RAID Issues

[resqtech]

I am building a machine using a MSI motherboard and 2 1.5 GB SATA drives attempting a mirror arrangement. However, I am having an issue with Windows XP Pro SP3 32-Bit seeing the drives when they are set up as RAID even after I loaded the RAID drivers from MSI's web site during setup. When I get to the end of the Windows Setup where it asks me if I want to install or repair I choose install and it states there are no drives in the PC. I then deleted the array and turned off RAID in the BIOS and tried to load windows just on one disk. It will show the two drives but will not allow me to format them. It states on both that Windows can not format the disks. Can anyone shed some light on my issue?

 

[S0ULphIRE]

This should've gone in the hardware troubleshooting area, not here.

Make sure the bios configuration for the drives are correct, e.g. that you changed it from their RAID settings back to sata settings.
Take out one of the drives, boot from the xp cd, allow it to format the drive as an NTFS drive. There's no reason that shouldn't work.
You can setup a mirror RAID after you've installed XP Pro. Just install the other hard disk, make sure they're both set to be dynamic (in Disk Management) then right click on the system disk (still in disk management) and select the 'Add Mirror' option.

 

[resqtech]

I'm sorry for the error.

Thank you for the information on this. I will try that. Can you think of any reason why Windows can't format the drives after I attempted to set it up as a RAID array? When it creates the array does it do something to the drives that Windows can't undo?

 

[Harper]

I'm sorry for the error.

Thank you for the information on this. I will try that. Can you think of any reason why Windows can't format the drives after I attempted to set it up as a RAID array? When it creates the array does it do something to the drives that Windows can't undo?

The only thing that I can think of is that the RAID Drives might not be set up currectly in the BIOS.
Can you get into the RAID utility that shows up shortly after POST? You might need to press Control S or some thing like just after POST. You should be getting prompted for this. Set up the RAID in there.

Also what type of RAID are you drying to set up? RAID 0/1?

Have you also check to see if your raid controller can recognise 1.5Tb? I have been some older controllers not liking any thing beyond 500Gb?

And finally, i find that for best results, it better to use a RAID card as appose to an onboard motherboard controller. I had have too many issues with onboard RAID controllers on normal desktop computer motherboards. Especially when you need to migrate the RAID. Plus I find that some of the RAID controller software that comes with RAID cards have some very nice monitoring tools. Like the Adaptec tools have some useful features like emailing statis and alerts on your RAID. Not to mention the other scary features where I can rebuld an array and still access the drives.

This should've gone in the hardware troubleshooting area, not here.

It's been moved now.