Win XP setup wont allow RAID setup

hey,

I am trying to setup windows xp on my 20GB HDD, i have just formatted it, however when you put in the first boot disk and it asks you to press F6 to setup RAID etc etc - i keep pressing F6 and nothing happens!?

It then goes on to say press F2 to run Automated System Recovery - and ive tried pressing F2 and that works fine!?

please help! i think this is why my windows xp does not complete setup!

thanks

Jonny

Could you be a little more explicit in describing your setup? You say "I am tryng to setup windows xp on my 20GB HDD." Your post is entitled "Win XP setup wont [sic] allow RAID setup." How many disks do you have attached and into which channels are they plugged?

On the face of things, it seems that you have preformatted a single drive and then run 'setup.exe' from the CD-ROM. Ideally, you would plug your RAID drives into the RAID channels unformatted and then boot from the WinXP CD. At the beginning of the boot sequence, you will be prompted to type F6 to load your RAID drivers. However, plenty of files will be read before being prompted to load your RAID driver from the floppy drive. It is at that point where the install routine will format your RAID array and then start loading the O/S to it.

dude2--

I'm posting your PM here so others may benefit from your question (and answers...).

hey about the RAID setup post i posted:

i think im gonna re-start and go through again cause i was given abit of bad advice and setup it up when the drive was attached to the normal IDE slot!

you say ideally the drive should be un-formatted. Is there a way to restore them to that status? or would it be best to just format the drive again and try setting up win xp with RAID.

I am gonna try setting this up on the newer, faster 60GB HDD. I also have a 20GB drive, do you reccomend i attach them both, re-format them both then try going through the setup etc after defining a disk array with both drives?

Click to expand...

Well, first of all, you haven't completely told me what was plugged into what--so that would help.

Anyway, try a quick search here on the term "RAID" and you will find a plethora of information on setting them up. In the meantime, I'll give you the quick primer...

You need at least 2 HD's to get RAID. RAID 0 is striping where you increase performance by splitting files across two disks so that you read from both drives simultaneously. RAID 1 is 'mirroring' where you get increased security by having a complete copy of one drive's contents on another drive. Should one fail, you can go right on computing with the other disk until you replace the failed one.

RAID 0 will act as a single disk that is the size of the smallest drive X 2. It will be as slow as the slowest disk on the array. That is why it is ideal to have two identical drives in this setup.

RAID 1 will act as a single disk that is the size of the smallest drive (X 1). It will be as slow as the slowest disk on the array because the controller must write to both simultaneously. Again, identical drives are ideal.

Plug your drives into the RAID channels 3 and 4 (one drive on each channel both set to master).

The drives don't need to be reformatted before installation. WinXP will do all that for you after you load your RAID drivers (F6).

The drives will be wiped anyway since the controller must enable the array before any O/S gets loaded to them.

Be sure to get your motherboard's BIOS (and any jumpers) set correctly before proceeding with setting up your RAID.