a8n-sli RAID detection problem

[biodeo]

I've read enough info in various forums to know this board has some issues with SATA drives and RAID, but I haven't seen anyone with the exact problem I have.

Under default bios settings, bios can see my 2 SATA drives (not Maxtor) just fine, but when I enable nvraid, bios (and therefore windows) will no longer detect them. The nvraid utility itself can see them fine.

I'm using the 1013 bios, the board came with 1011. No OS has been installed yet, but I'm trying to install XP Pro. No combination of SATA channels has worked.

Any ideas?

 

[Doctorweir]

First, welcome to the forums :beer:

If you activate your drives for RAID in the BIOS (aka hand them over to the RAID BIOS), you have to set them up in the RAID adaptor before they can be used. They are no longer under MoBo-BIOS control and are not detected by it or Windows in consequence.
To have them show up again, built any RAID array with them (RAID 0 or 1 or JBOD).
I had the same issue with the SIL-Controller. Hooked up a drive to it and it was not detected...had to assign it to a JBOD-array (even if only 1 drive) and it worked fine.

 

[biodeo]

Originally posted by: Doctorweir
First, welcome to the forums :beer:

If you activate your drives for RAID in the BIOS (aka hand them over to the RAID BIOS), you have to set them up in the RAID adaptor before they can be used. They are no longer under MoBo-BIOS control and are not detected by it or Windows in consequence.
To have them show up again, built any RAID array with them (RAID 0 or 1 or JBOD).
I had the same issue with the SIL-Controller. Hooked up a drive to it and it was not detected...had to assign it to a JBOD-array (even if only 1 drive) and it worked fine.

Thanks, great to be here.

I tried repeatedly to setup an array, but it didn't help. Of note though, all of my actions within the nvraid management utility were instantaneous. I don't remember from my last setup, does the act of "building" an array usually take time?

One other question, I know you can use 2 different controllers with the a8n-sli, nvidia and Silicon. Is that done at the BIOS or the OS level? If it's BIOS, how can I switch over to the Silicon controller? (I'd kind of prefer that anyway)

Re-edit: Only the Deluxe has the Silicon controller, so that's out. I was using the wrong drivers previously (accidently used the Silicon drivers, how nice of them to put them on my CD and bury the nvraid drivers) but now I'm getting an error durring the windows installaton. After using the F6 method of giving Windows the "RAID CLASS DRIVER" and "nForce Sorage Controller" Windows sees the drives, but when Windows tries to place setup files, it says it cannot copy the file "nvraid.sys". Skipping the file results in a BSoD when Windows tries to boot. It read the file just fine off the disk earlier, why is it having trouble now?

 

[Doctorweir]

Did you leave the driver disk inserted? Windows starts copying the files from disk to hdd during setup. With the F6 action they are only loaded to memory.
Arrays have to be set up in BIOS, not under Windows.
First hand the drives over to the RAID BIOS (what you did I presume as they "disappeared" from the BIOS detection).
Then go into NVRAID BIOS by pressing F10, when prompted during post.
Set up the array there (RAID 1,0 or JBOD).
Then start installing Windows with F6, etc...

If you want to use the drives individually, deactivate the RAID assignment of the drives in the mobo bios. Then Windows can detect and handle them without F6...

 

[timsatthepub]

hello, i dont mean to but in like this, but i have a similar problem. im running an asus a8n sli premium and 2 80gig maxor diamondmax plus10.s ive had the drives working fine on the silicon controller, just not at the speed i wanted. so i formated them and put them on the nvraid controller, however when i use the nvraid utility to create a striped set, i push f7 to finish and my system freezes. i cant find anyone with the same problem and would be grateful for any advice. many thanks

tim