed is Win98SE. The BX133 RAID fully supports this version of Windows and up.
Dennis

3. RE: HPT370 / HPT372 Help
lbyard Feb-21-02 12:03 PM
In response to message 2

You should not have to setup an array. I would attempt to manually add the highpoint drivers in Add New Hardware in the Control Panel. I have had to do that for several SCSI drivers. If you have previously installed the HPT drivers they should be listed under SCSI controllers. There may be an IRQ conflict with the normal IDE controller. I would disable all motherboard resources that you do not need (e.g., serial ports, USB). I would make the primary drive on RAID controller the first boot device in the CMOS Setup. Be sure the RAID controller is enabled in the CMOS Setup. I have had my share of problems with RAID boards and do not use them for ordinary PCs--unless a high number of drives, RAID functions are an actual requirement. Larry

4. RE: HPT370 / HPT372 Help
lbyard Feb-21-02 12:06 PM
In response to message 3

Believe I sent you a private message yesterday... Could you click User Menu and respond. I installed a new version of the forum software Monday and I want to see how this feature works. Larry

5. RE: HPT370 / HPT372 Help
Dennis Feb-21-02 08:17 PM
In response to message 4

Larry;
If I could find "User Menu" to respond I would, where is it.
Dennis

6. RE: HPT370 / HPT372 Help
lbyard Feb-22-02 00:57 AM
In response to message 5

Dennis, That's Ok; another reader sent me one. After clicking Conferences, look at the menu right above it. I will probably remove that choice from my preferences because I would prefer that readers post in the forums instead of sending private message to me to answer 1-on-1. They will still be able to E-Mail me, but most of those E-Mails are responded to with a request to the sender to post in the forums. If I answer an E-Mail, I defeat the forums. The reason for the forums is to help as many readers as I (and other readers) can with very limited time to do it. Of course, E-Mail and one-on-one communication does have its purpose when appropriate. A post in a forum is available to many readers and a response to an E-Mail is usually available to only one person, and may have to be repeated. Larry

7. RE: HPT370 / HPT372 Help
Dennis Feb-22-02 01:00 PM
In response to message 6

Well, anyone reading this thread, the HP370 controller is working fine and I was the problem in the equation so I thought it may help others if I mentioned what I did.
You just don't see as well in your mid fifties like when you were younger and I had actually placed one of the 80 conductor ribbon cables end that was marked with blue to the hard drive instead of the controller. When I saw that and reversed the cable, the SCSI HotPoint showed up immediately in the device manager and everything benchmarks correctly for the new xfers. It does make quite a difference.
Dennis