[trackbird]

I know we have a few computer guys here and it seems that someone here always knows something about anything that comes up.

Anyway, I'm finally getting a new main desktop computer together at home. I've been using my laptop and now my new laptop as my main computer for a while now and using my Linux machine to cruise the internet since my last drive failure in May. I just built my wife a new machine (new to her) and it's running well, moved the guts of my old machne to my Linux box, gave my brother in law the guts of the linux box and dad got the board, processor, etc out of my wifes old machine...all of those run great (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/huh.gif) ). I've built about 30+ computers in the last 5 or 6 years (I'm not new to this, but this time I'm having issues), but this is my first Socket AM2/XP64 processor and the first time I've used SATA drives and my second shot at a RAID setup.

The machine is an Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe board with an AMD 3800+ X64 (single core) processor, 2 x 1gig Corsair XMS memory (2 1 gig sticks, one in the primary channel of each bank of memory on the board), Asus GeForce 6300 video card (128 meg, non SLI), TDK 48x cd burner, a dual layer DVD burner, and 2 Seagate 320 gig SATA hard drives (and a floppy drive). It's powered by a 550 watt Asus power supply (overkill is my middle name).

When loading XP, I hit F6 to load a SCSI/RAID driver. I made the RAID driver disk using the Asus cd that came with the board (on my wifes computer, good thing I have more than one). During the install, Windows asks for the drivers disk, I insert it, select both drivers that need loaded. It loads them (or seems to) and does the format of the drives, then it asks for the driver disk again. This time it will tell me that the disk is corrupt?(I did try making a new one and it didn't like it either, so it's not truly corrupt, or it shouldn't be) I can't get it to load the RAID drivers the second time it asks for the disk (I've made disks for both the 32 and 64 bit drivers, it will never load the 64 bit, and it only loads the 32 bit at the beginning).

For now, I've seperated the RAID array and it shows two 320 gig drives (I want to mirror them for redundancy, I'm sick of crashing drives every 8 months like I've been dealing with lately). I was going to try to setup the RAID in Windows (it seems to indicate that the utility will do that), but I can't seem to find the utility on the disk that they sent with the board (or, maybe I'm just stupid after staring at this thing for too long).

Has anyone here set one of these up before, or, can anyone see anything glaringly wrong with my approach?

[gillbot]

Can you get to a format on the raid setup without adding the drivers? I've never had to add the drivers with a raid array IF the drives are properly recognized within the bios.

EDIT> If you can format and manipulate the drives/array from a C: prompt, try to do an install without adding the drivers. Otherwise, I'm not sure what is catching it unless the drivers need updated.

This post has been edited by gillbot: Sep 8 2006, 07:34 PM

[trackbird]

Can you get to a format on the raid setup without adding the drivers? I've never had to add the drivers with a raid array IF the drives are properly recognized within the bios.

EDIT> If you can format and manipulate the drives/array from a C: prompt, try to do an install without adding the drivers. Otherwise, I'm not sure what is catching it unless the drivers need updated.

If I don't load the drivers, windows runs for a minute and comes back with "Unable to install, there are no disks present on your system" (or something similar) and it can't see the raid array. This is an on board RAID card (on the MOBO).

The bios does not give me an option to format. I can enable it in standard bios, then go into the RAID bios and select what kind of raid it is and build the array and that's about it.

[CJ-TA]

Can you get to a format on the raid setup without adding the drivers? I've never had to add the drivers with a raid array IF the drives are properly recognized within the bios.

EDIT> If you can format and manipulate the drives/array from a C: prompt, try to do an install without adding the drivers. Otherwise, I'm not sure what is catching it unless the drivers need updated.

If I don't load the drivers, windows runs for a minute and comes back with "Unable to install, there are no disks present on your system" (or something similar) and it can't see the raid array. This is an on board RAID card (on the MOBO).

The bios does not give me an option to format. I can enable it in standard bios, then go into the RAID bios and select what kind of raid it is and build the array and that's about it.

Does the bios see your RAID setup as a single drive?

*most* of the time, it has nothing to do with RAID, and more to do with the SATA drivers. I don't think that the RAID config is your issue.

To test this, create your RAID 1 setup, and on the reboot, pull drive B. See if you can get XP to load that way. Your bios should report a degraded RAID config on your next reboot.

Make sure you have the latest BIOS installed, and the latest drivers from Asus's web site.

If your tech savvy, I can help you create a new Windows XP CD with your drivers already on the CD (or google slipstream XP)

edit:

Have you tried to load the drivers from the CD, and not the floppy?

edit 2:

Do you have the RAID config set as bootable?

This post has been edited by CJ-TA: Sep 8 2006, 10:07 PM

[SS2win]

The problem you describe sounds like a faulty oemsetup.inf file on the floppy disk. I would first try and download updated drivers from support.asus.com OR from the SATA chipset manufacturer support site.