Setting up new system gigabyte x38 - dq6

[neild]

Hi Guys/Gals

Searched the forums cant find a thread so here goes.

Just bought a second hand tower, high spec but no driver disk, reformatted the two 500g sata drives as unaware of their contents

Cleaned the tower, reset the bios

Gone through and set up the bios as per the manual

http://www.gigabyte.com/search/search.aspx?kw=x38-dq6

Set up the raid in the bios menu and also set up the raid volume, just did it as one raid 0 strip 128k and 931.5gb size status normal.
both drives show up on physical disk as member disk (0)

I'm using the normal sata ports not the gigabyte sata ports and installing win xp 32 bit. will fully update when installed, ( I know but I dont like vista or 7)

now the hard part for me is I have no mother board disk, I have downloaded all the drivers from the site

when I reboot the system after installing the raid volume it goes to:

disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter.

I have read the manual and it says I need to install the raid driver then the OS system, I have no disk.

Do they mean copy the driver to floopy with sys file to boot from the disk failure, insert system disk and press enter option?

and also what driver do they mean ?

1. Intel SATA RAID Preinstall driver (For AHCI / RAID Mode)
Note: Press F6 during Windows setup to read from floppy.
OS:Windows XP 32bit,Windows Server 2003 32bit

to me this is the one you load when you press f6 on os install as it says in the title

2. Intel SATA RAID/AHCI Driver
OS:Windows XP 32bit,Windows XP 64bit,Windows Vista 32bit,Windows Vista 64bit,Windows 7 32bit,Windows 7 64bit,Windows Server 2003 32bit,Windows Server 2003 64bit

I would say this is the one you install after the os to load the drivers?

So what do I use to get the raid driver on so I can then install the os from cdrom?

Do I just make a normal boot disk and then install win from dos, of which I haven't done for a long time, not sure if I remember how!

Thanks for help in advance

Neil

[absic]

Hi there and welcome to the forum,

Hopefully DM won't see that I have entered the dark side and it'll be OK fro me to try and help.

You need: 1. Intel SATA RAID Preinstall driver (For AHCI / RAID Mode)
Note: Press F6 during Windows setup to read from floppy.
OS:Windows XP 32bit,Windows Server 2003 32bit

If you want to set up raid

But, you might do better setting up your system without a RAID array especially if you are only using it as a Desktop PC as there is less chance of losing all your DATA if there is a system failure.

[neild]

Thanks for your help.

Raid is a nightmare to understand, was ok up to the point where I had installed the driver and OS, but kept getting boot failure.

But with good advice I have moved on from the old gamers tales of Raid is best and installed a normal set up, with the two 500g and one 160g I have plently of room and security for backups

Thanks again for the very fast reply and help.

I wish I had the faith and done this straight away, instead of paying £60 for a pc repair shop to say they dont know whats wrong as its a too higher spec system for them, when infact its just a standard install after dropping the raid

Thanks again

Signing off,  DIVE DIVE DIVE.  ha ha

[neild]

My main mistake was I wasnt asking it to boot from CDROM, hence the boot failure, major over sight    must remember f12  cdrom on boot up after setting raid bios and volume, then  press f6 on win install.

I was getting confused with the manual as it lead me to think I needed to install a driver to then install the os. but infact I had just forgot the above boot from cdrom

Thanks for Help again   

Tip I have learnt FORGET RAID.

[absic]

Pleased that you're now up and running even if it is not the set-up you were expecting.

After our chat on MSN I spoke to Dark Mantis and he is also puzzled by the problems with your CD drives and is not sure why they only work together and not separately. If you enjoy taking things apart, it might be worth checking the pin configuration on the back of the drives to see how they are set. As they are IDE one should be set as Master and the other as Slave. Another thing to consider would be investing in a SATA DVD/CD drive as IDE and SATA don't always play together as well as they should.