Windows XP w/ RAID installation problem

[KSquared]

Hello. I'm hoping one of the experts here can help with this problem.
I have the KX7-333R with RAID-0 on the Highpoint controlled IDE#3 and IDE #4 lines, with another hard drive on the IDE#2 line, and the CD and DVD drive on the IDE#1 line. Under Windows ME everything is fine and all the drives and partitions are recognized. But when I try to install Windows XP the RAID drives are gone. I can't install the Highpoint drivers for XP from the Abit CD because it will only look on drive A:. I tried to copy the WinXP folder from the CD to a floppy, but then it said I needed some text file. So I am wondering what I can do to get it to install Windows XP on the RAID drive like I want it to.
Also, now it will only allow the drive on the IDE #2 line to be drive C: and the RAID drives on the IDE #3 and IDE #4 line to be drive D:, and I'm wondering if there is any way through the BIOS to somehow make the RAID drives into drive C:?
As usual I appreciate any help you can offer.

[Farabomb]

Ok, I think I ran into this problem too. Mdzcpa hepled me out and I hope I can find the file. When I find I'll mail it to you.

I better find it. I may need it when I get my KX7 back from ABIT.

[Farabomb]

Dang, you have a addy I can send it to?

[Synthohol]

on the CD for the drivers is there a setup folder because i remember on mine (below) you could only create an xp/2000 driver disk with their setup prog in same sub-folder.
also are you hitting F-6 when prompted to load addtnl scsi driver during OS install in the begining?
also (possible stupider question) do you have the two hdd's for the raid on 2 different channels/cables? that meathod is preferred.
i am assuming ide1 and #3 would be used for raid as no other devices should be on the raid cables for best performnce.
how many physical ide slots do u have, 2 or 4?
best bet look for a disk creating prog on the cd to make floppy, i think thats the answer to the "looking for .txt file" prob.
good luck!

[sptw]

Hi KSquared.

Let's try :)

Power off your PC.Disconnect all the cables of your hd installed on IDE2 (power and ide cable).Power on your PC now.On Raid setup, erase and recreate your raido again.On bios, on advanced Bios feature, look for the First, second and third device.On first, set it as Floppy.On second set it as SCSI and on third set it as CD rom, or anything else.Don't use a HDD option.On integrated Peripherals, look for ATA100/133 IDE controller as enabled.Save it and restart your PC.Now install Windows XP.After that, power off your PC and reconnect the cables (power and IDE cables) on your third HD on IDE2.It have to works.
BTW, what are you thinking to do with the third drive on IDE2?Backup Disk?And what do you mean CD and DVD.Is it a CD-RW or just a CD-R?

[4.6POWER]

Hi K^2,

Windows likes to make the boot disk drive C: but you can usually change this within windows using 3rd party software.... I'm not sure what the process is with XP, hopefully lee will be along shortly to answer that

As for the raid, did you hit the F6 key or whichever when prompted for scsi or raid devices? If not... I think you can add new hardware using the wizard. The raid controller would be under SCSI devices. I would think you'd see a bunch of yellow !'s in your device manager right now. TTYL,

Joe

[KSquared]

A couple points of clarification. I am hitting the F6 key during the installation so it will accept the other driver. Then you have to hit the S key (I think), and I do that too. But then it only will look on drive A:, and when I copied the WinXP folder from the Abit CD to a floppy it wouldn't accept it and said it needed a text file. Also, the CD-RW and the DVD drive are on the same IDE#1 line, one of them is the master and the other is the slave. On the IDE #2 line is the single hard disk (wanted to use it for backup safety). On the IDE #3 and IDE #4 line is the Highpoint controlled RAID-0 setup.
The suggestion from SPTW sounds like it should work, but I was hoping to not have to open up the computer and do all that. Also, wouldn't the drive letters simply revert back to what they were once the hard drive on IDE #2 line was reconnected? It seems that there should be some way to do this with software instead of having to remove hardware.

[Farabomb]

If you are getting a .txt error or disk does not contain information error try the drivers I sent you. You sound like you have all the connections right and it's sounding too much like the problem I had. I hope it works.:)

[Synthohol]

was there a driver diskmaker on the cd for floppys?

