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can't format with raid! need help! mommy!

M

mygumballs

Member
i'm raiding(raid 0) 2 identical maxtor 20 gig ata 100 7200 rpm hd drives on my asus a7v133 motherboard, which uses the promise fastrack raid controller.

neither the windows xp nor 2k setups detect my raided drive to install windows on after loading the new promise drivers. the old ones i used before don't work either. help me!

 
here's the full story if you wanted to know:

3 months ago, i first set up raid and attempted to install winxp. unfortunately, at the time, asus didn't have drivers for the promise controller to support xp, but after searching these forums, i found i could get around the problem by installing the old drivers from the asus cd that was included with my motherboard. when i entered the winxp setup, i pushed f6, loaded those drivers, and proceeded to install winxp as the forums said i should. everything went fine, but due to stability problems, i ultimately switched back to win2k. when installing 2k, i used the same process without any problems.

now, after three months, the asus site has new drivers with winxp support, so i decided to try installing xp. i downloaded the drivers, entered the setup, pressed f6, loaded the drivers...but the the raided drive wasn't detected. even after i had loaded the third party raid drivers, the list of unpartitioned spaces to install windows on didn't include my raided drive. assuming asus still didn't completely have xp support, i decided on simply settled for reformatting the drive and reinstalling a clean install of win2k (i was planning on formatting anyways). unfortunately, with the new drivers, the win2k setup didn't detect the raided drive either. so i decided to go back to the old drivers i used three months ago( the ones that SHOULD work). the setup didn't detect the raided drive AGAIN! now i'm in a pickle.

why, after doing EXACTLY what i did three months ago, am i not able to format my raided drive witht he OLD drivers that worked just fine before? is there something i need to set in my motherboard's bios? if so, what? do i need to delete and recreate my current array? thanks to anyone who can help me.
 
Hope this helps, you could go to www.promise.com and check out your promise chip in there tech support to see if they release any with Windows Xp support. If it is the chip im thinking of this link will take you to it
Promise Drivers shpuld be the drivers you need.

Dahak
 


<< Hope this helps, you could go to www.promise.com and check out your promise chip in there tech support to see if they release any with Windows Xp support. If it is the chip im thinking of this link will take you to it
Promise Drivers shpuld be the drivers you need.

Dahak >>




thanks, but promise support page specifically says to not download drivers from their site if the controller is integrated onto the motherboard, which the asus a7v133 has. thanks anyways.
 
Put the Promise Raid drivers in the root directory of a 3.5" floppy BEFORE attempting to install W2K or XP (I know, I've done both, with the same MoBo as you have). Then, for example, when installing XP, you will be prompted to hit F6 if you have scsi or other drivers to install. Hit F6... later within setup, you will be prompted to insert the floppy drive. Follow the instructions (i.e., hit "S" to use floppy's drivers when prompted, not XP's native drivers (I recall reading "somewhere" that the Promise drivers on the XP CD are for the non-Raid installation). I've installed/reinstalled both W2K and XP several times on my Asus A7V133 (keep tweaking 'till I break it <g>) and also on my daughter's Abit with Highpoint Raid controller (same story, same procedure to use).

If you need the Promise drivers, let me know and I'll email them to you.
Best of luck,
jmichna
 
Oh yeah!!! There was on other trick I forgot to mention that seemed to be needed...
I had to save the file "evian.sys" from my old W2K installation... seems -- that for whatever reason -- that file was missing AND needed. Here's the list of what is on my Raid floppy:
Volume in drive A has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 5450-BDDE

Directory of A:\

11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> NT4
11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> WIN2000
11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> Win9x-Me
11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> WinXP
08/20/2001 09:12 AM 1,547 README.TXT
09/07/2001 08:44 PM 3,460 TXTSETUP.OEM
06/02/2000 03:58 PM 7 ULTRA
09/07/2001 08:45 PM 2,936 ULTRA.INF
06/02/2000 03:58 PM 7 ULTRA.CAT
08/20/2001 09:38 AM 28,032 ultra.sys
10/05/2000 08:13 AM 9,933 evian.sys
7 File(s) 45,922 bytes

Directory of A:\NT4

11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> .
11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> ..
06/02/2000 03:58 PM 7 ULTRA.CAT
09/07/2001 08:46 PM 9,236 ULTRA.INF
08/20/2001 09:36 AM 45,828 ultra.sys
3 File(s) 55,071 bytes

Directory of A:\WIN2000

11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> .
11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> ..
06/02/2000 03:58 PM 7 ULTRA.CAT
09/07/2001 08:45 PM 6,917 ULTRA.INF
08/20/2001 09:34 AM 39,502 ultra.sys
3 File(s) 46,426 bytes

Directory of A:\Win9x-Me

11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> .
11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> ..
06/02/2000 03:58 PM 80,864 ADVPACK.DLL
06/02/2000 03:58 PM 36,864 PTISTP.DLL
06/02/2000 03:58 PM 8,685 PU66VSD.VXD
06/02/2000 03:59 PM 7 ULTRA.CAT
09/03/2001 06:48 PM 9,228 ULTRA.INF
08/20/2001 09:35 AM 44,044 ultra.mpd
6 File(s) 179,692 bytes

Directory of A:\WinXP

11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> .
11/22/2001 07:30 PM <DIR> ..
06/02/2000 03:58 PM 7 ULTRA.CAT
09/07/2001 08:45 PM 2,936 ULTRA.INF
08/20/2001 09:38 AM 28,032 ultra.sys
3 File(s) 30,975 bytes

Total Files Listed:
22 File(s) 358,086 bytes
12 Dir(s) 1,090,560 bytes free
 
thanks for the advice Jmichna, but like i said in my second post, i've tried that several times. i never noticed the missing evian.sys files in the new drivers till you pointed it out, but that wouldn't explain the fact that the OLD drivers that already include the evian.sys files AND already worked before don't work now. thanks anyways, though

by the way, that list of files you sent was for the ata 100 drivers, not the fastrack raid drivers.
 
Mygum...,
These are the raid drivers... it's what I used the last time I installed XP. I separated out the ata100 from raid and only put the raid on my floppy. If you haven't tried the evian.sys, try it... that was the last hiccup for me. My guess is the ata100 and raid have the same date stamp.
 
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