Installing Windows 2000 Pro on Abit KT7-Raid with 2-30GB Maxtor HDs

[mrzippy68]

While trying to install Windows 2000 pro, with boot disks and cd rom, i get an error as follows: "Disk I/O error: Status = 00008001" and also get this message: "Failed to Arc Read the boot partition to check for a signature". Either message means nothing to me...does it to anyone out there?...need help asap...thanks

 

[AC]

What stage of the installation does this occur?

 

[mrzippy68]

It occured when win2k was looking for a harddrive to put its files on. Let me add that when I started, the non-raid ide channels only contained a zip250 internal, and 2 cd-roms...no harddrive; just the 2 on the raid channels. The next day...i remembered i had an old quantum bigfoot 6gig, i added it...started to load win2k...and so far it is working. I am still not sure what went wrong...according to the mother board manual...it should work. Anyway...any info will be appreceiated. Since this is a learning curve for me, i may pull the 6gig bigfoot and try to re-create the problem. Thanks for the quick reply.

 

[AC]

It seems that the HighPoint controllers have incompatibility problems with Maxtor hard drives. (There are numerous archived threads on this forum that discuss this issue. Just do a search for messages containing "RAID" and "Maxtor" that are "over 45 days old".) In other words, you won't be able to use the Maxtors on the HighPoint controller without random errors and/or lockups. Until HighPoint releases a new BIOS that addresses this problem, you will need to find an alternative for your Maxtors. Promise Technology has add-in card RAID solutions that will work. Otherwise, they could be installed as separate drives on the non-RAID channels and be configured to use Win2K's software RAID.

 

[AC]

Hmm, I look into it a bit more, and some people claimed to have gotten theirs to work. Maybe you could PM them to see how they did it. Good luck.

 

[AC]

Paul's Unofficial ABIT KT7 FAQ - Disks