[sptw]

Hi again KSquared,

Only copy a WinXP folder from the Abit CD to a floppy doesn't work.You have to copy the full drivers.Yes, Win XP need a TXT file, precisely a TXTSETUP.oem file beside others.Take a look for this link to find your correct drivers for your mobo.You have to match the bios and driver with the same version.Look for your bios number.I know that there's one that performed better than others, sorry i can't remember, but Mdzcpa can help you on this.

Links to download the full drivers:

ABIT (http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/driver/i_adapter.htm#HR100)

HighPoint - Drivers and Bios sections (http://www.highpoint-tech.com/)

Binary's
(http://www.biosmods.com/download.php#hpt)

ViaHardware (http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kg7kr7/downloads.htm)

Remember, take the full driver and copy it to a floppy.

[mdzcpa]

KSquared,

These guys have you going in the right direction.

sptw is correct that you need all of the contents from the Highpoint driver folder on the CD copied onto a floppy which will inlcude the OEM set up file. PM me your personal email addy and an email you the file exactly as it needs to be copied onto the floppy if you want. I suggest using the 2.31 driver only and that's what I'll send.

Then do as suggested and go into the BIOS and set up boot order as Floppy, ATA133, CDROM. Make sure the Highpoint Controller is enabled. Enter the Highpoint BIOS and create your stripe.

Then install XP and use F6 as you have been with the file on the floppy I'll send you. When the installation screen comes up you will now have a choice of installing on either the RAID drive or the regular IDE 2 drive. Choose to make the partition and format the RAID drive for the installation location.

That should be it.

Window's built in Highpoint drivers are enough to get XP to recognize the RAID drive, but not as a bootable drive, this is why it comes up as D: after the OS is installed. However, once you get XP to recognize the RAID drive as bootable (by getting the right files on the floppy for 3rd party scsi), it will show as C: after the installation:)

I've rarely seen any trouble with this procedure. But if you do, just unplug only the HD off of IDE #2 (you can leave everything else alone) and perform the same procedure outlined above. This will guarantee you will be booting off of C: , and D: will be added after you plug the drive back in after initial install. If you do it this way, however, you will need to go into Control Panel>Admin Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management and configure the added drive and assign a drive letter. No big deal, but it is easier if you let Windows do it all from the start.

[KSquared]

One more point of clarification. I have never actually installed Windows XP, I've always stopped when it came to installing the Highpoint drivers. So during this time XP never saw the RAID drives. Windows ME (already installed) would recognize the RAID drives, but they were always assigned as drive D:.
Also, SPTW says to have the boot order as Floppy, SCSI, and CD, but MDZCPA says to have the boot order as Floppy, ATA133, CDROM. Which way would be the best, or would they both work equally well?
When SPTW says to "copy the full drivers" onto a floppy, do you then run the setup on the floppy before installing XP, or does XP then do everything when it sees the "full drivers" on the floppy?

[mdzcpa]

Originally posted by KSquared

Also, SPTW says to have the boot order as Floppy, SCSI, and CD, but MDZCPA says to have the boot order as Floppy, ATA133, CDROM. Which way would be the best, or would they both work equally well?

You definitely need to use ATA133 not SCSI. SCSI would be selected only if you had a SCSI card installed and were booting from a SCSI drive. I think sptw meant to say ATA133.


When SPTW says to "copy the full drivers" onto a floppy, do you then run the setup on the floppy before installing XP, or does XP then do everything when it sees the "full drivers" on the floppy?

Yes...XP sees everything it needs when all the drivers and files are on the disk. Do NOT run the setup. Once all the drivers are on the floppy, just use F6 during the installation and the OEM file will direct the the installation routine to the right driver.

BTW, I received your email addy. I will forward the highpoint driver tonight after work. Just unzip it and copy it to a floppy..that's it:)

[sptw]

Also, SPTW says to have the boot order as Floppy, SCSI, and CD, but MDZCPA says to have the boot order as Floppy, ATA133, CDROM. Which way would be the best, or would they both work equally well?

You definitely need to use ATA133 not SCSI. SCSI would be selected only if you had a SCSI card installed and were booting from a SCSI drive. I think sptw meant to say ATA133.

No, i mean SCSI.The drives connected to the Highpoint controller are seen by Windows as a SCSI device.Not only on HighPointer, but promise and others cards too..It works in the same way for stand alone cards, but maybe i missed something on this new HPT 372 chipset and correlated bios.I have a 4 PC here with RAID0.3 with highpointer built-in and one with promise stand alone card.All of them are working as SCSI device on their BIOS.


