brianosaur

My Pc WAS working fine. Yet I figured I would clear out all my clutter by reformatting and doing a clean XP install. Backed up onto a large storage drive and am trying to reinstall on a RAID 0 – which was working fine.

After reformatting the raid array I ran the 6 xp start up boot disks. At the first restart I get, “Reboot and select proper Boot Device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key."

Now my P4c800e-del bios:
-boot only from the hd array. I disabled everything else in bios boot config.
-Bios detects the array.
-Bios IDE is set to "SATA as raid".
-Bios onboard Promise settings are the same as before I tried to reformat,
-I unplugged and replugged both SATA cables for the HDs.

What the heck is going on?

batty_professor

After formatting, the disks have no system data from which to boot. The disks are practically as clean as when they came out of the box. You should set the system to boot from the CD, and begin the installation from the CD.

brianosaur

Tried to boot directly to the cd first - doesn't work, thus the floppies

I ran fdisk and set up an active partiton then formatted.

Don't the six floppies set it up the system info so the xp cd can then take over?

I've done it this way in the past so I don't get it. I just set up the raid a few weeks ago, installed xp via floppies then cd, ghosted in my hd image and away it went. Not this time.

linderman

What is your boot order set to.

is your sata controller "enabled" review the mobo manual in the bios section for setting up disks / there is a "pata sata" setting kinda thing ?????


be patient / it will come together

I hope you dont have any IDE drives connected at the time you are trying to install the OS / that confuses the set-up.


regards;

brianosaur

I have a large IDE storage drive, but it is disabled in bios while I am trying to do the setup. There are no other boot devices enabled once I run off the 6 fd's. I will pull out the IDE plug to the IDE drive and try it.

I am going away for a few day and will try it when I get back. Prob gonna bump this thread when I get home.

Thanks

Xtremebring

Hopefully this will help you out, i wrote it up for another member.

These are instructions for a fresh build. Steps 1-6 are on a PC working already :) Drivers can also be downloaded directly from ASUS if the CD is not available.

1. Take a floppy disk and insert it.
2. Format the disk and leave it in the driver.
3. Take the CD that came with the motherboard.
4. Navigate to Drivers/promise/378RAID
5. Inside is a file called "Make Disk"
6. Click on the file and you should get a window with an option to extract. It shouldn't give you an option to change from drive a: (i do not suggest using a usb floppy drive as i could not get that to work.)
7. After the disk is created move to the PC you're going to build.
8. If you are using the promise RAID controllers on the board (easiest IMO) plug your 2 (identical) drives
into the promise SATA ports.
9. Boot the PC and after POST you'll see a message to enter a quick build utility or something similar (mine was ctrl-F i think)
10. In this you build your array by selecting the drives you want to include in the array and what type of array you want to build. (0 - striping - for performance or 1 - mirroring - for data redundancy)
11. Save and exit
12. Reboot with your Windows cd in the CD/DVD tray and make sure your bios is set to boot to CD. Also make sure that your bios RAID settings are NO. This is the setting that is put to yes to allow ID5 RAID done on the other 2 SATA ports and does not effect the promise ports. Also if this is set to RAID it will not detect a single drive plugged into the SATA1 or SATA2 ports.
13. When the Windows setup starts you'll see an option to press F6 to put in RAID or SCSI drivers. Immediately after you hit this you'll get another option to press F2(i think) ignore that and let setup continue.
14. You come to the option to specify the device to be installed. Press "S"
15. Insert floppy and press enter. You will be given a window with options, pick the appropriate drivers for your OS.
16. Continue with the windows setup as normal. When you get to installation you'll see the RAID Array as one disk. You can now partion it if you like or if you want use the entire array for the installation by selecting it and pressing enter.
17. Sit back and watch it load.

This should be correct. I'm typing it all from memory as i'm at work right now. If this didn't answer your question then let me know what i left out. But some quick info on RAID.

1. You must use IDENTICAL DRIVES.
2. You have to build you're array before Windows can recognize it.
3. On these boards if you have RAID enabled in the BIOS that is not for the promise ports, and will make your other ports look for 2 identical drives and if it doesn't find them (i.e. you only have one plugged in) it will not detect anything.

Hope this helps.

Jeff