Formating mirror raid array for new installation

When you are asked to place the Diskette with the drivers, make sure you insert it and you press enter, then it asks what kind of driver you want to install. Then you go back to the screen were you can choose to go on or press "S" to use the driver in the floppy !

Make sure you pressed "S" !

Best Regards !

I've gone through the steps that all of you mentioned.
- updated the bios version.
- obtained the latest drivers from their offical website
- the floppy disk if fine and the machine reads the available drivers in that floppy.
- pressing S then and giving it the right drivers and it loads it properly and shows it fine too.
- the raid card bios is read properly and I updated it successfully.

I just dont understand, when I set up the raid array everything is ok, it Identifies that I have 2 HDs in place, it clips them as an array and gives me a message created successfully.

At what exact point and with what message, after you successfully did the above, does the setup bomb out? What exactly is displayed?

its shows me the error right after the step where it ask for the raid card (by pressing F6), the drivers is identified and loaded with no problems.

after that step it gives me"  setup did not find any hard drives installed in you computer ......"

Then you probably didn't load the correct driver. Usually you get more than one on the floppies and it can be a bit of a hassle selecting the correct one. Maybe if the floppy lists more than one drivers, you could select the others as well. If that doesn't help I still think you may have to download a newer version or check with the promise homepage. Their user support is quite OK, although the first reply might take some time.

the same drivers I used for others and its working fine.  I noticed that when you create an array FastBuild utility reserves 64byte size for somthing.
how can i delete that if am not using that HD in the array? Reson for this is that some time age I was testing out some hard disk and created array the I deleted it but it. then I used that HD the FastBuild utility does not show me -+64byte.

I think that is used to store the raid configuration information so that when you need to change the controller it'll pick it up correctly. You might be able to remove this reserved area by using the HD's utility from the manufacturer and zero fill the disk (sometimes they call it lowlevel format) on a standard (not raid) adapter.

If everything is working correctly using the same type of controller on other hardware and with the same drivers, have you tried that controller on another mainboard, and are you sure the firmware level of this controller is the same as those other controllers?

a step forward!!!    I managed to get passed the previous message I formated the drive and the set the install partition, the I got this message:

*** STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x0000000C, 0x00000005, 0x00000001,0xBFE0D41A)
    DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_RQUAL
*** Adress BFE0D41A base at BFE08000, Date stamp 3C79D2B6 - FastTrak.sys

any idea

was this in the raid bios or during windows instalation

if this is windows server 2003 this is caused by an out of date Storport storage driver. if this is the case there is an update that can be slipstreamed onto the instalation media to solve this. here is the KB link

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;%5bLN%5d;838894

no its Win2k Pro with SP 4, but am unable get pass it.

this sounds like a memory reference error caused by the driver. is there an older viersion of the driver you can try, sometimes the newer drivers are not fully tested on older operation systems as they expect everyone to be running the newest stuff....dont I wish.

after the install is finished and you applie all updates then upgrade the driver to the newest version.

this may also be a hardware reference so if posible test the drive setup with the same controler in another computer and see if the same problem accurs.