Windows XP Pro RAID Installation Problem

[Guest]

I am having a little problem installing Windows XP Proffesional on my newly
built computer. I set up the appropriate RAID setup (4 drives, RAID0,
Bootable) and made sure the NVRAID is enabled. Then I made a Floppy of the
NVRAID Driver from the Motherboard supplyed Driver Disk. I then started the
installation of Windows. I pressed F6 when prompted to install addidtional
drivers. When I got to the point where it asked for me to insert the floppy I
did so and it did it's thing. Then a little bit on it asked it I want to
start the installation, I said yes. Then I got an error. Windows couldn't
find the hard drives.

I did these steps multiple times but no luck. What do I do now?



Here are my compononts:

Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 530
PSU: Antec TRUEPOWERII 550W
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939
RAM: OCZ Enhanced Latency 1GB
HDD: HITACHI Deskstar 250GB SATA 3.0Gb/s x4
GPU: eVGA Geforce 7800GT 256MB
APU: Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic
DVD-ROM: SONY Black IDE DVD-ROM
DVD-RW: SONY White IDE DVD Burner

 

[needlove]

In periferals' settings you need to enable Serial ATA raid hardware and
disable the ATA raid chip. Set it to RAID not BASE. Your hard drives are
Serial ATA. you need the Serial ATA raid driver from your mobo CD.

In the BIOS settings you need to set it boot from the windows installation
CD or floppies if your using those. In your BIOS settings nothing should say
RAID. Before installing windows you need to create the raid set. It should
tell you in your manual how to do this.

During the installation the computer will reboot. you want to be ready when
it does this and go into BIOS and change the first boot device to SCSI or
SATA. The boot device order needs to be set to SATA not RAID or it won't
boot.

 

[Guest]

Make sure that in F6,you select s install floppy,select controller,then
select
s again (this time you should get "use floppy drivers,or drivers from
windows"),
select floppy,in next window,press enter key,procced to xp installation.Also,
use the mfg floppy,its usually intel or silicon image.

 

[Guest]

I allready made sure that the Silicon RAID was disabled and the NVRAID was
enabled.

In periferals' settings you need to enable Serial ATA raid hardware and
disable the ATA raid chip. Set it to RAID not BASE. Your hard drives are
Serial ATA. you need the Serial ATA raid driver from your mobo CD.

In the BIOS settings you need to set it boot from the windows installation
CD or floppies if your using those. In your BIOS settings nothing should say
RAID. Before installing windows you need to create the raid set. It should
tell you in your manual how to do this.

During the installation the computer will reboot. you want to be ready when
it does this and go into BIOS and change the first boot device to SCSI or
SATA. The boot device order needs to be set to SATA not RAID or it won't
boot.

When I am at the screen asking me to press S it says <none> instead of the
floppy drive A.

 

[needlove]

On the asus site there is an FAQ. I read there that you should install both
the Nvidia raid class driver and the Nvidia Nforce storage controller driver
when installing XP. There is more there in the FAQ.

http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=A8N-SLI Premium

 

[frodo]

On the asus site there is an FAQ. I read there that you should install both
the Nvidia raid class driver and the Nvidia Nforce storage controller driver
when installing XP. There is more there in the FAQ.

http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=A8N-SLI Premium

OP: you said "and it did it's thing". YOU need to choose the right driver
from the list that's presented; scroll down, the drivers on the floppy are
listed last. And, from the above link, I believe you actually need to
select TWO different drivers for the NVRAID to work.

If you did it right it should present you w/ the raid array in question
and ask you to partition it and install to it.

TIP: I would leave all extraineous peripherals disconnected when doing
the install - just the HD, floppy, and one optical drive. After you've
got XP installed ok, power down and attach the other drives, one at a
time.

Question: FOUR drives set up as a RAID 0? Wow, should be fast. With that
many assests you might want to consider RAID 5. And make sure your power
supply is up to it, four drives at power-on will draw a bit of juice!

Good Luck!

 

[Guest]

For some reason I wasn't given any choices of which drivers to install. What
do I do then?

 

[frodo]

For some reason I wasn't given any choices of which drivers to install. What
do I do then?

then it did not register your F6 hit - try again. Tap F6 several times
when the prompt appears (if you have one of those MS keyboards w/ the
FLock key, be sure to press/light-up flock to make F6 a real F6!). Now
WAIT - it'll be MANY seconds before Setup actually responds to the F6 and
presents you w/ some options to hand-select additional SCSI and RAID
drivers. You should definately see the floppy being accessed at that
point.

read that ASUS FAQ that was referenced, it should walk you thru it step by
step - it's really pretty easy once you get it. If the FAQ doesn't have
the step-by-step, go to nvidia's site, the nForce section, it's there for
sure.

oh yeah, did you use the bios to enable and then prep the raid array? ya
need to do that first.

ASUS manuals are usually pretty good - it should be in there. look for a
possible insert sheet in the motherboard box, early boards may have come
w/ those before the manual was updated.