ASUS A8N-SLI RAID Problems

[Nihsnek]

Hi,

I had to buy a new motherboard since my old Asus A8N-E died. My HDs should still be fine, but I'm having issues configuring the raid/bios settings in order to get my 2 HDs to boot as one with Raid 0. My old board, a lot like the new one, just used nvraid and it was simple. This new one uses nvraid or Silicon raid controllers. I've tried both, and I keep getting a "hard disk error, please insert system disk" whenever I try to boot. I've checked and changed with my bios settings for a few hours, and tried re-making the raid setup about a billion times now. No luck.

Here's what I have at the moment:
HD plugged into red(silicon controller) sata port 1
HD plugged into red(silicon controller) sata port 2

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Raid 0 setup using both drives as striped and bootable.

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No IDE drives, floppy, cd-drive, dvd-drive, etc. at all plugged into mobo. Has anyone successfully done a raid setup with this board? If so, how?

 

[Hefemeister]

So you are trying to install an old raid array on a new board?

Putting them into the 2 red sata ports is the correct way with that board.

Does the raid bios utility see the drives?

Are you wanting to reinstall windows on this array?

 

[Nihsnek]

So you are trying to install an old raid array on a new board?

Putting them into the 2 red sata ports is the correct way with that board.

Does the raid bios utility see the drives?

Are you wanting to reinstall windows on this array?

Yep, trying to use my old array(that the settings have probably been erased by now) on a new motherboard.

Yea, the silicon controller(red ports) sees the 2 drives and successfully creates a Raid 0(striped) "drive". It just doesn't boot. I'm guessing it's not putting the drives into raid together correctly...? It was working fine for years on my old mobo.

No, I do not want to re-install or delete anything. I have precious files on these 2 hard drives that I need to keep.

 

[Hefemeister]

running xp?
It sounds like it is using a different raid controller now correct?

Please tell me that you have a backup of your precious data as you always should when having important data on a raid0 array. Just in case.

 

[Nihsnek]

Using XP.

I could use the same raid controller I believe, NVRaid, but I also have the option to use a different one: Silicon controller.

No back ups.

 

[Hefemeister]

You probably do not have the sata raid drivers installed for the new sata controller which is why it would not boot from that one.

I would try to get the xp install drivers for the controller cards and attempt a repair installation of xp.

I am worried that your rebuild of the array may have erased all of your data.
Raid0 can be picky and not like a change of controller cards. One drive dead means all data gone.

Raid1 and raid5 can rebuild arrays just fine if one drive is lost.

Hopes for the best.

 

[Nihsnek]

I'm going to find an Asus A8N-E board instead of my SLI one. Hopefully if I find an identical one the drivers will be the same.

 

[Harper]

I am worried that your rebuild of the array may have erased all of your data.
Raid0 can be picky and not like a change of controller cards. One drive dead means all data gone.

Raid1 and raid5 can rebuild arrays just fine if one drive is lost.

That is what I am thinking too.

Moving from one raid controller over to another one with a RAID0 with out backing up your data is not something i recommend.