Bios can't read drives on off board controller

[FierceInvalid]

I am trying to implement sata raid 0 with a PCI card built on the silicon image 3112 chip (Koutech PSA150). I can create the array in the card bios utility, start windows install process and load the drivers, and even format the logical volume and write the system files. When it comes time to reboot, my board doesn't detect the drives on the PCI card. The drives work fine if connected to the onboard sata controller, but this cheap board has the ICH6, not the ICH6R, so I need to use the expansion card for raid capability

It's a ECS 915p-a rev 1.2 board using an ami bios. I have flashed up to the latest bios available from ECS. I have enabled the 'boot from other device' option, but it doesn't detect the drives. I read that disabling the auto detect on the board's sata ports might help, but I haven't found a way to do that in the AMI bios.

hopefully, someone here smarter than me might have a suggestion.

 

[Nodsu]

Your motherboard BIOS doesn't have to and will never recognise the offboard RAID arrays. Your RAID controller has its own BIOS that will kick in at some point during the POST and perform its own disk detection and booting.

Tell your mobo BIOS to boot from SCSI or "other" and set the array to be bootable in the RAID BIOS.

 

[FierceInvalid]

I have enabled the boot from other device, and the card is posting, detecting the disks, and the array. The only thing you mentioned that sticks out is setting the array to bootable in the card bios. There is no option in the menu to do this. Since the card only has 2 connectors -- therefore only one array -- would this be necessary?

 

[Nodsu]

In order to boot off the logical drive in a RAID array the RAID BIOS has to present this drive to your motherboard BIOS as a bootable disk.

Usually there is a setting in the RAID setup utility to toggle bootability. If you don't have one then most likely it is always enabled and it is up to your motherboard BIOS to recognize the bootable logical drive in RAID and boot off it. You should experiment with "other", SCSI, hd1, hd2 or whatever your BIOS offers as bootable devices and see which one applies to your RAID.