RAID 0 setup questions's

[RCPilot]

I'm trying to set up a older computer for RAID 0 to do video ripping. Here's the system:

ASUS A7V133
1.33 gig T-Bird
1024 SD133 RAM
ASUS TI4200 vid card
2 x 80 gig WD JB Editions HDD
52 x 24 x 52 CD burner

This board has RAID 0 on it. I have it jumpered correctly for RAID. I booted it up & the FastTrack BIOS for the Promise Controller comes up. I create the RAID 0 setup, save it & it's recognized in BIOS.

Now here's where I'm having the trouble. The manual is out of date because it walks you through installing 98 or ME. Says basically, use the boot disk & format the array, then load the OS. I'm installing XP. XP won't recognize the array. I see where you can hit F6 & install 3rd party drivers for RAID, but it only looks for a floppy & I don't have one installed. I've read the RAID FAQ's but am unclear.

Do I need a floppy to load a driver for XP? If so, what driver. The disk that came with the MOBO has the RAID driver on that & XP isn't supported on it. I downloaded the latest Promise driver for the board & unzipped it. Is that what I put on the floppy & install as the 3rd party driver for XP?

Hey thanks for the help. I'm playing with this machine to learn RAID.

Honey, what's that smell? Don't bother me now I'm working on my computer! OOPS!

 

[smitbret]

Yep, you need to get the RAID drivers on a floppy disk. There's no way around it that I know of. Someone else probably knows how, though. You'll want to make sure that the file on the floppy is the '.inf' file. Make sure it's not inside a folder or something like that.
-Brett

 

[RCPilot]

I'm checking that now. Got floppy, but still can't get the file to load when I hit F6. Going to try & see the .inf now.

Honey, what's that smell? Don't bother me now I'm working on my computer! OOPS!

 

[RCPilot]

I tried that. Now it says it wants a text.oem file or something. I must not know which driver to get on the floppy.

Honey, what's that smell? Don't bother me now I'm working on my computer! OOPS!

 

[RCPilot]

I've got the 3rd party drivers to load during the XP install by pressing F6. When it says Windows is now going to start press enter, then it says no HDD's attached, F3 to exit. Is it something in BIOS or XP? I know it's something simple holding me up, but can't seem to find it. HELP!!!

Honey, what's that smell? Don't bother me now I'm working on my computer! OOPS!

 

[sjonnie]

You need to go to <A HREF="http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A7V133" target="_new">ASUS support</A> and download their latest <A HREF="http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/selectftp.aspx?l1_id=1&l2_id=10&l3_id=4&m_id=1&f_name=UltraWinDrvB29.zip~zaqwedc" target="_new">RAID driver</A>, expand it to floppy and use that during WinXP setup. Drivers directly from promise don't always work with onboard RAID chips.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=114979" target="_new">My PCs</A>

 

[RCPilot]

Yes I did that. XP install takes the driver fine when I press F6. It goes on & get's ready to install XP & that's where it can't see a disc or the RAID array.

Honey, what's that smell? Don't bother me now I'm working on my computer! OOPS!

 

[khha4113]

XP install takes the driver fine when I press F6. It goes on & get's ready to install XP & that's where it can't see a disc or the RAID array.

It should have listed what driver (eg. for Win98, W2k or XP) for you to choose. Then, you need to highlight that driver and press <b>ENTER</b>. At that time, WinXP is going to load the driver. It seems that you don't have correct driver for XP in your floppy.
BTW, the installation file for Windows's driver has extension <b>.inf</b> like <b>ultra.inf</b>.

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[JAGedlion]

find out which controller you have and seearch on google, there are probably more recent drivers. Either way when you find a set (their also probably on your CD but those on your CD probably wont work with XP, unless it support windows 2k, some of those work with XP) copy them to a floppy and follow the steps

 

[RCPilot]

I have done all of that & XP takes the drivers with no problem. When I press F6 it reads the floppy & gives me 3 choices, XP, 2000, & NT Promise FastTrack Drivers. So I select XP. It takes the XP driver & displays it & says its going to install it hit Enter to continue.

