Vista - Adaptec U320 39320D-R SCSI + Vista x64 Business will not work!

I have purchased Vista Business 64bit, only i cannot get it to install.

I have an Adaptec u320 39320D-R SCSI card and 2 x hard drives, when the install runs it says it cannot find any drives to install on.

I have downloaded the Vista x64 SCSI drivers from Adaptec's website which are MS certified, but if I select the browse and choose the 39320D-R (Raid enabled) drivers , Vista just BSD's saying 'Stack Overrun'.

So I tried the 39320D (non raid even though mine has host raid enabled - but not using raid! - XP even shows the SCSI controller as host raid enabled and didn't even require drivers when I installed it!)

the non raid U39320D seems to load ok but the screen still shows no drives available to insall onto, i've clicked the refesh option and nothing appears.

So now what do I do? I have a genuine Vista x64 Business copy, with genuine U320 39320D-R SCSI Card and drivers - supposedly certified by MS and they don't work.


Any ideas how I can fix this?

OK I'm getting somewhere.....

I went into the SCSI utility (CTRL-A) and disabled HostRaid.

Rebooted and ta-da Vista could see my drives, only I couldn't select the drive I wanted because it was an 'Extended' drive not the 'Primary' - obviously XP is the primary drive.

So I re-booted to go into XP to check out what I had on the 'Extended' drive before I switched the drives over in the BIOS as I can't partition drive 0 as there isn't enough space on it!

And guess what XP BSD'd on me, I tried to do a repair install of XP but the F6 additional drivers section BSD'd when installing, because the drivers are for HostRaid enabled - AGGHHHH.

So it would seem that XP will run fine with HostRaid enabled even if there is no raid array running, yet Vista will not, I don't know if it's a driver issue or a Vista issue, either way I'm screwed.

So I've had to re-enable HostRaid on the SCSI card to get XP to boot so I can go get the non-HostRaid drivers from the Adaptec website.

I will then have to disable HostRaid, do a repair install of XP using the non-HostRaid drivers, then check everything is OK.

If all is OK I will then have to switch primary drives in the BIOS so I can then start the Vista install.

What a palaver , I'm then not sure if I will be able to dual boot as XP certianly won't boot with that drive not being 'Primary' and I will have to wait and see if once Vista is installed on the other drive whether it will boot if I switch it to being the 'Extended' drive in the BIOS.

Does anyone know of this Vista 'multi-boot' program will help with this situation as it will be a nightmare if I have to keep going into the BIOS to swap drives each time I want to change the OS I want to boot into.

Oh well I guess at least I've made progress if nothing else!

Regards, 1DMF

Did you find a solution to this. I just started working with my new setup and have run into similar issues. I currently have a SATA drive with Vista x64 installed and would like to migrate to my 39320A-R card with 2x 36gb 15k drives in RAID 0. However even under my current installation whenever I try to install the driver for the 39320 card Vista hangs and then nothing works again. The driver "appears" in device manager as being "OK" but on reboot Vista fails and I have to go to "Last known good configuration".

Any ideas??

Yes, I've been running fine for over a year!

As mentioned, you need to ensure you have the non-host raid drivers and you have switched host raid off in the SCSI utility (ctrl+a)

The question is whether you are running your drives in host raid or not and then use the appropriate driver.

as for dual booting, the mobo has an F8 facility (boot select) , where I can then select the drive to boot from, which enables be to choose the OS I wish to run.

bit of a palava, but it works.

Hi, I have the same problem with Vista X64Ultimate.
I installaed Vista without HostRaid succesfully.
I followed Adaptec steps to migrate SCSI to HostRaid after I finished installaing Vista.
When Vista restarts BSOD appers again with the same errors [STOP: 0x000000F7 (0xFFFFFA60021C79F0 0X00002B992DDFA232 0X0000D466D2205DCD 0X0000000000000000)] I got during install.
I think it is much a problem of Adaptec Drivers then Vista.

Any idea?

Regards,
Stefano

Hi 1DMF, If you look elsewhere in these forums you will see a number of questions relating to the Adaptac SCSI U320 adaptor and the lack of Vista drivers for it. The adaptec is quite an old unit and although it works well on XP, Adaptec have provided limited support for Vista 64. You may need a BIOS update on your card. The URL for Adaptec cards, with links to BIOS updates is Answer

Thanks 1DMF,
but I have already upgraded SCSI card BIOS to latest version (4.30.00) and got latest HostRaid driver version too.
I waited till first Vista service pack to upgrade my pc and I was surprised to see this kind of problems.
29320AR is quite hold but it is a good controller for small server and workstations.
I cannot believe ADAPTEC to release a certified driver wich cannot be used to boot the OS.
I posted the same problem to ADAPTEC too.
Just waiting their reply.

Regards,
Stefano

Hey stefanogiron , I look forward to seing what Adaptec have to say.

My problem seemed to be specific to having HostRaid switched on but not running a raid set up and then trying to use raid drivers or non-raid drivers while raid was switched on.

Once I switched raid off and used non-raid driver everything ran fine.

I have no idea if I turned on hostraid and set my two scsi HD's to run as raid and tried the raid driver if it would work.

I currently use the two drives for dual boot 1 for XP and 1 for Vista, this for now suits me fine, I only upgrade my PC every 5 years or so, by which time SATA will have kicked my SCSI drives butt, so who knows what I'll be using then!

Hey 1DMF,
I succesfully installed Vista with RAID OFF.
But I have 3 scsi disks, 1 for OS and 2 for a raid 0 configuration.
Now I have to use Vista raid capabilities and this takes cpu overhead.

I have opened a question to ADAPTEC because I think it is a driver's problem.
I will post Adaptec resolution when it will be available.

Thanks for you responce.

Regards,
Stefano

Hi Stefano,

The only thing that I can find is this link: Adaptec - Microsoft Windows Vista x64