Promise FastTrak TX4660 issue when used with NVidia MediaShield Raid

Building a new machine, I have experienced the lack of compatibility between the Sata RAID Controllers from the FastTrak TX Series and some on-board Sata RAID controllers 🙁

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I have 6 Sata II controllers on my Motherboard “Asus Striker II Formula“. They support RAID thanks to the NVidia MediaShield Storage Technology.

Yesterday, I plugged into a PCI-e 16x port of this motherboard a Promise FastTrak TX4660 controller card with RAID support.

Unfortunately, the initialization sequence of the FastTrak (during the boot sequence) kept  blocked forever on the message “Press <Ctrl-F> to enter FastBuild Utility”. I was  unable to either enter this utility pressing Ctrl-F or continue the boot sequence (and start  the OS). And although the PC didn’t look completely freezed, Ctrl-Alt-Delete was not responding either. Notice: I was using a PS2 keyboard, just to be sure… as some USB controllers are sometimes not initialized before the end of the boot sequence to make this one shorter.

I quickly discovered that the FastTrak was passing successfully if I was disabling the RAID Support on the motherboard. But then, my PC was not able to start the OS as this one was installed on a RAID 0 array managed by the motherboard’s controllers.

To make it clear: if I was restoring the “default settings” in the Bios (which does not enable the RAID support), then the FastTrack was passing successfully (or I could enter the utility pressing Ctrl-F). But as soon as I was re-enabling the Raid Support on the Sata Controller of my motherboard (and nothing else), the boot sequence stopped after the message mentioned above…

This morning, I read that the Promise FastTrak is incompatible with some other Raid Controllers. I assumed I was in such a case. So, I started to hope that a Bios Update would possibly fix the incompatibility.

1) I did first update the Bios of my Asus Striker II Formula from v1305 to v2402 (the latest) using the tool of Asus, the “EZ Flash 2” available in the BIOS itself, and the new firmware copied on a USB key. The update was a piece of cake…

Unfortunately, it did not solve the problem 🙁

2) I did next downgrade the Bios of my Promise FastTrak Tx4660 from v2.9.0.0039 (the latest) to v2.9.0.0037 (the previous one) using a Bootable USB Key created with a tool from BootDisk and the flash utility found on Promise.com

And BINGO!!!

The boot sequence completes now successfully with RAID enabled on the motherboard. Only notice that I see a black screen for 15s to 25s while the FastTrak scans for the drives…

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