Boswachter,

does it detect the Raptor (give it some time) or does it just not boot (set bootpriority to boot from scsi first or an alternative, e.g. if they provide use onboard SATA raid controller use that ofcourse)? Did you use the SATA poweradaptercable?

It's detected, formatted it in W2K, did sandra and atto bench on it.

I only tried twice to boot from it.

- set first boot device to sata controller
-> hangs at silicon post screen

- disabled ide-disks and set only one boot-device, the sata one
-> hangs at silicon post screen

I use the normal 12V connector, no need for sata powercable.

When i have the time i'll look into the sata-bios or switch the sata cable to "slot 2" in stead of "slot 1" or try the 3-4 jumper setting in stead of the recommended 1-2. Cannot find any documentation on the jumper settings, in the web-reviews they all leave it at 1-2.

Try switching ports & cables & check if all connectors are properly seated. If it's not something there or with the controller the drive is probably DOA & it's just a matter of returning it to the dealer for warranty replacement. If you have another SATA controller somewhere or a friend who has one, you could check it there aswell (e.g. try excluding potential compatiblity issues) Definately check if all pins of the molex connectors are connected (you'd be surprised how often it ends up to be one pin has been pushed back a bit in one of the molex connectors that is causing no or erratic powersupply on the 5 or 12v line). Does the drive spin up at all?

Wel in winXP you can hotplug regular IDE devices connected to the on-chipset controller (not a raid or seperate IDE controller however.
This because windows goes in search of the drives itself instead of relying on the bios information like 98 did.

I guess it spins up, it even works, but won't boot.

Definitly update bios and driver (the disk)
There are significant improvements when using newer BIOS and drivers for SATA.

It works fine ... but i cannot use it to boot from ... yet :grin:

Latest mobo bios & silicon drivers ... of course :D

What happens if the bios is detecting the disk: it just plain hangs there & doesn't continue? (without stating it found the raptor)?

If yes, I had a similar issue with a WD ATA harddisc (older firmware revision) on an Nforce 2 board, so it could be related - the fix in that case was to cut the reset wire of the ATA cable (ofcourse, in this case we have a SATA drive). I believe it was fixed later on in software. Could you try to shortly unplug the power & replug the powerconnector of the drive?(as if in a reset) If you do that, does it continue - and if yes, with or without detecting the drive?

Ofcourse: if it's just a matter of the drive not being partitioned, formatted (no correct masterboot record) or boot priority not being set right your system might not boot either. I'm not sure how silicon image's bios handles not finding a bootblock (if it finishes gracefully with an errormessage or just sits there doing nothing)

indeed

New 16 bios fixes "hang at sata-raid post screen" :D