Why Boot and System Disk?

[mo]

I have an Asus A7N8X-E motherboard with 4 drives. I'm told that Disk 0 and
Disk 1 are the HDs on the IDE chain and that Disk 2 and Disk 3 (last one
invisible) are on the SATA connectors and are SATA HDs, Disk 3 being a
mirror of Disk 2 using the raid level 0 feature.

I've tried to install winxp on Disk 2 but I'm informed that system files
must be places on Disk 0 while it's in there. When I do setup it says that
system files must be on Disk 0, and I can't leave it unformatted so all the
necessary files go on Disk 2. Obviously I can't effectively Ghost/image the
main hard drive, Disk 2, because necessary system files are on Disk 0. What
can I do to install? Will I have to yank the other HDs and install WinXP
first?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Guest]

First format the SATA drives,xp can do that in diskmgmt.msc,both need
a primary partition and format each in ntfs,then shutdown,disconnect the
IDE drives,on start-up,enter BIOS,enable RAID configuration,install xp cd,
boot to xp cd,install the drivers from floppy,then install xp.When the boot
to RAID is enabled,you'd create either a striped or mirrored set,before you'd
boot to xp cd.This is the way it works,also,youre 4th or 3rd drive however
its plugged in to board isnt ever shown in xp,or dealt with,after you create
a set,other than boot configuration,youll never see it listed.

 

[old man]

Are you saying you origonally had sys running with two ide drives, and have
now added to sata drives, one of which you wish to make primary boot drive?