Hi ppl I've just got myself a EIO DM-8401 ATA133 raid card which slots into the pci bus. I got it so that I could put in extra hard drives. I have my boot drive and a slave hd attached to the IDE 1 channel on the mb and a CD rom attached to the IDE 2 channel on the mb. When I connect the RAID card by itself everything works fine but when I try and boot with a blank (formatted) hd connect to the card as well as the original two drives on the mb the machine wont boot. It does the RAM check and then gives me a choice to goe to the RAID card's BIOS setup or hit esc to carry on booting. If I hit esc the machine very briefly flashes a screen up with the original hds on it (like a normal post) and then goes 2 a blank screen and hangs. If I go to the RAID card's BIOS and try to set the array type to "normal" (I only have 1 extra hd atm) it doesnt save it and the machine refuses to boot when i exit the RAID BIOS. Also how do I have to set the jumpers on the hd's attached to the RAID card? Any ideas guys? cos im stuck. Thanks in advance

the jumpers are std master slave. have the cluster sizes been defined on the HD'S? Usually the only reason the config wouldnt save would be if it is done wrong. how are you setting it up, striping only? mirror? etc. are the drives identicle?

The hd's on the mother board ide are set up as master+slave. The RAID card hd (only one atm) has been formatted under w2k as fat32. The options on the card dont appear to be giving me the "Normal" option which should allow me to use each physical drive as a seperate logical drive. My main prob atm is that the machine wont boot when there is a hd attached to the raid card (boots fine when there isnt one connected). Is it the raid card not saving the array config that is giving me this error? Do I need more than one physical drive up the raid card in order to implement the "Normal"(not JBOD) setup? cos the manual (which is c**p) says u can use the normal setting with 1,2,3 or 4 drives. Thanks

remove the partition(s)from the added drive. You should boot normally. Then partition and format using Disk manager after you have loaded the raid card drivers in W2K. I suspect the raid card is trying to boot the new drive. check your boot order in the bios.

There is nothing on the raid drive, it was just formatted under w2k as a slave. Should that b ok?. If not what do I have to do to the drive? The bios reports that the boot order is: floppy, CD, and then under hd the order is: primary drive on the mb, then secondary drive on the mb and then finally the RAID card so thats right. I cant understand this at all, it should boot! Any more ideas?

"it was just formatted under w2k.." When you partition and format the OS assigns a drive letter to that drive/partition. If that drive letter is one previously used by the OS the OS can't boot. This is why I said remove all partition on the raid array. The idea is to get you booting again. Once you are booted you can follow this procedure so you don't have the drive letter conflict again. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];Q282530

ah thanks wanderer. How do I reassign the drive letter in W2K? If I boot with my primary drive and have the drive that was the raid drive as a slave and reassign the drive letter will it retain that letter even when i plug it back into the raid card? Please bear with me i've not had to muck with this before and im slowly feeling my way around. Thanks Toby