Can't get to RAID setup screen...HELP!!

[mcurphy]

I am running the Gigabyte SINXP1394 board with a P4 2.53 chip. I just installed two IDENTICAL Maxtor ATA133 30 GB drives on the RAID controllers, but I can't get to the setup.

When I boot, it says to press "cntrl G" to enter setup....well I press it over and over again, but nothing happens, it ignores my attempts and boots as normal into Win XP pro. The drives both show up in My Computer, but their size is wrong. (I assume this is because I haven't formatted them). Do I need to partition/ format them first? One of the drives has Win XP pro on it because it was used as a primary drive in my old PC. Should I have erased that before installation?

Some other notes: I just built this rig yesterday and I have had no problems with it so far. I am using a 120GB Maxtor drive on the primary IDE channel as my boot drive. It has 1 GB PC2100 RAM with 4 sticks of 256. It is not overclocked.

Any suggestions as to why I'm not allowed into the RAID setup??

I hope someone can help because this was one of the main reasons I bought this board!!

Thanks,

Mcurphy

 

[tommie]

you mentioned that it bi-passes setup and boots into windows, i believe you need two identical formatted drives, meaning they both must be clean( formatted with no operating system installed. hope this helps. tommie j

 

[mcurphy]

I just realized that the two drives listed in My Computer was the two partitions on one of the drives. So I installed partition magic and erased the partitions. Now neither drive shows up.

I also tried using the Giga RAID software that came with the mobo. It allowed me to specify the two disks and select what type of array I wanted and then it created the array.

The only problem I have now is that it is listed as "inactive". How do I make it active??

One other question, the RAID array doesn't have to be my boot drive....does it? I just wanted to use it to run games and media for the performance increase of RAID-0. I don't want to risk the loss of any of my data by using it as my OS boot drive.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: mcurphy

The only problem I have now is that it is listed as "inactive". How do I make it active??

Right click on my computer -> manage -> disk management.

Scroll down and find your inactive array/partitions. Right click on the drive name and activate them.

One other question, the RAID array doesn't have to be my boot drive....does it?

No.

I just wanted to use it to run games and media for the performance increase of RAID-0. I don't want to risk the loss of any of my data by using it as my OS boot drive.

Running multimedia apps and games off of the array is a good idea, however, storing irreplaceable data is not unless you have some type of backup method. Honestly, I wouldn't be as concerned about losing my OS/games/apps, I'd be worried about losing my data files.

Chiz

 

[mcurphy]

AWESOME! Everything is good to go now.

Thanks Chiz!!