XP can't find a drive

[Terry]

I just changed my Bios to RAID. The plan is to format 2 identical
drives for RAID and boot from them. The Post screen reports a
stripped raid drive. It shows its size as roughly double each drive.

When I load XP from CD, it says it can't find any drives.

I tried pressing F6 for more drivers. I have a disk that came with my
P4SCT mobo. XP setup is looking for a floppy. I don't have a floppy.

 

[SteveH]

I just changed my Bios to RAID. The plan is to format 2 identical
drives for RAID and boot from them. The Post screen reports a
stripped raid drive. It shows its size as roughly double each drive.

When I load XP from CD, it says it can't find any drives.

I tried pressing F6 for more drivers. I have a disk that came with my
P4SCT mobo. XP setup is looking for a floppy. I don't have a floppy.

Well it looks like you're going to have to get one from somewhere, doesn't
it?
And do you have a good backup plan? You will need one if you intend running
striping.

SteveH

 

[Yes Baby]

I just changed my Bios to RAID. The plan is to format 2 identical
drives for RAID and boot from them. The Post screen reports a
stripped raid drive. It shows its size as roughly double each drive.

When I load XP from CD, it says it can't find any drives.

I tried pressing F6 for more drivers. I have a disk that came with my
P4SCT mobo. XP setup is looking for a floppy. I don't have a floppy.

make up a slipstream OS CD and include the SATA drivers

http://blog.waynehartman.com/archive/2007/04/10/64.aspx

 

[Terry]

Well it looks like you're going to have to get one from somewhere, doesn't
it?
And do you have a good backup plan? You will need one if you intend running
striping.

So I take it you don't think using striping is a good plan for the
boot drive?

Thanks

 

[Terry]

make up a slipstream OS CD and include the SATA drivers

http://blog.waynehartman.com/archive/2007/04/10/64.aspx

I will give it a shot.

Thanks

 

[pen]

So I take it you don't think using striping is a good plan for the
boot drive?

Thanks

It's a horrible idea. If one drive fails ALL your data is gone. The
speed increase is not that much to make it worthwhile to put your data
in peril.

 

[Terry]

It's a horrible idea. If one drive fails ALL your data is gone. The
speed increase is not that much to make it worthwhile to put your data
in peril.

This is kind of changing the topic. I would like to hear more on
using RAID for the boot drive.

 

[Frank McCoy]

So I take it you don't think using striping is a good plan for the
boot drive?

I don't know about HIM; but from me?
Emphatically NO!
You raise your chances of failure by about 2 squared, or four times as
likely. Twice as many things to fail; and twice as many ways for them
TO fail.

NOT what you really want in a boot-drive.
Striping is for SPEED and SIZE, not reliability.
Drives these days are plenty huge enough without striping.
Speed for a boot-drive? Not really needed.
Actually, for *most* uses these days, trading off reliability to gain
speed seems a very poor choice indeed. Perhaps with some games ....

When you get up to RAID 5 or thereabouts, you finally gain both.
Costly.

 

[SteveH]

This is kind of changing the topic. I would like to hear more on
using RAID for the boot drive.

But the previous poster just said what I would have anyway. I wouldn't try
striping again ever (well certainly not without some *very good* backup). I
did it once as a boot drive on XP, with 2 brand new seagate Barracudas. All
was working well until 5 days in (and before I had made a complete backup)
and one of the Seagates packs up, taking all of my XP install with it.
TBH you would probably be better off getting a SATA2 controller card (I
assume your mobo doesn't have SATA2) for your PC and get a decent SATA2
drive to boot from. The speed probably isn't goint to be much different and
you could have a second SATA drive for your data or whatever.

SteveH

 

[DaveW]

Without a floppy you cannot load the RAID drivers for the motherboard. IF
you have a floppy drive in the computer you need to copy the RAID drivers
off of the motherboard's installation CD onto a floppy disk. Otherwise, no
go.

 

[Terry]

I gave up on trying to use a RAID setup for my boot drive.
I actually did have the mobo driver setup make a floppy driver disk,
but when I tried to use it in the XP install, I got a message that no
useful drivers were found.
I probably picked the wrong SATA driver to install, but it doesn't
matter. I gave up.

FYI (not Dave) from another discussion, this is one situation where
XP has to have a floppy to work.

I hope VISTA will not hang on to a floppy

 

[Pecos]

FYI (not Dave) from another discussion, this is one situation where
XP has to have a floppy to work.

I hope VISTA will not hang on to a floppy

<snip>

You can load RAID drivers using almost any storage device in Vista
including floppy, CD, DVD, flash drive or even a hard drive as long as it
is recognized by Vista. To reload Vista to an existing RAID 0 volume I
have even been able to load the drivers from an existing RAID 1 volume
IIRC.