INstalling windows with SATA raid

[aricjonho]

I have recently purchased an a8n-sli motherboard. I have two seagate barracuda SATA 200gb hd's. I'm trying to install windows onto a raid setup with these hard drives(but to no avail), here's what I have done so far.

Enabled Raid in the BIOS, and enabled the SATA1 and SATA2 slots for RAID.

Created a RAID0 stripe setup using the (f10) menu screen array.

Set the striped array as bootable.

Booted from Windows XP Pro w/sp1 Installation CD

Hit F6 during loading screen for SCSI/RAID drivers

Inserted a disk I created with the appropriate(?) drivers.

Loaded appropriate(?) drivers.

Windows install fails to recognize any existing drives.



So, evidently my problem lies in the drivers I am loading. The Mobo manual has instructions for creating the floppy disk from the CD provided, but I guess the CD is slightly different. I browsed the CD for the silicon3114 64 raid drivers, and copied the appropriate 7 files.
These did not work.

I went online to the silicon website and downloaded their 3114 64-bit SATA raid drivers. None of these worked either(the si3114r5.sys file was corrupt? The older version worked and loaded, but still the hard drives were not recognized.)

I'm pretty positive the RAID setup was done correctly, as the 2 drives are listed as a single 376GB hard drive during some of the information posted during bootup.

Any suggestions? Maybe there are drivers that work?

Thanks for your help!

-Aric

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: aricjonho
I have recently purchased an a8n-sli motherboard. I have two seagate barracuda SATA 200gb hd's. I'm trying to install windows onto a raid setup with these hard drives(but to no avail), here's what I have done so far.

Enabled Raid in the BIOS, and enabled the SATA1 and SATA2 slots for RAID.

Created a RAID0 stripe setup using the (f10) menu screen array.

Set the striped array as bootable.

Booted from Windows XP Pro w/sp1 Installation CD

Hit F6 during loading screen for SCSI/RAID drivers

Inserted a disk I created with the appropriate(?) drivers.

Loaded appropriate(?) drivers.

Windows install fails to recognize any existing drives.



So, evidently my problem lies in the drivers I am loading. The Mobo manual has instructions for creating the floppy disk from the CD provided, but I guess the CD is slightly different. I browsed the CD for the silicon3114 64 raid drivers, and copied the appropriate 7 files.
These did not work.

I went online to the silicon website and downloaded their 3114 64-bit SATA raid drivers. None of these worked either(the si3114r5.sys file was corrupt? The older version worked and loaded, but still the hard drives were not recognized.)

I'm pretty positive the RAID setup was done correctly, as the 2 drives are listed as a single 376GB hard drive during some of the information posted during bootup.

Any suggestions? Maybe there are drivers that work?

Thanks for your help!

-Aric

Unless you're running 64 bit Windows, those drivers you downloaded won't help you a bit. Download the 32-bit version and try again. The F6 bit you're doing is right. Check that all files are in the root directory of the floppy.

Failing that, use nLite to integrate the drivers, ensuring you make the appropriate choices to integrate the drivers so they're available in textmode.

 

[boomerang]

Is that the exact model of the mobo you're using? I ask because that model has only NVRAID. No SI drivers needed.

Maybe you have either the Deluxe or Premium version?