Rampage IV Extreme Asmedia SATA ports not working

[TigerNightmare]

Hey, all, I just built this computer and I've been having issues with the non-Intel SATA ports. I understand I'm only supposed to put hard drives in it, but nothing I plug into it works.

Right now, I have three drives as a RAID 5, a blu-ray drive, and a 3.5" hot swap bay plugged into the Intel controller and a single hard drive and an eSATA port on my chassis plugged into the two Asmedia ports. The plan is to switch to RAID 10, transfer all my files over, then grow the array to four drives while keeping a non-RAID disk for DVR recordings.

I downloaded and flashed the latest BIOS from the website (4403) and everything looks alright there. I don't see the Asmedia OPROM when booting, even though it's enabled. Same thing if that other setting says Force BIOS or Keep Current. In Device Manager under IDE/ATAPI controllers, I see Asmedia 106x SATA Controller, ATA Channel 0 and ATA Channel 1, but I'm thinking those are the built-in eSATA ports in the back. I have the latest drivers installed, but no matter what I plug into there, nothin. It's not the drives either. I tried different ones and they all get recognized if I use the Intel controller. Please tell me there's something I can do to get them working. Would be a huge pain in the ass to RMA at this point.

[Pezhan]

I have also that problem, more one year and Asus never answered about my problem...
as of today, I still have the same problem

[HiVizMan]

TigerNightmare wrote:
Are you using the same BIOS version? You're saying the SATA ports on both controllers are supposed to appear on the same screen?

No I am not saying that. I am saying I was using my RIVE and was not able to duplicate your issue but then I do not have a RAID 5 array built at the minute.

Have asked some one else to look at this thread as I can not see how to help you based on what I am seeing.

[Nodens]

What you heard about the Asmedia Option ROM is not what you think. Those older versions you speak about did not have the OROM at all in them and neither did they have an OROM on/off switch in the UEFI. These later versions do have the Asmedia OROM. But the point is that you don't need to actually load the OROM because you are not actually booting from those ports. Disable it for starters as it may be causing a conflict.

Other than that, you said 2 things that are possibly important here.

1) You said you have a eSATA header connected to one of the Asmedia ports. I want you to remove this for the testing.
2) You also said that you are using a hotswap bay. I want you to remove this also for testing. Connect the drive directly. And only connect 1 drive to first Asmedia port. Nothing else.

Let me know how that goes.

[TigerNightmare]

I disabled the OROM and then I used three different drives for testing. One is a new 1 TB WD Green formatted under 32 bit XP, one is an old 1 TB WD Caviar Black with lots of data on it also formatted on XP, and one is a new 4 TB WD Black formatted on 64 bit Windows7 using the Intel controller. I tried one of them at a time in one of the ports, then I tried the other port alone. I got a different SATA cable and plugged a separate power cable into a different rail just in case. Nothing worked.

[Nodens]

Did you remove the eSATA header and the hotswap bay while testing these?

If you did, what can you see in the device manager with only 1 drive connected to a single Asmedia port? Do you see the controller device? If yes examine the channels, do you see devices connected to them?

[TigerNightmare]

The hot swap bay and eSATA are both unplugged. I only have one drive plugged into one port right now. In Device Manager, it's the same as it's always been. Under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, it says Asmedia 106x SATA Controller, ATA Channel 0 and ATA Channel 1. No conflicts or error flags. When I look at the properties, it doesn't show any devices connected. The controller properties lets me turn on or off driver cache mode and "Enable safely remove disk." I doubt messing with these would do anything.

[Nodens]

No changing those settings ais irrelevant. Have you installed the Asmedia driver or it's the Microsoft OOBE driver? If you haven't installed the Asmedia driver, try doing so. If you did already or try it and there's no difference, RMA the board since we've covered everything that could be wrong.

[TigerNightmare]

I made sure I installed the latest driver from the ASUS website before RMAing the first time and I checked it again just now. I found it odd that the driver date in the device manager properties is 1/5/2012 when the date on the ASUS website is some 6 months later, but it seems to be the same one, 1.3.4.0. I tried using the Vista and XP drivers and I think the XP one moved the device to the storage controllers category next to the Intel controller, but there weren't two extra ATA channel devices listed and it didn't work either way. I tried using the previous 1.3.1.0 driver. It doesn't look like having the wrong driver is the issue unless they're all faulty.

Can I have any kind of assurance that another RMA request will not have the same result? Can I get ASUS to pay for shipping this time? This is a very, very expensive motherboard and $15 once is okay but if I have to keep sending it in, the cost is going to go over $500. And if there's some kind of standard RMA testing procedure, it does not see this problem. I would like more communication with someone sending me an e-mail or two that says they did this and that with working hard drives in a Windows environment so I don't just give up my computer for two weeks with nothing to show for it again. So frustrating.

[Nodens]

If I get it right you have gone through RMA once already correct?

Also can you do one last test for me please? Download a Fedora Live CD from here:http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora (Use Fedora because I know it supports the controller right out of the box).
Boot it and let me know if you can see the drives there. I want to rule out anything OS dependent. If you still can't see the drives there, I will forward your issue to someone that can help you (since you have gone through RMA once).

[TigerNightmare]

Finally got this done. Booted from a flash card and, despite weird issues where mouse clicking was unresponsive sometimes, I was able to look through the file manager. The drive plugged into the Asmedia controller was not visible. It could see the RAID array on the Intel controller but not access it. I assume that's a driver issue. I couldn't find anything like device manager to further investigate, but I might have missed something seeing as I've never used Linux before. So, probably not an OS issue.