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BIOS is not seeing SATA RAID

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MoBo: MSI K9N2 AM2+ nForce 750a
2Gig Ram
Radeon HD4550
X2 Seagate 1.5 TB

I set up the Raid in the BIOS and when the Riad util starts it sees both drives and says they are healthy. However, I do not see the SATA drives in the BIOS. When I try to install Vista I don’t see the drives. If I set the BIOS to IDE it works fine but I would rather run the drives striped Raid (0). I have tried every setting in the BIOS to read the drives in Raid with no success. It seems pretty straight forward. What am I missing/

Topic

Clarifications

In reply to BIOS is not seeing SATA RAID

Clarifications

Did you check that the RAID

In reply to BIOS is not seeing SATA RAID

drivers are compatible with Vista?

Did you press F6 when prompted to install the RAID driver before you proceed with the Vista install

RAID Drives

In reply to BIOS is not seeing SATA RAID

are not usually displayed in the main BIOS.

As computercookie said — you likely need F6 drivers for the RAID controller.

Where you are going wrong here is that you need to

In reply to BIOS is not seeing SATA RAID

Press the [b]F6 Key[/b] when the first blue screen appears in the Windows Installer and when prompted insert a Floppy with the RAID Drivers copied to it’s Root in the A Drive and install the RAID Drivers there.

If you don’t have access to a Floppy you can Slipstream the RAID Driver to a Vista Install Disc with vLite available for download here

http://www.vlite.net/download.html

don’t forget to read the instructions on their Web Site here

http://www.vlite.net/help/

BIOS normally can not see any RAID Arrays as it loads before the RAID Drivers are applied and loaded tot he system.

Col

Flash Drive

In reply to Where you are going wrong here is that you need to

With Vista you can use a flash drive in lieu of a floppy drive for F6 driver installation. Also believe you can use a CD but flash drive is more convenient.

Yep I know

In reply to Flash Drive

I just like to follow the [b]KISS Principal[/b] and not confuse the OP too much. 😉

Col

KISS

In reply to Yep I know

True that… 🙂

Keep It Slip-Streamed?

In reply to Yep I know

?

That is one big plus

In reply to Flash Drive

with Vista and Windows 7 being able to access USB instead of a Floppy. I wonder if the BIOS manufacturers could allocate A and B drive to USB.

Never happen

In reply to That is one big plus

to logical, in a real world you’d expect something like that.

However, its taken many years for them to boost L2 cache and now they’re out to at least 12 MB shared on Quad core processors even though XP and Vista can’t recognise the shared L2 so it defaults to 256 KB (too lazy to load W7 so I don’t know about it).

Obviously legislation is useless as you only have to look at the USB experiment!!!

Could you imagine if it was in a real world using this

In reply to Never happen

as A and B drive.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/under-the-microscope/soa/USB-3-0-will-crush-eSATA-FireWire/0,2001098126,339294329,00.htm

Keep trying

In reply to Flash Drive

I just need to get acclimated to SATA striping. I tried using the Raid drivers from MSI website on a flash drive. When I select the drivers off of my flash drive it keeps defaulting to the C:\ drivers. I would think that would be ok but it never loads the drivers. OH Smeg suggested this:

“Where you are going wrong here is that you need to
Press the F6 Key when the first blue screen appears in the Windows Installer and when prompted insert a Floppy with the RAID Drivers copied to it’s Root in the A Drive and install the RAID Drivers there.

If you don’t have access to a Floppy you can Slipstream the RAID Driver to a Vista Install Disc with vLite available for download here

http://www.vlite.net/download.html

don’t forget to read the instructions on their Web Site here

http://www.vlite.net/help/

BIOS normally can not see any RAID Arrays as it loads before the RAID Drivers are applied and loaded tot he system.

Col”

I may just compile a MoBo driver DVD and put the popular drivers on it for the future. I?m trying to in stall on Vista Extreme. I have never used the Ops set up before. It?s possible that this OP is giving me problems. I like what OH Smeg suggested and plan to make that my next attempt.

VLite

In reply to Where you are going wrong here is that you need to

I downloaded VLite. However, it appears it needs Windows to run. I have to get the drives to read first on the machine I have them in. I downloaded both the Raid drivers from Seagate and MSI but it still does not see them in the F6 set up when it asks to install them. BIOS does not see SATAs. I set the BIOS to run Raid and I also set the channels to the correct channels. On Post F10 I see both drives set to Raid Striped and status reads healthy. Then when Vista starts it’s install I can’t get past installing the drivers. I burned a DVD with all the drivers I can find but none seem to hook up. I not giving up but I’m currently out of options. I don’t think I’m following the KISS rule. Thanks in advance and thanks for the quick responses.
In all cases the driver that I’m trying to install is nvrd32.inf

Basically Windows does not like SATA…

In reply to VLite

If the drives are showing healthy in the Raid setup then that is all you need. What you need to do is to install Windows Vista on a SATA (non raid) drive and when you have all of the updates then do a clone of the drive to your Raid0 drives, i have done this on my system and it works really well and good. Sometimes it is a hit and miss with the Riad0 setup with Vista. Well that is my easy option to you.
You can do a clone/image with Acronis:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/anr43f

Hope all goes well.

I will have to try that

In reply to Basically Windows does not like SATA…

I am going to try that next. Why can’t I make the raid bootable in the post util? The option is not available.

Greybear

In reply to Basically Windows does not like SATA…

Question: When I had the 1.5TB HDD’s I tried using the Vista Util to fix my problem on a IDE Drive boot up. In the Manage Drives Util I selected an option that said the drives would not be bootable. After that I was not able to change drives to bootable in the post util. When I replaced the drives with x2 500 SATAs I still can’t set them to boot in post? Do I have to clear the CMOS? I don’t understand why a win setting can effect a post setting on new drives. Sorry about newbie sata raid questions. I can remember getting excited about DOS upgrades like 1.2 and doskey.

I believe you boot from the RAID controller, not drives

In reply to Greybear

I don’t know if you will see separate drives or not. You may just see the array as a whole.

I see the array as a whole but…

In reply to I believe you boot from the RAID controller, not drives

When I boot from new
drives the option to make them boot able is
grey out. How do I make them boot able? I see them in Vista install but I’m still have the boot issue. If I use an IDE with the Sata drives all seems ok but I have to use the IDE drive to see OP. If I don’t it will not boot. Thanks in advance, Tuff When I get home I’m going to set up windows on none Raid drive and then try to clone them with the ap. I just hope this fixes the boot issue. 🙂

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