Abit AN8-Ultra Raid Problem

[ThunderKinde]

Hello,

New to the forums; but not to installing windows, so bear with me

Right, made a massive order Ive been saving up for for about 6 months, the following might help in resolving any conflicts that can spring to any people's minds:

Arctic Cooling Silentium T1 (SHHH, im trying to listen to my computer!)

Abit AN8-Ultra

Palit GeForce 6600 GT 128Mb

2*SATA 8Mb 120GB Maxtor SATA

1*NEC DVD-+RW

1Gb Geil Value Dual Channel kit

^ That was the origional spec, added and changed as ive needed to, just to install windows.

Anyway, I put it all together, turn it on, just to check its actually running. Without any HDDs or Graphics cards in the case with its custom PSU is whisper quiet.

Build the RAID array as RAID-0, grab my customized installation disk for WinXP. Only to get to the partitioning stage, when windows has a fit, basically along the lines of "You aint got no HDDs in this, how were you expecting to install?!". I go doh! Run down PC World to grab a FDD, as I did away with floppy drives when I got my NF7-S machine.

Anyway, come back, hit F6 in the right place, no problem at all, select the two that I would be using nVIDIA ATA Bus Controler, and nVIDIA RAID Controller, both for windows XP. Alls good, until it tries to copy the .sys files from the floppy disk within the DOS copy section of the install. Then it throws a fit, "Setup cannot find NVRAID.SYS blah, blah". I checks that the disk is still in the drive, it is, hit enter, drive light comes on. I go to make a cup of coffee. Come back to the machine to find that its at the "please insert disk" screen.

I grab a floppy, format it in dos with the debug option to find if the new one has got any bad sectors on it, none. Copy the files across in thier specific order. Go back to my new machine again, hit enter. Does this again.

I also tried a few other drivers from the CD that came with the mobo, all of them gave errors, probably because they were for WinXp64, but since I was in DOS when I was copying the files I couldnt get the full directory names. So, that was discounted.

Ok, Ill try integrating the drivers into a new nLite installation disk, only find that nLite will only let you integrate one driver into the installation from the same manufactorer. "Great" thinks I "Ive got two to get into there". So, select the nvraid.sys driver over the nvatabus, as if DOS can pick up the fact that Ive got a DVDRW drive, windows should as well. After all, it was reading from it at the time with no problems.

Try the new CD in the system, does the same thing, doesnt pickup any HDDs this time either.

It had taken me 2 days to get to this point, working on the problem for about 3 hours a day, I work 12 hour days, so 6 hours spent on one computer problem aint how I really wanna be spending my time. But, thats me, it aint the hardware's fault

So, I thinks to heck with this, grab a spare maxtor 80gb that ive got hanging around thats PATA, put it in, DOS and DIR to it, find that its got a windows installation already on it. So try booting from it, no problem. Windows does its normal no drivers installed crawl when it finally loaded up. But, that didnt bother me.

As Im new to RAID arrays, I install the nvidia chipset drivers from the CD that came with my mobo. It loads all the drivers no problem, a ballon tip shows its merry pale yellow face, saying that one drive has been detected, then a second saying the other has been found. Then a third to say that the two had been added into an array.

Great thinks I, atleast its working.

Ive looked around the web quite a bit since I got it working lastnight (today is day 4 of my challenge to get a RAIDed windows setup working). I copied what I thought was interesting from my old hdd to the raid array, then reformated the 80gb drive in dos.

Put my origional customized windows cd into the dvdrw again, and rebooted. Setup flies through, no problems, no hangs as has been reported on the higher end AN8 series.

So, my question to you fine people is, what the hell do I have to do to get windows installed on the RAID array rather than the HDD thats (litterally) stuck to the inside of the case with gaffer tape (had to take out the 'floating' drive holder due to the fact that the PATA ports on teh AN8 series are mounted horiziontal on the edge of the board (where the holder is) instead of the traditional vertical.

Quite angry with the fact that I cant get windows to install on the drivers when I used the exact same ones to install the drivers in a running windows installation. **** near threw the thing out of the window with the frustration.

Any more information that I can provide will be yours if you request it, but, my inside leg measurement is between me and my tailor (), thanks for reading to my ramble!

[jbm]

If your using an unattened CD then the F6 option doesn't work.

You have to integrate the drivers into the CD.

I use this method http://unattended.msfn.org/intermediate/drivers/raid.htm

You might also check out the device driver forum.

Its the line oempreinstall=yes in the winnt.sif that causes F6 to fail.