Asus A8N Premium Bootable RAID SATA Help

[LexF15]

Trying to set up 64bit WinXP on a Striped array - fresh install on this new machine (in sig).

Bios is 1005 and all 4 Gig ram is recognized fine. Using the manual (novel eh?)....

Hooked up both drives to the Nvidia Raid ports - not the silicon graphics (want native spt)
I've tried power using the SATA cables, the old 4 pin molex cables, and never both at once.
I set up the BIOS to Enable NvidiaRaid and the drives I plan to use (1 & 2).
Boots fine, posts fine, can do F8 and F4 to enter silicon graphics raid utility but....

No matter when or where I spam F10 I cant get into the Nvidia Raid utility.
After WinXP CD loads and the F6 option comes up i hit that too, but won't enter there either.

Thinking a couple things.
Power on the drives? Kinda hard to tell since they dont show in POST.
Is the keyboard broke - heck it's new - but F8 and F2 and F4 all work so.....
Power again? I've tried using both power supplies in the case - both come on at once.
I've tried enabling all 4 Nvidia SATA drives as well as just the two I want.

Any ideas? All hardware in sig - I have not upgraded the BIOS
Experienced builder - new to SATA Raid bootable.

 

[ElTorrente]

I've found that the easiest, and most problem-free way to get raid arrays working is to unplug every single drive and harddrive that isn't totally necessary before I try making it work.

Disable everything in BIOS that isn't totally necessary - and of course, make sure you disable the silicon image RAID (which I'm sure you probably did).

The first RAID I setup had the same issue. I couldn't get the computer to recognize that I had disks hooked up and ready to stripe. In fact, I think that not only did I unhook my other drives, but I had to run FDISK before it finally recognized.

 

[LexF15]

Hmmm not sure they are even getting power. Not even seen as regular drives (not RAID) when connected to Nvidia SATA ports.