Raid Problems

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Earlier this year I completed my first build - researched my topic, read a book, lurked on a couple of forums, bought a few issues of Custom PC, then bought all my kit online and sat down one Sunday afternoon to build - was really quite pleasantly surpirsed when everything went according to plan, powered up and loaded Vista without a single problem and had a working PC by late evening.

The original headline spec was - Asus P5B deluxe wifi; E6600 Core 2 Duo; 2GB RAM; Western Digital 500GB HDD; X1950XT Graphics card; Enermax 1kw Galaxy all brought together in a Coolermaster 830 Stacker. I overspecified the power with the intention that at some point in the future I would be beefing up the system with maybe a pair of top of the line graphics cards (unfortunately Crossfire if I retained the same M/B) maybe a quad core CPU and further HDD's and who knows what else.... I dabbled with a little overclocking which also worked fine and then called it quits.

I have just decided to spend a little more tweaking things upwards further so bought a G0 Stepping Q6600 Core 4 Quad and a couple of Samsung Spinpoint 501's with the intention of setting them up in a RAID 0 array.

My intention was to leave the WD HDD in place as the boot drive and storage for things like photos and music and have the two Spinpoints as a separate RAID 0 array where I would load games and other programs I wanted quicker load times from.

It unfortunately doesn't look like that's going to work - I've successfully phyically connected up (S-ATA connections) and mounted the two new HDD's - BIOS recognises them, but they don't show up in the "Computer" spec summary in Vista and whenever I try to configure the new array in BIOS Windows won't then load.

What am I doing wrong? My internet searching has revealed mixed help - all I can possibyl discern is I might have to go for a re-install of Vista but I understand Microsoft might be difficult with me about that as I bought an OEM version of Vista. Thoughts, help, a kind person out there to give me a step by step to achieving my end objective?
 
I have just been through this infuriating experience. I am not a stranger to RAID arrays and thought that with a fresh install of XP Pro on a new 10K rpm boot drive I could then use 2 x 200 Gb matched drives as RAID0. Fat chance. Even installing the RAID driver during a windows repair installation failed. I have the same motherboard as you and as you see much the same idea about using the striped array for speed. My O/S is OEM XP Pro.
What did work (after making a floppy with the Asus Intel drivers on it and setting up the RAID in the BIOS) is to reinstall the OS from scratch, pressing F6 to opt for additional driver installation, feed it the floppy when asked and then carry on with the insallation as usual. I was then able to format the RAID array as drive D. Some two weeks after all is OK - but now I have said this the whole sodding lot will fall over in the morning.
 
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