Problem installing XP on SATA RAID 0 setup

Status
Not open for further replies.

ew0054

Posts: 9   +0
Good afternoon, all

I just finished installing a second SATA drive and configured it as RAID 0 as per m otherboard manual instructions. Using 2x WD800JD 80.0 GB drives, SATA II.

I have a floppy drive and made a driver disk for the In tel ICH8R RAID driver as required, and did the F6 install when running XP setup. It appeared to recognize the drivers, formatted the array as NTFS, installed the XP files.

I go to restart and I get BSOD upon rebooting. The second and subsequent times, I get the following message:

Reboot and Select Proper Boot Device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key


I cannot get it to boot from C:. I went through the XP installation again and this time there is no BSOD but I get the same message.

Both times, during XP setup, it asks for the RAID driver files with options to press ENTER-continue (does nothing) F3-quit ESC-ignore.

I tried ignoring and obviously it doesn't install so I'm still stuck. When I press ENTER it scanns the floppy but still asks me for the same file. I tried making a second floppy and stil have the same problem.

I am fresh out of ideas. Thanks in advance for any help!
 
Raid is both impractical and a source of horrors and terrors to your average user. Why not simple install the two drives as C: and D: ?
 
Raid is both impractical and a source of horrors and terrors to your average user. Why not simple install the two drives as C: and D: ?

80 GB is more than enough space anyway so I am trying to get as much speed out of the com puter as I can. Thanks anyway for sharing.

^^ misspelled on purpose to remove ad
 
Is drive detection actually set as "SATA" in BIOS? I'd also consider re-re-reading your mobo manual to find out if there's a nuance you might have missed regarding the onboard SATA controller
 
Perhaps I am at fault for failing to clarify the situation.

Once I get past the screen where I select the drive to install XP onto, it checks the floppy for the RAID drivers (in this case, iastor.sys).

I get the following message:

Setup cannot copy the file: iaStor.sys

To retry press ENTER

If you are installing from a CD make sure the WIndows XP CD is in the CD drive.

To skip this file press ESC

CAUTION if you skip this file setup may not complete and WIndows may not work properly.

To quite setup press F3

The disk is in and contains the files. I keep pressing ENTER and the above message repeats. The FDD light is on so it is polling the diskette, but refuses to actually copy the file.
 
This is an oddity indeed. I was using an XP Pro disc and was having all of the problems. I dug up an XP home disc I had and so far it seems to be copying the files off the diskette correctly. I will update when finished.
 
Ok it went through the GUI portion of the setup no problem. Now when I restart the computer I get a message

Reboot and select proper boot device
or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key


And it wil not boot from C:please help
 
Ok first I get a ******* award for today... I score plenty of those actually.

I forgot to add the hard drive to the boot order in BIOS.

Now it boots to XP properly!

I still don't understand the different between the Home and Pro installs, but at least it all appears to work now.

Thanks for your time and help. Sorry for multi-posting but perhaps this thread can help others in the future who have this situation.
 
If you search for 'raid' on this site, you will find many users struggling to get it working with windows. Typical case here https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic121740.html

For a potential increase in bandwidth, the difficulties or impossibility of recovery in almost all situations has to be experienced to be believed. Even in the case of supposedly hardware-based raid, it is often the case that the OS (windows) does all the work anyway, resulting in actual throughput being lower than a single drive.

Also read completely, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_array which says much the same thing. Note particularly about 'fake raid'. Some people advise using raid 1 instead, but that is equally pointless, because actual hard drive failure (which is what raid 1 protects against) is 100 times less likely than corruption due to malware, windows faults etc etc.

My advice (no charge !) is use both drives, but use one for backup amd drive images taken regularly.
 
I appreciate the insight. This is mainly a gaming rig, and I keep all my other important docs backed up on an external HDD.

I am aware of the risks, but I never had a HDD go bad on me before it became obsolete. Not saying it doesn't happen of course.

From what I see so far, load times are pretty much instant now. I saw a noticable difference from the beginning that I was quite impressed with. Installing XP, which normally takes over an hour (copying files onto an already formatted HDD) took about 40 minutes after formatting the RAID 0.

And yes, technically there is no "redundancy," since if one drive fails everything is gone. But the way I see it, if you work everything on a single drive and it fails the data is lost anyway.
 
You are just about to become obsolete on the speed front. See https://www.techspot.com/news/33972-super-talent-unveils-new-ultradrive-performance-ssds.html and this is just the start....

Ain't it the truth though? It's nice to hear that the solid state drives are becoming affordable sooner than expected.

On a side note, I recall Quad-cores selling for $1K about two years ago. Now I see them for about $200.

Of course, I could hold out a few more years and wait for the 200MB/s SSD to drop in price. By comparison, it'd be way better than ATA133, but when everyone else by that time would be using 300-500MB/s... well you get the point.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back