Trouble Booting from RAID

Hey Guys,

Alright, I've managed to install Windows XP Pro on my RAID 0. It was a bit roundabout to get it to work. To do it, I had to install windows to the single SATA drive that I intend to use for installing games to, use Windows disk management to partition the RAID 0 array I created from the system' RAID controller, then reboot, put in the installer disc, and have Windows setup locate the drivers on the floppy. Doing this, the installer sequence can see the HDD and install Windows. Oncew it's done, it reboots, and setup proceeds normally.

The problem comes when I reboot after that. The system restarts, and fails to find the boot device. If i insert the setup disc again, however, and opt out of it to tell the system to boot from the first HDD, it boots into Windows normally. This seems really wierd, since it boots itself to continue setup and setup completes successfully.

Just for info, the mobo is a DFI Infiity 865PE Rev. B, with an SiI 3112 Raid Controller chip being used to control a RAID 0 array buit with two SATA 150 WD400 hard disks.

 

Update. It may not have been booting to the RAID when I opted out of the setup. It seems it may have been booting to the intended storage disc that I had that temp copy of XP on. Still stuck on how to make it see the RAID disk.

 

RAID-0 ? Are You using it for performance? How many drives?

 

The RAID controller needs to hand the boot record to the processor. Perhaps the RAID configuration is not saved? If you go into the raid utility at POST...is the array valid?

 

Yes, I want to use it for performance purposes. The RAID-0 will run the system and the seperate 80GB SATA drive will be where I install the games too. On the other hand, if I would see a larger game performance increase from booting off the single drive and installing games to the RAID, that would solve the problem. But I don't know if that would do anything. As I stated before, it's two drives. That's all it supports anyhow.

And yes, the config is saved. The array is set, created. It shows in the RAID's boot sequence configuration utility, and it lists the array if I just let it boot through when it scans for arrays prior to trying to load the OS.

I was able to install Windows to the second drive, partition and format the RAID array, and then install Windows to it. Given the driver for it, Windows setup was able to see the array as a drive. The setup then proceeds perfectly normally, and I only run into an issue when I reboot after setup is entirely complete and I am actually running Windows.

 

OK, so if I understand....the problem appears after Windows is running?

That would indicate that Windows doesn't have the proper driver for the controller. When installing Windows, it will ask for the driver two times. Once when initialy loading the drivers in Windows setup mode after pressing F6. The other time when Windows is setting up all the devices for the nonsetup version of Windows. Did you load the raid driver both times?

 

More or less, yes. Windows installs and runs, and the system reboots fine when it does the reboot during setup. It only fails if I reboot after all is said and done.

The driver is installed. I had a look in the device manager the second time I went through this, and Windows shows the RAID controller card as set up and having the correct drivers, with no problems showing.

The error when I reboot comes when the system is looking for a boot device though, either HDD, Floppy, or CD/DVD to boot from. At that point is where it says it can't find a bootable disk and tells me to insert one.