BIOS Doesn't See RAID Drives

[teddymoe]

I am installing a fresh copy of Window XP Pro SP2 on a pair of SATA Western Digital Rators, RAID 0. The drives are attached to a Promise FastTrak SX4300 RAID contoller card. The MOB is a SuperMicco C2SBX.

After setting up the Array, I go thru the Windows setup, including installing the RAID card drivers. Windows recognizes the raided drives, formats the drives, and proceeds to copy the setup files to the harddrive. During the 'copy' process, Windows needs to reboot to continue the process.

Here's the problem ... Windows boots from the install CD again because BIOS doesn't see the raided drives as a boot option. It's not listed. Therefore Windows can't see it as a bootable drive to continue the setup process.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

 

[MrLinux]

Have you enabled Expansion ROM support for the expansion slot which holds the RAID card.

 

[teddymoe]

Yes, the PCI-X slot the card is in is setup as follows:
Options ROM Scan - Enabled
Enabled Master - Enabled
Latency Timer - Default

 

[jitpublisher]

What motherboard? You should have an option in your boot order to boot from other devices, or something similar. Do you have it in your boot order?

 

[teddymoe]

The motherboard is a SuperMicro C2SBX. The RAID drive does not show in the boot order listing.

 

[halcyon]

The RAID drives might now show but the RAID card should show as an option to boot from. Can you list for us all the available boot options in your BIOS?

 

[teddymoe]

Here goes ... Boot Priority Order
1. PCI SCSI: Sony DVD Drive
2. Legacy Floppy Drives
3. All USB Floppy
4. All IDE HDD
5. All PCI Bev
6. All PCI SCSI
7. All IDE CDROM

I have re-ordered this boot order several time from their present arrangement.

 

[jitpublisher]

The line about the Sony PCI SCSI device....looks like Windows can be confusing this device for what should be the PCI SCSI device. Try reordering so that CDROM is first, and the PCI SCSI device is second. Remove any other devices from this list that you do not need as a boot option. Is there a submenu under any of the SCSI devices when you highlight them (like you would have for your SATA and IDE devices) to set the order of the devices, and set them as part of the boot order, or take them out individually
Any luck with any of that?