p5k and sata drive help!

slareau

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Jun 13, 2007
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18,510
First time poster.

I am building a new system based on a p5k delux board and I ran into a little snag last night while trying to install the software. I have two WD5000YS 500GB drives that I plan on using in RAID 1.

I have tried everything I think I could so far and the asus manual is super vague when it comes to this. I finally got the drives to appear in BIOS (thank god) with the sata config set to IDE. I tried to install windows xp sp2 on the system and I got blue screened out with a message saying that there was an error with the hard drive. I managed to repeat this error twice, once for having both drives plugged in and once for just one drive plugged in.
I then played with the sata config setting it to raid and ahci. no luck there either.
I happened to have x64 copy of xp so I figured why not give that a shot. This time I made it to the format screen. I selected the partition size (using 1 drive right now) and tried a quick format. this failed. i tried again on the slow format overnight and woke up this morning to a partitioned drive. I then selected for it to do the same to the second half of the drive right before I left for work.

In the manual it says that devices cannot be used if the sata config is set to IDE. This doesn't make any sense.
I've read everything about how you have to make a floppy disk with the RAID drivers and hit f6 and all that fun stuff for RAID but at this point I will be happy to just get the thing running. I will worry about RAID later.

So my questions are the following:
Does it make any sense that x64 XP would work and XP pro sp2 wouldn't?
What should the initial bios setting be for a clean install on a single, lone sata drive?
Assuming this install works, will I be able to migrate to a raid 1 without doing another clean install?

thanks guys,
Hopefully this all gets sorted out.
Steve

Let me run you through what I did and the results and see if anyone can help me figure this out.

Had both drives plugged in to motherboard one to a red SATA connector and to the black. Turned everything on. Wouldn't recognize either one.
 

slareau

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Jun 13, 2007
2
0
18,510
I just realized I put this in the wrong place, forgive me. I reposted in the asus general motherboard forum. Sorry.