Sata drives raid 0 - can't seem to set it up

stevejazzx

Got an an8 - sli - deluxe
I have 8 sata connection on the mobo, 4 red, 4 black
I had the the drives pugged into two of the black connectors on the mobo, and the system seemed to find them on boot up. Then I went into the bios to enable nvraid, and rebooted only to see that system no longer see trhose drives there.
I've tried various different configurations but whenever sata masters are enabled in the bios the sytem doesn't seem to detect the drives. the drives are 2 western digital raptors, and there is no os installed on the pc as of yet
anyone done this from scrath, do I need sata/raid drivers for windows before istalling?

DamoKen

Hi Steve, unfortunately WindowsXp doesn't recognise Sata drives during an install, so as you guessed you need the drivers. You should have these though supplied with your mobo cd. what you need to do is copy them onto a floppy (there was a makedisk exe on my mobo cd to do this in the correct dir structure afair) and have this on hand during the installation process.

You'll be prompted for any additional drivers during the installation and to press F6 (I think) to confirm this. Insert the floppy and hit enter when prompted. It should now read the required drivers and you can continue with the installation.

Khannie

I used slipstreaming (I put the drivers on the install disk) as I have no floppy. There's a quality tool to automate this proceedure for you, but I can't remember what it's called.

This may help: I found nvraid 0 to be more hassle than it was worth, and removed it within a month.

irlrobins

Nlite Khannie?

8T8

Wait stevejazzx are the drives not appearing in the NVIDIA RAID controller bios which is separate to the regular motherboard bios ?

That is normal that they would disappear from the IDE/SATA controller when you enable RAID mode, after that you normally press something like F10 (after bios posts) to enter the NV RAID bios where you will see the drives and set them up in an array.

Inside the NVIDIA nForce driver package which you can extract to a folder will find under IDE\WinXP\sataraid the drivers required to be put on a floppy for XP to recognise the array when installing the OS.

stevejazzx

8t8 cheers

ok f4 brings me to raid setup

raido
raid1
raid2
etc

f10 brings me to

raid setup like

mirror
striping

presumably i setup the drives as raid0 in the f4 option and install the drivers on prompt form windows when i'm installing?

8T8

Correct, the F4 is probably the Silicon Image RAID or other third party controller and the F10 is probably the NV RAID controller.

If you want to use the NV RAID controller select striping that is essentially RAID 0, add the disk to the array. Then press F7 to finish it's creation and after that press B to set it as a boot-able array.

Now press F10 to exit, in your motherboard bios set the CD to boot first and run XP installer press F6 when it prompts, feed it floppy disk for RAID controller if all goes well it will find the array (leave floppy in drive), format quick with NTFS, copies files across and then reboots (remove floppy).

Go into motherboard bios set NV HD RAID array to first boot position and it should load XP and proceed with the install of the OS.

stevejazzx

8T8 wrote:

Correct, the F4 is probably the Silicon Image RAID or other third party controller and the F10 is probably the NV RAID controller.

If you want to use the NV RAID controller select striping that is essentially RAID 0, add the disk to the array. Then press F7 to finish it's creation and after that press B to set it as a boot-able array.

Now press F10 to exit, in your motherboard bios set the CD to boot first and run XP installer press F6 when it prompts, feed it floppy disk for RAID controller if all goes well it will find the array (leave floppy in drive), format quick with NTFS, copies files across and then reboots (remove floppy).

Go into motherboard bios set NV HD RAID array to first boot position and it should load XP and proceed with the install of the OS.

hmmmm right...I won't be doing be doing until tonight so cheers for that....

stevejazzx

sorry lads stuipid question

went to this page to get drivers but

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

it is saying 15.66mb for xp ? which obviously won't fit on a floppy....

DamoKen

Hi Steve, that link directs to the general download page so couldn't see what you meant. Is it the sata drivers for the mobo you're looking for? I have an asus motherboard myself and the sata drivers are on the supplied cd as well as a utility exe to make the driver disk for winxp installation if that's any help?

stevejazzx

DamoKen wrote:

Hi Steve, that link directs to the general download page so couldn't see what you meant. Is it the sata drivers for the mobo you're looking for? I have an asus motherboard myself and the sata drivers are on the supplied cd as well as a utility exe to make the driver disk for winxp installation if that's any help?

dunnay have the mobo cd bought it second hand!
will find that link

stevejazzx

on that page selct

motherboard
939
a8n sli deluxe
and then click raid and it bribgs uo the drivers

can't link driectly to it

winxp raid driver is 15.66 mb?

8T8

Download the drivers from this link
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_win2k_6.86.html

Run the installer (click next once or twice) then cancel it as it auto extracts the files to a specific folder
C:\NVIDIA\nForceWin2KXP\6.86\IDE\WinXP\sataraid

copy the files in that folder onto a floppy disk, I'd advise against using the Asus supplied NV drivers they are often out of date or lagging behind NVIDIA's current set.

stevejazzx

got it!
so how much is my tech bill with you now 8t8?



thanks again

steve