whats a bit between friends?
I beleive it was Lewis Carroll who said, "listen to what I mean, not what I say". ;o)

He-he!

The distinction is important some times though. A few years ago, a large jet airliner was on its way to Canada when the fuel ran out and they had to deadstick the plane onto a small airport runway. [This has to rate as one of the top piloting feats in history, it is normally believed to be impossible.]

How could an airliner run out of fuel?

The Canadian crew had checked that the fuel gauges read 38,400 (or whatever the exact number was) and they had carefully calculated that this was plenty for the trip home given the prevailing winds.

Unfortunately this particular plane had fuel gauges that indicated pounds, not kilos. Net effect: they had less than half the fuel they expected, and it just ran out.

You may also remember the Mars lander that crashed after seven years of hard preparation work because of getting units mixed up.

At least with hard drives, you can always add another one...

:O)

Not to mention the fiasco with Hubble telescope. It's widely rumored that the Hubble didn't work because two labs worked on the design. One lab used metric and one lab used IPS...hehehe. We all make mistakes.

Bill, where did you get your components?

Bought mobo, CPU, memory(OCZ PC3200) and video card from NEWEGG. You can do a search on PRICEWATCH and NEWEGG has th ebest prices, overall. You may save a few pennies by buying each from diff vendors, but, IMHO, it's not worth the hassle and cost of shipping. HDD come from compuplus.

Did the F5 bios come with your board? Are you using XP 64 bit?

JJK

yes, F5 BIOS. No, not interested in 64 bit computing until Vegas and Photoshop go 64 bit.

Are you using the nvidia raid or the Sil raid?

I've had a little trouble with the raid not coming up at boot from time to time and for the life of me couldn't figure out how to install an array after Windows was installed. It just seems like you can't install the nvidia RAID drivers unless you do it a s a part of the initial setup.

Sounds great! Congrats.

Rob Mack

I'm using Nvidia RAID, no problems.
There's a trick to installing the RAID drivers if you're already installed. It took me some time to figure it out, but, it works. Do this...

0-be sure to ENABLE the Nvidia RAID option in the BIOS.
1-insert the MS Windows XP install CD(yes, that's right), and boot from it.(edit: If you have SP2 installed, be sure you use a slipstreamed SP2 install disk or it will "repair" the system to SP1)
2-It will ask you if you want to install windows XP, say yes. When it asks if you want to install third party drivers, press F6, DO IT!!!
3-It will ask for the floppy disk. Make sure you created an Nvidia RAID driver floppy per the Gigabyte Instructions. Insert it and follow the directions from the Windows XP install disk.
4-After a bit, it will ask you where you want to install the OS to. Select the boot drive as if you were gonna re-install.
5-Here's the trick...it will detect the existing installation and ask if you want to repair it. Say YES!!! It may not be able to locate some driver files. In that case browse to the floppy disk where the RAID files are.
6-Don't be afraid, it will look like it's re-installing the whole OS, right down to asking you for the date, etc. When all is said and done, the original install pops up and, lo and behold, there's the RAID disk.
It's a little scary, but it works, and it saved me several days of re-installing everything.

BE SURE TO BACK EVERYTHING UP WITH GHOST, FIRST.

Good luck.

Bill,

Are you using the RAID 0 as your boot device or capture? I just purchased parts for an almost identical system using the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium motherboard with 6800GT video card. Other than that, I also selected the AMD 4600+ X2, 2GB memory (Corsair TwinX), and two WD2500JS’s that I plan to use as a RAID 0 for capture. I want to use a WD 74GB 10K SATA drive as the boot device.

I’ve never used a RAID before. Should I create the RAID when I install Windows XP even though I’m not using it for my boot device. It sounds like this is the easiest way to configure the machine. (I was going to configure without the RAID at first and then create the RAID when I had the PC running stable. It sounds like this will be a hassle and I should just do it all at install time)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. (my parts shipped from NewEgg today and I can’t wait to get them)

~jr

Johnny Roy...

My thinking was the same as yours...install the raid after I had things up and running, since I boot from ordinary PATA HD's on the IDE bus. I use raid only for capture. Alas, if you don't install the raid drivers from the get-go, you'll have to go thru gyrations to get them installed. My advice...load the raid drivers when you load the OS, just like the manual recommends. Same procedure, tho'. press F6 when the windows installers asks if you have any 3rd party drivers. making the floppy is easy if you have the factory CD.

Bill, Thanks for that advice. I’ll load the whole thing from the start. (I’m getting excited now) :-D

~jr

My elite guru buddy says you do not have to load those drivers during OS install. (3rd party). I found out he was right. It's not hard at all. He says there are no 3rd party drivers that have to be installed during OS install period. Anyway what do I know. I just do what he says.

JJK

I was sure of the same thing. The way XP lets you intall drivers, or update drivers, is thru the device manager. What happens with the Nvidia ultra south bridge is that it doesn't recognize the RAID controller chips if it doesn't get the driver info before you install the OS. So, without recognizing the RAID controller chip, the RAID HD's appear as ordinary IDE drives after installation without the RAID drivers. I tried updating the drivers thru the device manager, but, this method still failed. Again, do what Nvidia recommends, either install the drivers thru the F6 option when you install the OS, or go the "REPAIR" route I describe above.

I will remember the repair procedure but I have been afraid ever since Windows 95.

JJK

Thanks Bill,

This is the first intelligent description of the process I've found. I had actually gotten all the way up through step 5 but my install discs were for SP1 and my system was SP2. That scared me off a bit. Since then I've found instructions to build a new setup disc that incorprates the SP2 update. so I should build myself an up to date install disc for XP. Then I won't have as much trouble.

Rob