HELP URGENTLY PLEASE - Problem with new SATA non-boot drive installation

Hi

I have a P5W DH Deluxe board, and just bought two Samsung 500GB HD501LJs. I intend to boot from one and install progs and games etc. to it, and use the other for Swap file and data.

I also already have two Hitachi 250GB drives that I am going to format and use in RAID1.

I took the existing drives out, installed one of the new 500GB Samsungs to the SATA1 port. Went through a fresh Windows XP installation and pressed F6 to install the RAID drivers, etc. Everything went perfectly fine.

Now I've installed the second Samsung and my PC stops at boot-up asking for the installation media to be inserted (or something to that effect). It's as though it is only looking at the new, empty, Samsung drive and can't find an OS on it.

If I press Ctrl-I for the Intel Matrix Storage Manager in boot-up, I get the options to create a RAID partition. But I don't want one on these drives! In the BIOS both drives show as "RAID: Samsung HD501".

So how can I get my PC to boot!?!

DM

Set the boot order in the BIOS so that the Windows drive starts before the other, if that fails you can start the computer with just the Windows drive and plug the other one once windows has loaded then format it.

does it still boot ok if you take the empty 500gb out

Change the cables around on the sata ports, or have a look in the bios and see if theres a way to shift the drives up and down in the list.

Edit: beaten to it :D

Boot priority has two different sections.

One shows things like Removeable (floppy), Optical (DVD), SATA , USB etc....so you set that to SATA HDD

THEN you find the hard disk priority, and swap it about to work on the right one.

Once XP is booting off the correct HDD< then add the next hard disk in....boot again.


Lastly....this is important: DO NOT PLUG IN ANY USB HEADERS for external card readers . My floppy drive (yes...I still use one sometimes) has a cool SD card reader built into it, running off a USB header from the mobo. but leaving it on ruined my XP installs. Its cool for my digital camera now its ok.

And finally add the USB headers. Otherwise you'll end up with C and D drives as USB headers