GA-K8NS Ultra-939 RAID problems

I have a GA-K8NS Ultra 939 Motherboard. I have a single IDE drive with
Windows XP with service pack 2 installed. I would like to add a second
IDE drive and set up a Raid 0 array. Can I do this without reformatting
and reinstalling XP?

I have gone into the bios and enable the RAID on both drives. When I
reboot and press F10, the raid setup screen appears but the system
freezes. If I don't press F10 and boot from the window XP CD and press
F6 to install the raid drivers nothing happens. Do I need to reset up
Windows?

Thanks for any suggestions you have.

wrote:
I have a GA-K8NS Ultra 939 Motherboard. I have a single IDE drive with
Windows XP with service pack 2 installed. I would like to add a second
IDE drive and set up a Raid 0 array. Can I do this without reformatting
and reinstalling XP?

I have gone into the bios and enable the RAID on both drives. When I
reboot and press F10, the raid setup screen appears but the system
freezes. If I don't press F10 and boot from the window XP CD and press
F6 to install the raid drivers nothing happens. Do I need to reset up
Windows?

Thanks for any suggestions you have.


Yes, to set up a RAID-0 array, you would need to reload the PC.
A RAID-1 (mirroring) array, you could probably do without a reload, but
you would only get redundancy, no performance or space benefits.

As for the freeze up, I couldn't tell you. I've got the K8N-Ultra9, and
my RAID setup is on the Silicon Image SATA.

As for Nothing seeming to happen when you press F6 during Windows setup,
it will (eventually) bring up a message asking you to insert the driver
floppy, but only after it has continued on past the F6 dialog...
Really annoying, as I expected something to happen right away also. MS
could have at least popped up a dialog saying "You've pressed F6!"

I plan on setting up a mirror array (sorry, I thought that was Raid 0).
Do I still need to start with a empty primary IDE drive?

When I press F6 nothing happens. Eventually the menu to do a repair or
a XP setup comes up.

you can do it without reformatting
add the blank drive and create the array in the BIOS. It will ask which
drive you want to use as the source for data (although it usually suggests
the right one if one is unformatted)
It then copies the disk across in BIOS, this will take several hours
depending on the disk size.
Then and only then will it boot to windows

On 4 Jan 2006 19:23:45 -0800, wrote:

I have a GA-K8NS Ultra 939 Motherboard. I have a single IDE drive with
Windows XP with service pack 2 installed. I would like to add a second
IDE drive and set up a Raid 0 array. Can I do this without reformatting
and reinstalling XP?

I have gone into the bios and enable the RAID on both drives. When I
reboot and press F10, the raid setup screen appears but the system
freezes. If I don't press F10 and boot from the window XP CD and press
F6 to install the raid drivers nothing happens. Do I need to reset up
Windows?


I would make an image of your current C-drive and store it on a spare
harddisk.
I can suggest Driveimage as program. Bootable CD.

Then make your array.

Boot on Driveimage CD and restore the image on your new array.

Then reboot on the array. maybe you will have to press F8 for safe
mode when booting first time.

This should work if the raid driver is 'transparent' for your current
windows installation.

best regards

John