I need some serious help

[MJPZero]

Recently I bought a 320gig SATA hard drive from Tiger Direct. My computer, a Dell Dimension 4600 had a 40gig ATA, but anymore it just does not have enough space, and I'm having problems with it... So I figured it was time to upgrade. Knowing that my mobo does not have SATA slots, I also bought a Serial ATA 2-Port SATA RAID PCI Controller Host Card Adapter with a power adapter and a SATA cable.

Now I have everything hooked up, and it appears to recognize my hard drive because it labels it, but here is the screen I'm seeing:

SATA primary drive 0 not found
Secondary drive 1 not found

Sil 3512 SATARaid BIOS Version 4.3.534
Copyright (C) 1997-2005 Silicon Image, Inc.

Press <Ctrl+S> or F4 to enter RAID utility
0 - ST3320620AS - 298 GB

Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility

F1 does nothing. I've hit F2 and tried to boot from IDE CD-rom so I could install XP, but it NEVER boots from my XP cd...

I did hit F4, and I got into some sort of RAID menu. I formatted the hard drive, but that didn't help.

Any suggestions??

[Teachingmyself]

Raid is not to be trifled with!

I see no need for you to use it as if you use striping your sata hard drive will run at the speed of your ATA and if you use mirroring you will have one 40 gb hard drive with a redundant back up.Anyway to the troubleshooting-

Have you installed the drivers?

Is Raid enabled in the BIOS?

If the answer to both of these is "yes" then go back into the secondary raid bios("ctrl + s") and bring both of your disks over to the right.I've never seen a sil raid bios so I'm going on generalities here.They'll be in one menu,transfer them to the other and create a RAID array using striping or mirroring.Bear in mind what I said earlier though.

Personally I'd leave the 40gb out of the Raid controller completely and just use the raid card as a SATA adapter until I could get another Sata HD and then stripe both SATA's,assuming no vital Data was being kept on them.

Did the raid card include Sata drivers or was it raid only?

Check out this thread for a pretty comprehensive explanation of Raid
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread63384.html

[MJPZero]

The raid card came with a cd containing the drivers.

It has some directions for XP systems:

1. Before installation copy the driver files to a blank floppy (which I've done).
2. After the SATA RAID PCI Host Adapter and attached drivers are configured, follow Microsoft procedures to install windows accordingly.
3. At the Windows set-up screen, press F6 in order to specifiy and add the driver.

(I've gotten here before, but the first time I didn't have the drivers on a floppy so I had to exit - I CANT GET BACK HERE AGAIN!)

4. Insert the Driver diskette. Press S then Enter.
5. Select Silicon Image Sil-3x12 SATA Raid Controller Driver and press Enter.

...The rest is pretty simple.

Anyway, I've pressed F6 everywhere I can can't get to a place to make sure these drivers are installed.

I currently do not have my 40gig EIDE hard drive hooked up, I wasn't planning on continuing to use it, but just use the 320 as my main drive.

Is my problem that I cannot use this card as a means to providing a sata slot for my computer?

When I press CTRL S, I see:

Create RAID set
Delete RAID set
Build Mirrored set
Resolve Conflicts
Low Level Format

then below,

*0 - PM - STR3320620AS - 298GB
1 - SM -

*First HDD

-Thats basically everything.

For right now I just want to get windows installed on this 320gig hard drive! I don't know if RAID is enabled or disabled in the BIOS...

In the setup, I went to drive configuration:

Diskette Drive A: 3.5 inch, 1.44 mb

SATA primary drive........ unknown device
SATA seconary drive...... off
Primary master drive...... off
Primary slave drive......... off
Secondary master drive... cd-rom device
secondary slave drive...... unknown device

IDE drive udma .............. On

My hard-disk drive sequence:

1. 02: 00-0 ST3320620AS
2. System BIOS boot devices
3. USB Device (not installed)

Boot Sequence:

1. IDE CD-ROM Device (checked)
2. Hard-disk Drive C: (checked)
3. Diskette Drive

I really don't know what else I can do...

[Teachingmyself]

Ok this should be an easy fix.

What you need to do is put the windows xp cd rom into the cd drive.
Put the cd-rom as the first and only boot device
Boot to the cd.When windows is copying itself onto the hard drive it will say "press F6 to install 3rd party drivers" on the bottom of the screen in blue

Press F6,it will keep loading and as soon as everything is on the HD it will ask for the drivers.Please note there may be 2 or 3 on the floppy,you have to copy them all.

Now you should be able to finish your setup normally,the HD drive will show up,put windows on it budda bing budda boom working sata HD.

If you're not setting up a raid forget all the crud with the Raid bios,you don't need to worry about it

Once it shows up as sata you're fine,the unknown is because windows see's the raid card.

Basically all that the unknown is saying is"Yes there's something attached to Sata slot one,don't think its a HD though"

Windows see's the Raid card as one hard drive and the raid then deals with the Hard drives.The raid card needs its drivers so it can "lie" to windows.At the moment windows knows you're after sticking something dodgy in the drivespace

[MJPZero]

Ok this should be an easy fix.

What you need to do is put the windows xp cd rom into the cd drive.
Put the cd-rom as the first and only boot device
Boot to the cd.When windows is copying itself onto the hard drive it will say "press F6 to install 3rd party drivers" on the bottom of the screen in blue

Press F6,it will keep loading and as soon as everything is on the HD it will ask for the drivers.Please note there may be 2 or 3 on the floppy,you have to copy them all.

Now you should be able to finish your setup normally,the HD drive will show up,put windows on it budda bing budda boom working sata HD.

If you're not setting up a raid forget all the crud with the Raid bios,you don't need to worry about it

Dell comes up, I press F12 to go to "Boot Menu"

It boots from the cd (finally...) and I'm waiting for it to press F6, when it's almost done going through all the files I get a BSOD

"Process1_Initialization_Failed"

Upon shutting down, and rebooting again - I went through the same steps, and I get

"No boot device available -
strike F1 key to retry reboot, F2 for setup utility"

F1 gives the same message...

I press F2, and retry - this time I get a Boot Device Menu

1. Normal
2. IDE CD-Rom

3. System setup
4. IDE drive diagnostics
5. Boot to utility partition

Naturally, I'm trying to get XP installed so I selected 2 and get the usual "Strike F1 to continue, F2 to run setup"

I hit F1 and heard the CD drive rev up, but nothing happened and I had to restart.

Upon restart I'm getting "No boot device available" again.

I checked the Boot sequence, and it says

1. CD-Rom Device (not installed)

LOL I love it. Where the hell do these problems come from?? I did take out my cd burner to put a dvd burner in as well, but I didn't mess with the CD drive at all...

I'm going to physically make sure everything's attached, should I unplug the new dvd burner for now?

[MJPZero]

Thanks, You've been a lot of help!

I re-connected the cd-rom, it worked, it loaded, I got to the F6 screen again... my floppy was corrupt. Such bad luck I am having...

Anyway I just connected the 40gig again, loaded up, and this time I am making 2 floppy's...

I'll update my status when I get there...

[MJPZero]

Thanks a lot dude! I finally got it running and everything. I'm glad I went through the trouble of installing a SATA hard drive, there seems to be a noticeable upgrade in speed :)

[Teachingmyself]

Glad I could help.

Raid is very powerful but as you saw it's definitely NOT plug and play

It all comes down to a dirty 9 letter word beginning with "m" and ending with "arketing"!

[Teachingmyself]

Oh and remember to mark the thread solved :)