More RAID 0 problems...

[kdburns]

I'm seem to be in a holding pattern. Can someone jerk me out of it?

First things first, this is my stuff, ASUS P4C800-E, P4 2.8Ghz, Northwood, 2- WD Raptor 74GB, 1- WD SATA 160GB, Radeon 9600XT, Antec True 430W PSU, Lite-On DVD+/-RW, 2- 512 Transcend/PC3200.

I have the two Raptors in the Intel SATA 1 and 2, the 160 in the Promise SATA 1. In the BIOS I went to IDE Config and enabled everything there. Next I rebooted and hit CTL-1 and set up the Raptors in RAID 0. Rebooted again, the setup screen recognized the two drives as being a RAID. When I go back into the BIOS I do not see the 160G drive. And by the way, I didn't see it before, I forgot to metion that.

I have the OEM version of Windows XP Pro. I put in the Preinstallation disk and it gave a black setup screen that read:

D:\i386\system32>factory -winpe
D:\i386\system32>

That's it. So, I ejected that disk, rebooted and tried to install windows. It says that there are not any hard drives.

Should I un-RAID the drives? Can I RAID them after installing Windows?

I don't why this is so complicated. Maybe I'm making it harder than it should be?

Thank you in advance.

[glc]

I'd do it this way........

Remove the 160 for now. Reboot with the XP cd and press F6 when prompted to install 3rd party drivers, have a floppy ready with the Intel raid drivers on it. Once Windows is installed, then hook the 160 up and partition/format it in Disk Management.

Don't use the preinstall disk.

[kdburns]

I disconnected the 160.

I downloaded the drivers but they are too large for a floppy. So I thought I would be smart and install an additional cd drive I had but it doesn't see it the BIOS.

Any suggestions?

[kdburns]

Oh, I forgot to mention. I have the dvd as master and the cd as slave.

[kdburns]

I'm still stuck going around in circles.

I downloaded a driver but I can't get it on a floppy. I tried using a cd but that won't work either.

I read this information from another site

(a) In case you install W2K/XP you MUST hit "F6" immediately after the blue welcome screen pops up. After hitting "F6" you will be asked whether you want to install a driver for a storage device not included in the W2k/XP own device driver inventory, confirm this and push the floppy with the RAID drivers in the slot. Soon afterwards you will be asked to select the RAID driver from the floppy, and then the selected drivers will be loaded. You find the necessary drivers either on the RAID controller installation floppy disk, or -in case you have an on-board controller- copy them from the mobo installation CD to a floppy. In case you have Win98/ME, it is NOT necessary to load any "outside" driver during the installation process. You have to do this AFTER the first boot into Win98/ME. AGAIN: if you have W2K/XP and if you miss "F6", means you don't load the RAID drivers from the floppy, there is no way that W2K will work: When you try to boot for the first time you will be greeted by a BSOD, because W2K cannot find the drivers for the RAID controller and cannot recognize the RAIDed HDD. In case of XP some older RAID controller drivers are already included in the OS, in that caes theoratcially it's not necessary to hit F6. But the newer ones, for example for SATA controllers are not included. You should therefore always work with the F6 key and load the dirvres during installation from a floppy.

So obviously I need the drivers but can't figure out how to install them.

Can anyone help me? I'm just about in tears over this.

Thanks

[glc]

You don't have to copy the whole driver package onto the floppy.

Download iaa35r.zip from the Asus support site. Unzip it into an empty folder. Double click on MAKEDISK.EXE and put a floppy disk in your A drive.

[kdburns]

Success!!

I just wanted to thank you for all the help glc.

I got things up and running late Friday evening.

After looking around on the ASUS cd I did find the drivers but they were in a folder named IAA and I was not making the association.

As I stated in one of my other posts I am mostly an apple user and so some things that are problably obvious to most here are not to me. I can't remember the last time I used a floppy for anything!

Once again, thanks. I have learned so much from this.