Hi guys,
After much hair tearing out (and trust me I don't have much left
) I discovered a bug in either WinXP or the Promise RAID software.
Some of you come across something related to this bug when you do a boot and the dreaded "No operating system found" message appears because the RAID 0 array has *lost* one of its members.
Config: Sager 8890 with 3.2GHz CPU
Twin 7k60 Hitachi disks in RAID 0 config.
BIOS 1.00.10-T1
XP pro clean install
Ok the deal is this:
I am doing a clean install of WinXP onto a RAID 0 array.
I tell the Fasttrak software to create the RAID 0 array using autoconfigure.
Insert XP CD and boot.
Press F6 to load 3rd party drivers.
More XP loading then select S to specify disks.
Insert floppy with RAID driver on it.
Select Fasttrak Lite for XP
RAID array shows up as disk of 114GB. Fine to here.
Now I select C - Create partition.
I downsize the winxp partition from 114GB (default is all available disk) to 92GB so that I have an extra partition of 22GB for Linux, Solaris and FAT share which I will setup later.
Tell the system to do a NTFS FULL format (not quick).
System starts to format.
BANG! (not literally, just figuratively)
Disk not recognised - RAID array offline.
The time it takes to do this is random during the format.
It is repeatable otherwise.
If you don't partition (ie format full RAID 0 array 114GB) it works perfectly.
When it does happen the Fasttrak config program shows the array offline and one of the member disks (normally Master 1) as being free?
I have emailed Promise with this issue.
As a work around you first do a full format without any partitions, let that complete then restart the laptop (power cycle as WinXP install locks out Ctrl/Alt/Del), restart the install from CD, partition the disk then only do a QUICK format rather than a full format.
Go figure.
Hope this helps someone.
After much hair tearing out (and trust me I don't have much left
) I discovered a bug in either WinXP or the Promise RAID software.Some of you come across something related to this bug when you do a boot and the dreaded "No operating system found" message appears because the RAID 0 array has *lost* one of its members.
Config: Sager 8890 with 3.2GHz CPU
Twin 7k60 Hitachi disks in RAID 0 config.
BIOS 1.00.10-T1
XP pro clean install
Ok the deal is this:
I am doing a clean install of WinXP onto a RAID 0 array.
I tell the Fasttrak software to create the RAID 0 array using autoconfigure.
Insert XP CD and boot.
Press F6 to load 3rd party drivers.
More XP loading then select S to specify disks.
Insert floppy with RAID driver on it.
Select Fasttrak Lite for XP
RAID array shows up as disk of 114GB. Fine to here.
Now I select C - Create partition.
I downsize the winxp partition from 114GB (default is all available disk) to 92GB so that I have an extra partition of 22GB for Linux, Solaris and FAT share which I will setup later.
Tell the system to do a NTFS FULL format (not quick).
System starts to format.
BANG! (not literally, just figuratively)
Disk not recognised - RAID array offline.
The time it takes to do this is random during the format.
It is repeatable otherwise.
If you don't partition (ie format full RAID 0 array 114GB) it works perfectly.
When it does happen the Fasttrak config program shows the array offline and one of the member disks (normally Master 1) as being free?
I have emailed Promise with this issue.
As a work around you first do a full format without any partitions, let that complete then restart the laptop (power cycle as WinXP install locks out Ctrl/Alt/Del), restart the install from CD, partition the disk then only do a QUICK format rather than a full format.
Go figure.
Hope this helps someone.
