RAID Help Please!

[wellmad]

I've just tried to setup my first RAID 0 and it didn't want to happen...

My setup is a P5K Deluxe Wifi/AP, Q6600, 4GB Ram and two brand new Raptor X drives

The manual for the mobo is a little cryptic but sems to suggest that I can have either the ICH9R SATA RAID controller or the JMicron controller, is this right? These are two seperate controllers and shouldn't used together right?

I tried the ICH9R controller setup first and went into the BIOS, set the SATA configuration to SATA from IDE. I then saved the BIOS config change and rebooted, went into the Intel Matrix storage controller and created the RAID0 set. Both drives showed up as members and it seemed fine.

I then booted to the Vista setup screen with the ICH9R driver ready on a floppy. The vista setup could see the drive and the size was correct for two drives striped together. I then proceeded through the setup screens and chose the Vista version (home premium 64 bit). It all seemed normal until it moved to the 'Copying Setup Files' screen, where it just sat on 0% for ages. The dots were appearing continually, but no files were copied.

I restarted the Vista setup, went through the screens again but this time chose the install driver option on one of the setup screens. I stuck in the floppy with the RAID drivers on it and it highlighted the ICH9R driver but then when I tried to install it, I got the message that: 'Intel ICH9R SATA RAID controller could not be installed, get an updated version. This is the latest version of the driver from the ASUS site.

At this point, I pretty much decided to try the JMicron setup instead...I went back to the Intel Matrix RAID setup, set both drives back to NON-RAID, went back into the BIOS and set the JMicron option to SATA from IDE, saved the changes, and rebooted...

According to the manual, on the JMicron screen I should see my drives and be able to CTRL-J into the RAID setup, just like I was able to CTRL-I into the ICH9R setup, but, on the JMicron screen, all I see is my DVD drive and there is no CTRL-J option.

I carried on into the Vista setup, went through the options again, chose use disk again and inserted the JMicron driver floppy (this is also the latest version from the ASUS site). The setup did not list any files in the choose driver window, it was as if the disk was empty (probably as the JMixron RAID was not setup).

I don't get it. I'm using 64 bit drivers and trying to install the 64But version of Vista. The mobo setup was fine running Windows XP 32Bit on a non-raid and I made the BIOS changes as stated in the manual. The versin of Vista has been installed on another non-raid computer briefly so that should be fine.

I guess I need to use the JMicron controller, but the screen for this just doesn't list the drives, even though the drives can be seen in the BIOS. My DVD drive is an IDE drive so why that is listed I'm not sure

Can anyone advise? Should I flash the BIOS maybe? I really want to get this RAID up and running

[alsenior]

did you set the controller to raid and set the and set the serial ata bootrom option to enabled

[wellmad]

I remeber that bit from the manual, but there was no SATA BOOTROM option anywhere that I could see, it wasn't in the SATA config screen and I didn't see it in any of the other screens either..?

[wellmad]

*UPDATE*

After a little more research it appears from a post on the x-labs forum that the option to set BOOTROM in the BIOS is a mistake and that this option does not exist.

Also, I set everything back to how it was and connected my old HDD again, the first time I booted it was fine, it went right back to my old setup and everything seemed normal. This morning however, it took like 20 minutes to boot (this is no exagerration) and it is running *realy* badly, it takes ages (honestly, like a couple of minutes) for the start menu to open when this is clicked. This setup should be fine, it was yesterday and now that the raptors are disconnected and the BIOS is back to how it was nothing has changed! OMG!! ARG!

So now I have almost no machine =(

I'm going to try and install Vista on just one of the raptors without the RAID and see what happens, but I really want to get the RAID working, especially now my XP setup is going tits up...Any further help would be massively appreciated

[wellmad]

Any suggestions, does it sound like hardware failure or config error?

[wellmad]

ok panic over; I unraided the two drives and did seperate vista installs on them...

One of the drives installed seamlessly with no problems, the other drive wouldn't even show up in the installation....

I'm surprised but relieved =)