Installing XP Pro 64: "No drive available"

[spork891]

Hello,

I am trying to upgrade this machine from Win2k to Windows XP Pro x64 OEM. I am using a SATA drive, and I have the proper F6 disk ready to go. After booting from the XP 64 CD and installing the RAID drivers, the installation halts, complaining that there is no drive available. The exact words are: "setup did not find any hard disk drives on your computer."

I have an Asus K8V Mobo and I am using their x64 RAID drivers entitled VIAMRX64. The hard drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB SATA.

Isn't the installer supposed to go to a section where I define partitions and reformat the hard drive at this point? Or have I been spoiled by the Win2k installer that actually made this quite easy by doing it from within the installer? Is there some crucial bit of software I am missing?


Cheers,

Spork

[glc]

You don't install the RAID drivers unless you are using RAID, you install the standard SATA drivers.

[Lespaul20]

I think the RAID drivers are the SATA driver. Thats how my motherboard works.

I look and found this. http://www.techimo.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120094

Look in BIOS and see if there is something like that.

[spork891]

Hmmm... although I do have this drive working as a RAID drive in Win2k, it does seem likely that WinXP 64 may work differently.

In any case, I have tried this setting and it didn't seem to change the behavior of the windows installer at all. I think that I may go to a new BIOS version and see whether that causes "IDE mode" to be more effective.

Does anyone know more about this mysterious "IDE mode?" Especially what implications it has on performance and whether it could, of course, get the drive working at all?

[glc]

IDE mode is simply non-RAID for standalone drives.

[spork891]

Well, even though I have been using this Mobo for more than 3 years now, I decided to RTFM. I have determined that I did indeed have a the correct driver disk for my RAID controller...

But the wrong RAID controller. This board has two, a Promise Controller, and another one on the Via chip set. I believe I am plugged into the Promise one, and I was definitely installing the VIA drivers.

The problem is now likely solved; I will know for sure once I check under the hood this evening. Man, SATA can be irritating to get running. I can't complain though, since I had been lazy about really learning anything about RAID all these years, and now I know quite a bit more about it.

Thank you to all responders,

Spork