How do I get Windows installer to recognize my RAID1 on my IS7 board?

Hi all,

I'm trying to install Windows XP on a new machine but the installer keep saying that there's no HDD.

I've setup a S-ATA RAID1 and both Partition Magic 8 and the old 98 boot disc finds it. I've created one primary partition and set it to "active". I've tried formatting it as both NTFS and FAT32. I've pressed <F6> and installed the supplied S-ATA drivers (v1.20) when I try installing Windows but to no avail.

So, what am I doing wrong? The mobo manual is of no help as usual and I cannot find any info over at Abit's site.

Hardware includes:
Abit IS7
P4 2,6GHz HT
2x512MB Geil RAM
2x80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 S-ATA

Grateful for any help here

/Ola

Try using a differant version of the SATA RAID drivers . Ive had to do this with some other RAID drivers in the past .

Also ... if your using more than one CD-ROM type of drive in the system , DISCONNECT all but one drive (so you have only a "D" drive and no E/F/G as a CD-ROM drive) . I say this because , "sometimes" Windows looks to more than one installed CD-ROM drive as a possible hard drive and trys to install the OS to it thinking it "IS" a hard drive . When Windows does this little mis-direction of drives it usually will show the floppy drive light as ON ! (wierd)
I myself have run into this situation ALOT with XP .

Give it try .

I agree with the above comment, different drivers and disconnect all cd/dvd roms but one.

I've tried both the supplied drivers and the latest downloaded from Abit. I only have one DVD drive in the machine.

I broke up the RAID configuration to see if windows would install at all. IT did but I can never reboot... "inaccessible boot device" every single time I reboot.

Man, I'm glad I chose SATA... fudge

/O

OK .... did you press "Ctrl" -"I" during the boot process to setup the drives on the Intel RAID controler ? You must do this to set up ANY drives that reside on the Intel controller . This should be listed in the boards manuel , in the RAID setup section (all-be-it its sometimes hard to find )

*Doh* I'm an idiot.

I thought the board had silicon SATA chips but on this particular variant of the IS7, it's intel chips...

Sorry for wasting your time

/O

Oh wait, I got the exact same symptoms with the intel drivers...

I only have two drives in this machine so all drives are handeled when I try setting up the RAID.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

OK, I found the problem. The Intel SATA chip only supports RAID0 while I was trying to create a RAID1 array. Funny that there's an option for RAID1 in the chip setup menu when it's not supported

Hi,
I have also IS7 and 2xMaxtor 120GB SATA in RAID1 configuration.
You must download Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition
(IAAR2_FLOPPY.EXE) and make floppy for F6 instalation.

Great. Thanks for the tip.