I'm about to BREAK!!! HELP

[Kid Cisco]

I am not a NooB but I am having a little issue.

Installing my A8V, I can not get the board to install XP. It is not recognizing any drives. I am attempting to run a pair of raptors in Raid 0 and a backup 20GB that will be storage for crucial data. It is not hooked up yet.

I used makedisc.exe in order to create a sata driver floppy. The drives are recognized when system boots , I have created the raid 0 array. In bios I have serial ata enabled , promise is enabled and also sata raid. I want to use the VIA sata raid drivers, I have not tried the Promise drivers yet.

XP begins its install I hit F6 whn asked if I will need to add raid drivers. The screen appears I insert the flppy select VIA serial ata raid drivers for XP, it loads them , then XP says no disc drives found. I am to the point of blowing up. Almost had it will try the promis drivers once , and if does nowt work I will run a master slave.

I just do not want to be BEAT cause I have never been stumped like this before

KC

[themortarman]

So you created the Raid in the VIA BIOS?

[Kid Cisco]

Not sure what you mean, I just now tried to see what would happen installing the Promise Raid drivers. And bam it works it detects the raid array and sees it as one large drive giving me the option to partition it which I did. It makes no sense to me as I left the bios settings alone since the last attempt to install Via raid drivers.

Explain if I am missing something cause I have not used a VIA board since my MSI K8T NEO A64

KC

[themortarman]

You're not attached to the VIA Sata controller this Board has 2 controllers a Promise and VIA. The VIA controller is the upper ports by the floppy connection.

[Kid Cisco]

Your not attached to the VIA Sata controller this Board has 2 controllers a Promise and VIA. The VIA controller is the upper ports by the floppy connection.

I tried the sata connectors there as well. I now have the sata cables attached to the red sata connectors below the ide raid port. I will give this another whirl with the sata connectors attached to the sata ports right besife the flppy connector. I did this in past to no avail.

If it works on this go, I will be p*****. What settings in bios would be enabled for the VIA sata raid drivers. I will leave on default settings since the array is already completed and detected. Here I go again ! 3 mths off a desktop and I think I may be losing the touch of not fiddling and formatting continuously LOL

BTW does it matter which ide controller my dvd rw is attached to? I had tried to master IDE and slave IDE?

Wow this time it is taking and when I key the tab button to enter the raid set up this time around I am able to navigate through the menu, before I could not, weird we will see how this all finishes off

thanks for your help

KC

[themortarman]

If you want to use the VIA controller I would disable the Promise for now. You enter the VIA BIOS by pressing TAB during BOOTING create your Raid array in there. Here is a thread on creating the Floppy for the VIA controller.

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.p...33&postcount=2

Note: You can't just move the array from one to the other you will have to rebuild(recreate) the Raid 0 in the VIA controller.


Note2: IF you are going to do this be sure you Delete the array in the Promise controller before hand.

[Kid Cisco]

If you want to use the VIA controller I would disable the Promise for now. You enter the VIA BIOS by pressing TAB during BOOTING create your Raid array in there. Here is a thread on creating the Floppy for the VIA controller.

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.p...33&postcount=2

Note: You can't just move the array from one to the other you will have to rebuild(recreate) the Raid 0 in the VIA controller.


Note2: IF you are going to do this be sure you Delete the array in the Promise controller before hand.

yeah I am just finding that oout now as I re create a performance raid 0 array, messed up way of going about it. In your opinion which raid option do you prefer via or promise?

KC

[themortarman]

They both have their strong points if you're planning on serious overclocking in the past the Promise is the way to go. VIA makes a real nice "Sustained Transfer Rate" benchmark(about the fastest), which is a poor representation of DISK\Controller performance.

[Kid Cisco]

They both have their strong points if you're planning on serious overclocking in the past the Promise is the way to go. VIA makes a real nice "Sustained Transfer Rate" benchmark(about the fastest), which is a poor representation of DISK\Controller performance.

Thanks all is well now will just use the VIA raid controller for now. Running a 3500 and since this particular board is a rev 1.02 I am not gonna do much in the waty of massive overclocking. I will toss on the beta bios that will hopefully give me working locks and go from there. I already know I can return this board to the vendor and they will get me a rev 2 from their supplier but that mneans another 1mth wait for it. I already have gone 2.5 mths with no gaming rig, tooo long

Thanks for your help

KC