Need help seting up Raid

[integrexman]

I have a Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3LR board Bios F4. I am wanting to use the AHCI or Raid. If I set the bios to AHCI and use F6 and select the ICH10R drivers on the floppy when installing XP. XP Setup says it can not find a drive to install on. If I set the Bios to Raid I can't seem to find a way to get into the Raid bios to configure the drive. Any Ideas before I pull the board?

If I disable the RAID/AHCI in the bios XP installs and runs fine. I was able to install WNIDOWS7 with AHCI turned on in the bios so I know the drive works.

I am wondering if I have to have more than one drive to get to the Raid bios? The manual says it can work with only one drive. When RAID is enabled and the machine is posting it shows the drive and says it is configured in the RAID bios but how do I get into it the manual says Ctrl+l but it doesn't work.

 

[Zorg]

First, where are the responses from the RAID guys?

I, not being a RAID guy, would load the ICH9 drivers. Just me trying what can be tried.

I'm sure that the answer is out there.

 

[integrexman]

The driver I used said it was for ich8R ich9R and ich10R. I tried 2 other drivers as well. No joy

 

[bilbat]

You need to set up the RAID arrays, first, from inside the RAID BIOS. I can't seem to get on GB's AppleIIe-hosted website right now to dl the manual (I've got more than two dozen here, but not many of the GA-xx'T' series, they're not as popular as the DDR2 MOBOs), but I'm gonna guess, from looking at the EP45T-DS3 manual that you'll find the relevant procedure on pages 85 through 97 of your manual...

Once RAID is enabled in the main BIOS, the system should boot through the BIOS, and display a message to the effect of "examining drives - RAID supports only SATA and IDE devices (someone had a problem with this - I asked 'what were you intending to hook up - a toaster, perhaps?) while it counts down the attached drives and displays a check-sum or hash entry of some sort; then it will pause at "Press Control+I to enter RAID BIOS utility" (sorry to be vague about this, I see the damned thing at least twice a day - you'd think it would be indelibly printed on my brain, somewheres!!) the 'Control I' will take you to the set-up screen, to select your array volumes and configure your RAIDs...

Then, you install your OS, and load the drivers; I always suggest loading both drivers (the Intels and the GB/jMicrons) as, that way, your future options are open, and getting the drivers installed post-OSinstall is a real pain...

 

[integrexman]

I have Raid enabled in the bios. My problem is I hit "Control + I" while it is listing the drives and it never goes into the raid bios. I have watched it post several times and it doesn't show the "Control I" or something else to go into the raid setup. The manual says to use Ctrl + I when prompted to enter the Raid bios. It even says under the drive that it is setup in the "raid bios".

 

[JDocs]

No, just after the BIOS screen your talking about for a few seconds there should be another screen that says 'Hit xxx keys to setup up raid'. Probably Control-I as recommended.

 

[bilbat]

A little later, I've got to reboot this thing six (or nine) times to fix an MS Outlook problem with a shared file accessed by three OSs - I'll take a more careful look at the behavior, make some notes, and report back...

 

[shabaa]

You have to set up your raid array in the bios before you can load the os... I believe it is the second boot screen .. hit the Ctrl + I and then you should be able to set up the array.....

 

[Zorg]

In the OP he said that he set AHCI and couldn't load the drivers in XP, but windows 7 loaded fine. That's problem #1. Problem #2 also in the OP is that he can't get to the RAID setup screen. So telling him that he needs to set up the RAID in BIOS doesn't really help him since he already knows that.

 

[integrexman]

Problem solved. Thanks for all the comments. So everyone knows here is how I solved the problem. I final got Gigabyte on the phone.

1. They told me the Raid/AHCI drivers on the CD that came with the board were not correct.
2. When I set the Raid option in the Bios to AHCI and made a floppy with the drivers from Gigabytes site I thought there were only 4 drivers to chose from when in XP setup. I did not realize that there were more drivers in the list I just had to use up arrow to see them. I selected ICH10R AHCI and XP installed with no problem.
3. Gigabyte told me there HAD to be at least 2 drives to get into the Raid Bios. The Manual says "If you do not want to create a RAID, you may prepare only one hard drive" (I was planning on migrating it on to a second drive later) this is why Control + I never opened the Raid Bios.

When I installed Xp a created a 25gig partition to install on and made an image. Next I installed WIN7beta and chose the Custom/advanced option and created a 20 partition(Win7 took up 10gig) then I used disk management to format the rest of the drive to use for data on both XP and 7. Dual-boot was cake doing it this way.

Thanks.

 

[Zorg]

Happy to see you got it worked out.

Thanks for the feedback, too many people don't come back and fill in the blanks. I thought you got the driver from Intel's site. Nice to know about the BIOS issue, another piece of info missing from a manual, go figure.

I don't use RAID, maybe someday I'll build a "R"AID0 for kicks. I also don't use AHCI, it just makes it a potential hassle for recovery purposes and it doesn't really give you anything unless you need hotswap or NCQ.