Windows Forum

Ask something
Question Locked

BIOS is not seeing SATA RAID

0 helpful
18 replies

by tuffgi

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

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/

18 replies

by computercookie

drivers are compatible with Vista?

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

by willcomp

are not usually displayed in the main BIOS.

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

by oh smeg

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

by willcomp

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.

by oh smeg

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

Col

by rob miners

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.

by tuffgi

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.

by tuffgi

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

by peconet tietokoneet

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.

by computercookie

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!!!

by tuffgi

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

by tuffgi

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.

by seanferd

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

by tuffgi

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. :)

This discussion is closed to new replies.