I am building a new pc and wish to set up a RAID1 configuration.

System

MSI P35 Nero 2 MB
Intel Core 2 Quad 6600
2 - WD 500gb SATA2 16mb 7200rpm WD50000AAKS hard drives
4 GB Ram
GeForce 8800GTS Video Card
Soundblaster X-Fi extreme Gamer
750w coolmaster power supply
Lian Li V2100 case
2 DVD Drives


When I first booted it up it saw the DVD's Drives but not the HD's. I played around with cables and SATA sockets on the MB and got one drive recognized... now I am struggling to see the second drive before I load the operating system. I switched the cable from the drive that was seen to the other drive and it still sees one drive... so the drive is not bad. The SATA cables are 36" long as this is a big case.


I got the BIOS to see one drive on SATA6...but SATA 1 - 5 ore "Not Detected"... I changed the cable to a shorter one...still does not see it at boot up... I have not set up the RAID1 configuration yet so it should not be acting as one drive right?

Am I missing something obvious?

You might hate me for asking this, but have you tried each drive in every SATA port on the MB, it could be a MB issue?

I also noticed that there is a lighter blue SATA connector on the board is any of you board connected in it? If so try connecting it to one of the 4 other ports (the light-blue SATA is provided by one of the MB's sub-component, the Marvell 88SE6111, and might not be recognised by the BIOS itself).

Two of the ports are covered by the video card...I did not even try to connect to them...however to get one drive recognized I plugged it into the light blue port...after they both were not recognized in the black exposed ports...but I just moved the cable off the light blue port put it back into the black port and ...viola it sees them both....and that is the way I installed them in the first place...dang...must have been some pilot error along the way somewhere.

Ok, to use the light blue port you have to enable the extra IDE controller in the bios.

This also enables the Pata port.

Yeh panicatak, also reading the motherboard manual can help too...

True,

Its a great high end board at a mid end price!

My q6600 will do 449x8 to give just under 3.6Ghz but I leave mine at 3Ghz as it only needs the jumper changed to 333 boot strap and no other changes (ie voltages)

OK I have the Raid 1 setup...now a dumb question...this is a new machine and I have not set up a RAID system before. Do I really need to have a floppy to install XP in a RAID 1 configuration?

The XP setup disk will not allow me to go anywhere but to the floppy if I do the F6 prompt...I installed a floppy drive and enabled it and made a SATA driver floppy on another machine from the MSI setup disk but the machine does not see it... the floppy light blinks but the insert disc prompt returns.

BTW...I read the manual and the instructions like most manuals are less than clear.

I used the driver from Intels website.

Are you sure the floppy disk drive works? Is the disk you are using readable?

I got a floppy to read finally...but I am getting an error

"txtsetup.oem caused an unexpected error (512) at line 1747 in d:\xpsprtm\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c."

I tried both Intels and MSI drivers and they both get the same error.

have you tried another floppy disk\drive?

I bought a new floppy drive... now I stripped the txtsetup.oem file of all references to anything but the ICH9R driver and the system accepted it and loaded the drivers but when XP went to load it said it could not find the hard drives.

The BIOS is set to RAID and the RAID configuration shows up at bootup

I rebooted without F6 just for drill and no drives were found?

I am getting closer inch by inch.

strange, I am not riunning raid, but i am running ACHI mode.

I had to use a Floppy and F6 and it worked like a dream, not sure what your issue is. I have a couple of spare matched drives, I will give a raid install a go and see what I find.

Have you tried http://forum.msi.com.tw/

Yes I have posted on MSI's forum...the drives are not formatted...would that make a difference?

Not a s far as I am concerned, Once the Raid is setup I would have thought Windows would treat it as one big drive (assuming Raid levels)

not formatted should also be detected in the bios except on windows for non patitioned drive.

Would it make a difference that the drives are on SATA ports 4 and 5?

Also would the name of the array make any difference?... I am searching for anything here.