New Abit KT7A RAID - Need help setting up RAID as bootable drive

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I have the (infamous?) Abit KT7A RAID, with 2 IBM Deskstar 45's on it. I really want them to be my boot drive, but can't seem to finish the task...

I have ATA RAID IDE turned on in integrated peripherals, and my boot devices are set Floppy, then RAID, then RAID. All good there, like the instructions say. I used the cntrl+h to set up RAID 0 on the drives, this appeared to go fine too.

I had a heck of a time with several drive formatting diskettes, they wouldn't detect anything other than IDE's 1 and 2. Finally I went to the IBM site and found 2 more to try. One saw them as a PCI card add-on, but as two seperate drives. I gave it a shot but it didn't work. The other did in fact appear to work though - saw it as a single 90. Great! Partitioned into 3 chunks, formatted, and figured I was on my way home.

But it's not my boot device, that's where the problem is (It's the only frives I have attached) Normally on any PC I setup I use the hard drive installation disk, and at the end of the procedure it asks for a 98 diskette, and copies files which makes the drive bootable. The only formatting program I found that even saw my RAID drives (as mentioned above) didn't do this last step, so I'm trying it manually now... I have in the past used an old 95 boot disk to do a "sys c:\", which always made my c drive bootable. This time around, that disk won't detect the RAID drives at all, so that's not working. I try my 98 disk, and it sees the drives (c, d, and e), but thinks they are 2 gigs in size, and whenever I try to copy command.com or otherwise over, the system just freezes up totally, power off to reboot.

I feel like I'm so close - I've spent two days searching for FAQ's, boards, etc. Baiscally, I (believe that I) have successfully installed the drives, partitioned them, and formatted them. The BIOS sees them as a pair of striped as well (both are set to master, one on IDE3, one on 4). All I have to do is put the boot files on them, right?

BUT HOW? Obviously some people here have had success, so what's the secret? Can you point me to a particular program that you use? I'm looking for that last step of a bootable diskette, that can find the new drives, and copy the command.com and other bootup files without crashing. If you do this off of a single, "magical" diskette, could you e-mail it's contents to me??? Or point me to where I can download it? Is there some other way around this? So close!?!

My e-mail addy is greg@sallee.org . Any help is appreciated!

 

[Aruba]

Did you format with the M/S FDSK for large drives available on their site?

What did you set you cluster and stripe size to?

My memory is that there is a problem with large (i.e., 45GB) drives in a RAID array and the FDSK/format/cluster has to be done differently than a 2 x 30GB array.

Give us more info and we'll try and help.

 

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No, I didn't use anything recent from their site... I followed several links from the Paul's FAQ site (via www.icrontic.com) and came up with little. The FreeDos Fdisk didn't seem to do anything, I've re-downloaded it at work to give it another shot. What I did download from MS fit the description but was an exe file and simply not an fdisk - must have been an after-the-fact patch. I also tried an "ultimate boot disk" i came across, but it also froze the machine up when trying to do anything. I've browsed the MS site, but I will try harder this time, to find an updated fdisk, and give it a shot.

I've tried 64, 32, and 16 each for the cluster size, nothing seemed to make a difference there. (I've done this like 20 times now with trying things, breaking the array, resetting it, etc.)

I've been reading about fdisk being goofy, with it reporting not the correct size, but the correct size - 64 Gigs. But I haven't had any luck finding a new version. Again, I'll try a little harder, it suddenly seems like a great idea.

I'm going to be at it again here, I'll report in the morning if I come up with anything. If I get it fixed, I'll share that too. Tonight I'm going to try a different 98 boot disk, and another version of fdisk I copied from somebody's homepage I discovered along the way. I will also yank everything out of it except these drives, the floppy, and the video card. I've been reading about how 3 or more PCI devices screw with it. I thought I had some old DOS 6.xx diskettes to try, but can't find them. That may do it too. Lastly, I'm considering throwing in a third drive, on the IDE 1 primary master, loading the minimum amount of Windows to it, and then hopefully finding the RAIDs within it. If I do, I'll copy the sys files over, power down, yank the IDE 1, and restart. Maybe that will get everything over.

I'd still like to find a very simple program to partition, format, and install the boot files. So many hard drive set-up programs do this... I can't seem to combine that ability with one that sees the RAID. It's got to be out there. Somewhere.

I'll go play, and let you know if I come up with anything. Sorry for the essay, I just want to let people know what I've already done to make this efficient.

Thanks for the ideas, please keep it coming.

 

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SUCCESS!

I wanted to get back that it looks like I'm running (loading Windows right this minute).

First thing I did - followed what I read at www.icrontic.com, that RAID and more than three PCI devices installed clash with each other. Major @$#%*& - sounds like there HAS to be a fix... So I yanked everything except the video card.

Second, I tried a new 98 boot disk, one I made at work today (other machine at home is an NT server running our satellite modem). It booted right up, saw the three partitions at the right size, I ran a "sys c:" off of the floppy, and rebooted.

That's it - it works! Between the PCI cards and the newer 98 boot disk, it's running like every other machine I have ever set up.

Thanks for reading, thanks for the start on the help. I've discovered a new board, and am eager to post questions / help others.

Yippee! Gotto go upstairs to finish installing Windows.

 

[M O M O]

Kick ass.. thanks for helping me find a program to format my hard drive... Glad that you got your system up and running .. sorry i wasnt any help..

Have my two 75gxp's humming.. at raid 0 .. 4 partions. Going to do some benchmarking to see some comparisons.

 

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Hmm, well except that now that it's basically up and running, I'm encountering a whole new problem. I'll make another post of it. The 370 controller drivers give me bsods, but It appears to work without them.