Once I hit enter Windows inspects the system & stops again quite a ways farther into the setup at the Welcome Setup screen. It says to install Windows press Enter. To Repair Windows setup press R. Once I press Enter here (it's not the place you load the 3rd party drivers, they're already loaded at this point in the setup) Windows says it can't install because there are no HDD's in the system. For some reason XP will not see the HDD drives in RAID.

If I change the jumpers to non RAID & leave everything the same XP will load on C drive & D drive is present as well. What is funny after it loads XP when you look in Device Manager it shows the HDD's as SCSI Disc Devices. This puzzles me & is the only thing I can see that is different anywhere.

I've feed it the XP disc & floppy, jumper, cabled & done every thing I can possibly think of until I'm blue in the face & I can not get it to load XP on the RAID array after I create it & load the drivers for it. I guess the HDD's vanish at that point for all I know.

Honey, what's that smell? Don't bother me now I'm working on my computer! OOPS!

 

[sjonnie]

Yes I did that. XP install takes the driver fine when I press F6. It goes on & get's ready to install XP & that's where it can't see a disc or the RAID array.

I have had exactly that experience. Got the updated promise driver, pressed F6, loaded the driver into Windows setup then only to find it will not recognize the RAID array. XP will load any driver you give it for a SCSI/RAID device, of course, it won't work if it does not recognize it as the right driver for your device (you can force it to do that later, but not during windows setup). It is not working in this case simply because you have the wrong driver. Get the original driver from the CD that came with your MOBO or download the official ASUS driver from the ASUS website. That should make it work. If not I'm don't know what else to try.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=114979" target="_new">My PCs</A>

 

[unoc]

Did you formatted the RAID volume ?
Within DOS boot (after booting with a dos floppy) you should see without any problems the array. Then use fdisk to create at least one partition and activate it. Then you must format the partition using fat32. Repeat all the procedure (F6.. drivers from floppy... etc.). Now XP should see the DOS partition and can copy on it the installation files. When asked you can allow XP to convert the partiton using NTFS.
As the OS has been installed, you can finish to partition and format the remaining partition on the RAID volume.

______________________ <font color=red>A straight line never ends……………….until it comes up against a vicious circle</font color=red>

 

[RCPilot]

You know that's about the only thing I didn't try on that machine. I thought about it, but didn't try it. I'll see if that's the ticket. It says to do that in the manual, but that's written for 98 & ME. I'll let you know.

Honey, what's that smell? Don't bother me now I'm working on my computer! OOPS!

 

[nowareman]

From WD's Knowledge Base:

<A HREF="http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=Qznb9WMg&p_lva=&p_faqid=913&p_created=1047068027&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTQmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1yYWlkJnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9NCZwX3Byb2RfbHZsMT05MSZwX3Byb2RfbHZsMj05MiZwX2NhdF9sdmwxPTI3JnBfc29ydF9ieT1kZmx0JnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=" target="_new">Why do EIDE drives disappear from the IDE RAID array or system after a short period of error-free operation?</A>

 

[RCPilot]

We're going to go at it again this week to get RAID on this machine. I'll download that file & see if we need it. Thanks for the heads up!

Honey, what's that smell? Don't bother me now I'm working on my computer! OOPS!

 

[soulprovider]

I had a similar problem when I set up Raid 0 on my A7V133. I was trying to use the latest drivers from the web but none would work.

What did work though was using the original driver on the Motherboards driver CD. On there theres one for Windows 2000 which needs to go onto a floppy.

When you hit F6 during install you'll see 2 or 3 drivers listed. You need to choose the 'simple' one.

Once you've got XP installed you'll see a popup window telling you theres a problem with the Promise Filter Driver. Just download the latest one and you'll be set.

<b>Vorsprung durch Dontwerk</b>.....<i>as they say at VIA</i>

 

[RCPilot]

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind when we try it again. I know it's some little thing. Got to wait until he brings it back to try it again.

Honey, what's that smell? Don't bother me now I'm working on my computer! OOPS!