Ahh, Raid/Sata Pissin Me off

[scwam]

I've nearly given up on this. Tom's forum is now my last resort. I just bought 2 250g Maxtor Diamondmax ultra 16mb cache Sata Drives. My Abit Av8 only has 2 sata connectors.
Both drives are being recognized by WinXP Pro, both have been formatted and partitioned into 2 Dynamic discs using Windows Xp Pro Disc Management. Both discs have exactly the same partitions with the same drive letters on each drive for given partitions.
So far, I believe I'm doing this right. Right?
I've downloaded the "Intel/VIA/Silicon Image 3112/3114 SATA Driver Disk" from Abit's sight and installed it. The programs works, and recognizes the drives. There is another driver program that I could not install called "VIA SATA 8237 Driver" (no setup icon available). So I don't know if this is needed. I'm sure the same files are on my motherboard cd so I didn't bother with that cd.
Since both drives seem to be recognized and they work fine I decided to install Windows XP Pro on the Sata Drives in the current Raid0 format that I've put them in. I attempt to install a new copy of the OS while working in the current OS. When the Computer restarts of course it doesn't find the

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by scwam on 03/31/05 09:54 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[scwam]

Sata drives to continue windows installation. My BIOS with regard to RAID only has the following selections:
"Bootable Add-In device"
choice of: PCI Slot Device or Onchip Sata Raid.

I have it set to Onchip Sata Raid.

The other selection is:
"Sata ROM Raid"
This is Enabled.

I Know that SP 2 is supposed to help XP recognize drives over 137gb. But all my drives are being recognized, even the older 200gb drives. The new sata 250gb drives are not being found when the system tries to install an additional copy of Win Xp Pro to those drives.
However, the system Post DOES recognize both drives (displays the drive names) and says something about "Raid: None"
So if the post recognizes the drives are there, why cant Windows XP find those drives to install a fresh copy?

I don't have a Floppy drive to make a bootable disk for the Raid. Why can't one just use the CD to do this.
What Am I doing wrong??

I got 200gb of video files I want to run in Raid0.
Ship sinking, must jump,.. ... Help... elp Hllp

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by scwam on 03/31/05 09:47 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[scwam]

I finnaly found a detailed sight. So I guess I can not do this without having a floppy drive. Curses!!!

 

[dmroeder]

What I did with mine was connect 1 drive at a time and formatted them with the Maxtor software that came with my drives. If I remember right I then setup my RAID BIOS for RAID 0 and when it rebooted, I had the Maxtor software in my drive and combined the disks and formatted them as one. Then during the windows installation you have an option to format or leave the partition and install windows. I had to choose leave the partition. You do have to have a floppy disk with the RAID drivers on them. If you lost it, you should be able to download it from the manufacturers website. At the beginning of the windows install you will be asked to press F6 if you want to install them.

It's been a while and I'm pretty sure that is how I had to handle it. It took me a bit to figure it out, and I was about to give up too. Give it one more shot and see how it goes. Hope this helped

 

[scwam]

Thanks for the reply. I try what you mentioned. I just seems silly to me that you need a FD to boot the drivers from. Just as Windows can be booted from the CD/DVD why don't they allow the drivers to be booted from cd/dvd? Unfortunately the only FD I have is from some old crappy amd k6 which I've hooked up and can not even tell if the ribbon cable is in backwards or the power cable is in backwards either. I hate this low tech stuff.

 

[Crashman]

Compared to IDE drives, the cable does go "backwards" on a floppy, that is with the stripe on the left rather than right as you face the back of the drive. If it's hooked up wrong, you'll see the light come on, and stay on constantly.

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