Raid5 array won't complete initialization

[atxz06]

I have a new system built around the components below that refuses to fully initialize the raid array. It gets to exactly 50% each time and hangs. I've tried the drivers that came with the motherboard and it hangs at 50%, I did a fresh install of Vista and latest drivers, bios, etc. from manufacturers and it hangs at 50%. Is there a limitation with these components that I'm not aware of? Anything I can try? I've made three attempts, all from clean installs, with the same results each time.

The raid I'm setting up is not a system drive.

System:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R - latest bios and drivers
ICH9R chipset with latest driver and manager console from Intel
Vista 32 Home Premium - clean install with only security patches applied
6 - 500gb western digital hard drives

I've left it at the 50% mark for 8 hours, rebooted, etc. and it didn't make any progress.

Thanks!

 

[Fardringle]

It sounds like one of the drives has a problem. Download the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool and run it on all of the new drives to determine which one is causing the problem. Since it is stopping at exactly 50% every time I would guess that it is the "number 3" drive in the array. If you know which one that is, start the scan with that drive, otherwise just scan each drive one at a time. You should remove all of the drives from the array first so you can scan them individually.

If you don't want to (or can't) run that utility from within Vista for some reason, download this version that will create a bootable CD containing a DOS version of the diagnostic tools.