SATA Raid Setup

[Mavicator]

I'm at wit's end. I'm installing a new set of drives on my system in a Raid 1 (mirror) configuration. XP Setup does not see my drive(s) even after loading the correct drivers.

I've updated the Bios which fixed crashing problems during Windows Setup, and I'm using the latest drivers for the Promise 378 Raid controller. I've tried disabling the normal (non-raid) SATA controller and I've tried both XP and 2003 drivers for the Raid controller.

What am I missing here? HELP!!!

Here are the system specs:

Asus A8V Deluxe
Athlon 64 3000+
1024 Corsair XMS DDR3200 (2x512)
2 x WD2500 Hard Drives (250gb, 7200rpm, 16mb cache)
BFG GeForce 6800 256mb AGP
CD-R and DVD-RW both on IDE0

-- Ah sh*t! sys64738 --

 

[pat]

In your manual, there is a step by step RAID configuration help...

(\__/)
(=<b>˚</b>.'=)That was my bunny..terminator!!! Now terminated...

 

[Mavicator]

Been there, done that. It's all installed correctly and the mirror is functional. However Windows refuses to see a hard drive. I booted into DOS and can see the drive there but I can't install Windows on the machine.

HELP!

-- Ah sh*t! sys64738 --

 

[pat]

You even get the correct drivers and press F6 to install third party RAID/SCSI drivers at the beginning of the install?

(\__/)
(=<b>˚</b>.'=)That was my bunny..terminator!!! Now terminated...

 

[Mavicator]

Indeed. I tried the drivers from the CD first, which is about a year old. Then I tried the latest driver from the Asus site, and when Windows asked which to install, it listed the correct Fast Trak 378 Raid Controller for 4 differnt operating systems. I tried XP and 2003.

No matter what I try, at the point where I press "Enter" to install Windows, I do not get a screen where I select which drive to install to but rather a screen saying Windows detects no hard drives.

I've never had a problem like this before, especially one I can't figure out eventually. ARGH!!!

-- Ah sh*t! sys64738 --

 

[Mavicator]

For anyone interested, I finally got this issues resolved. It seems there are THREE drivers needed during installation. Fast Trak 378 Raid Driver, Fast Trak Miniport Driver and VIA Raid Driver.

 

[Mavicator]

The Mobo has two Raid controllers, one for SATA Raid and one for IDE Raid. The only thing I can figure is that the VIA chipset controls both to a certain extent. I still don't know what the miniport driver is for exactly, but that was the magic ingredient that made it all work.

My device manager lists the following SCSI/RAID controllers:

VIA Serial ATA RAID Controller
WinXP Promise FastTrak 378 (tm) Controller
WinXP Promise RAID Console SCSI Processor Device