Migrating to Raid 0 from single seperate drive

Howdy all

I got me 2 new 74 GB Raptors from the deal BB has going. Now i know all about the raid 0 debate, but i back up and simply am looking to try something new.

I have a P5B-Deluxe with an ICH8R controller.

I have windows on a 250gb SATA drive. Windows was installed in "IDE" mode, no F6 drivers. I set the mode to RAID in the utilty, built an array of the raptors, i wanted to then boot to the 250gb drive and use true image to clone it to the array. But thats a no go.

Is there a way to get windows to boot on the controller in raid mode so i can clone. I thought about a repair install but i don't have a floppy drive to for F6 drivers, just USB thumb drive.

Any help would be hugely appreciated.

You can always use Fry's rental policy to solve your floppy drive problem, but why would you need to? OEM floppy drives go for like $5 on the egg.

No frys within 500 miles. As for buying a floppy. I'd like to have this working soon.

almost the same problem here, i just pulled a floppy out of an old computer and used it for installation. The weird thing is, after about the 3rd time remaking the raid(without re-installing windows), the drives showed up as a single disk in partitionmagic, so i made a 150gb partition on them and it worked great. I have since re-installed windows and forgot about the raid drivers thing(hell it was working 5 minutes ago and the partitions are just fine) but I boot into windows and it says there is unknown hardware(my HDDs) and i cant see the partition.

You could slipstream the drivers with nLite. Then you wouldn't need a floppy.

^^Agreed with above^^

Make sure you slipstream the CORRECT drivers, or windows won't find the files you need. Took me a couple goes to get it right, but once you do it, it feels NICE, to not need a floppy disc.

How I went from a 120GB PATA WD SE to 2 x Raptors in RAID0:

1. os was installed on 120GB drive - let's call this C: for shits and giggles
2. made sure the drivers for the RAID array were installed.
3. while booted into "C:" I created and formatted the RAID0 array - let's call this R: for more shits and giggles.
4. nLited my original XP CD with all service packs and patches
5. nLited every driver that my current system build (i.e the running OS on the 120Gigger) into the XP CD build as well.
6. tested the nLited XP install media from step 4&5 to see if it could see 'R:' i.e. the formatted RAID0 array.
7. used the good working media from step 6 to create a Reatogo BartPE cd that includes an installation of Norton Ghost 6.0
8. used the BartPE cd w/ Ghost6 to Ripsnort the known good working OS Partition from C: to R:
9. Booted off of the 120GB (C, just to see that it wasn't fucked, and to check that R: had tha shiznit on it.
10. Did a little dance.
11. Shut down the system, and unplugged the cables from C:.
12. Set the BIOS to boot off of the onboard raid 1st, rather than the ATA controller.
13. Disco.