Edit: I could see it now: there's an option on KX333R named ATA133RAID.Well, i think it's better yo use this option.

[mdzcpa]

KSquared,

Hmmmm...having trouble getting your email to go through. I'm getting an undeliverable address. Please confirm your addy again.

[KSquared]

Thanks for all the help everyone. I think I've figured things out.
First, I got the floppy by using the link from SPTW to the Abit site. And on the floppy readme file is this exact problem. It states, as SPTW said also, that in order to put the OS on the RAID drives all other hard drives on the IDE #1 and IDE #2 lines must be disconnected. I even tried something I thought of, to delete the partition from the non-RAID drive. This made the RAID drive to drive C: as I wanted, but FDISK would only set the active partition to a partition on disk 1 (my disk on IDE #2 line), so that didn't work. So it seems that it is impossible to put the OS on the RAID drive without disassembling the computer.
Now I'm wondering if the benefit of putting the OS on the RAID drives is worth all the extra work? Is it that once the OS is loaded it doesn't really access the disk much after that, so there isn't much difference between RAID and non-RAID? Or will the time lost by not having the OS on the RAID drive soon exceed the time spent working on the computer?

[Farabomb]

I had a KT7 running the OS on the RAID and it was wicked quick. Then I got a A7V and I didn't run RAID after a mishap that took 15g of mp3's. It just seemed slower. Now I run (when working) a KX7-333R with 2 15g Maxtors and I'll allways run it now.

It took me 3 days and Mdzcpa's help and I got it working and it was well worth it. :)

[KSquared]

One more thing I forgot to add.
Somebody has also said that microsoft discourages installing any OS on a RAID-0 array. Is there any other reason than possible loss of use if a hard disk fails?
Would you get 90% of the benefit if you installed the OS to the non-RAID hard drive and the swap file to the RAID disks?

[sptw]

KSquared, now i know why you're suffering for installing RAID0 on your machine.Before i continue here, let me know the specifications from your 3 HDs(Brand, capacities).The 2 for RAID0 and this one for backup, please, and i will help you to do a best setup for it.

For your last question, yes, the OS on different drive than RAID0 is the best deal, but i would not believe in 90%, never.In my opinion, in your case(unless you're working most of your time for audio/video edition) ,it's better to put the OS in RAID0, and use the third hd for backup, exclusively.

[KSquared]

OK, it took two days, but XP is now on the RAID-0 drive. I wanted to be lazy and just put it on the non-RAID drive, but the peer pressure here was too intense.
I found out that you must do the entire installation of XP before reconnecting the other drive. I thought once you got ME installed everything would be OK, since XP was just upgrading. But NO, I got the blue screen error message. So once again I took the computer apart, but this time I did the complete installation of XP, and got it working without any problems. Also, XP recognized the additional hard drive when it was reconnected, I didn't have to do anything else with the disk management tools.
After doing all this I was still wondering if this was the best way.
The XP instructions say that the best way is to have the OS on one drive and the pagefile on another drive. But is the consensus that when there is a RAID-0 the speed advantage is to have both on the same RAID drives?
Also, couldn't I have told XP that I wanted it on drive D: when it was setting up, and then it would have been on the RAID-0 drive? Some people say it "doesn't like to be on a different drive than C:," but I can't see that it would make any difference to it as long as it knows where to go.
Another question I have is about the format/a command. I guess it somehow is beneficial, but since XP is now installed on drive C: it would be impossible to use this updated format on drive C:?
Also, is it now impossible to set up the computer with a dual boot between XP and ME, since XP is now installed?

[lechumbl]

Hi KSquared,

You must have ME on before you can put on XP.
Once XP is on, the only way to get ME on is to take off XP, put ME on, and put XP back on.

Isn't the wisdom of Mickeysoft great?

Take care.........

[Synthohol]

what if his xp partition was ntfs and he partitioned 10 gig lets say to fat32 then booted with a ME boot disk, ME wont even look at an ntfs partition he could install ME then no? with a little editing of the boot.ini file he should get the menu no?

[lechumbl]

Hi Synth,

No, it still will not work.
The boot.ini would not know to come up with both options available, so would not.

Take care........