I'm trying to do a new winXP install with a new harddrive but I'm stuck.
I'm stuck because I need to install raid drivers in the windows setup but I don't have a floppy drive.

Is there any way I can completely remove this raid utility so that my disk will be a regular disk?
I have no need for raid with this install but I can't find any way of removing the raid tool.

I've got Silicon Image 3114 sata raid.

Im assuming you have the hard drive connected to the motherboard because that chip is prodominately used for onboard RAID. You will only need to enter the BIOS and change the hard drive config from RAID to something like "IDE" (which means your SATA drives will act as normal IDE) meaning it will get detected by windows setup.

Ok. Will that make the drive slower? SATA is faster than IDE, right?

I tried this as well as I could.

What I found was under the Main tab in bios (phoenix awardbios cmos setup utility)
I put "first sata master" to none.

My dvdrw is primary ide master so I tried putting both primary ide slave and secondary ide master to "auto" and restarted. didn't work and in bios they still say "none". Weird.

Also under the section "Boot" and "Hard disk drives" I'm not seeing any drives at all...


Now I get Disk boot failure.

What is the exact model and revision of your mobo?

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium ACPI BIOS Revision 1009.

you need to enter your bios utility go to the advanced section
select onboard devices configuration.
select nvraid configuration
Select the first option labeled "raid enabled" set it to disabled.
hit f10 and your computer should start with raid shutoff and your drives should now show up as separate hard disks to windows xp.

just as an fyi. your non raid data transfer rate is gonna be around 80 megs per second. if you spend the 5-10 bucks its gonna take to get a floppy disk and run a raid setup your data transfer rate is gonna be more like 140 megs a second. not to mention drive searching, browsing, accessing, game loading, everything will run faster. i highly recommend getting a floppy drive (internal or usb external will work)

Hi vegettonox

Actually the nvraid IS disabled.
I'm using something else outside of bios that's called Silicon Image SATAraid.

When booting I have the option to hit DEL for bios or F8 for boot menu. If I hit F8 I then get another option to hit F4 to enter raid utility. That's an interface where I can create raid or delete raid.

Anyway... it seems hard or impossible to remove that silicon image raid thing altogether so I gave in and bought an external usb floppy drive.

I must be doing something else wrong now. I hit f6 in the windows setup and it takes the raid drivers but then when it comes to choose a drive / partition for the install it's not showing my drive...

god, I really hope some of you can help me. I'm getting nowhere.

When I delete the raid configuration in the Silicon image raid tool, then windows setup does not find the drive in the windows setup.

If I enter the raid tool and create a single jbod raid with my drive then windows _does_ find my drive and installs to it.
But when trying to boot it it says "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem".

What to do?

Some more info:
In my bios under "boot" and "hard disk drives" I see two drives. One that I've used as a back up drive
"1st SATA-M: SAMSUNG HD160HJ"
and the new one that I'm trying to install windows onto:
"SCSI-0: 05:50-1 Sil JBOD" (will have different name without the raid config)

Something that looks strange to me is that bios says my "First SATA Master" is the Samsung disk. I've tried to change to the other one but I can't. I can only switch from None to Auto and auto becomes the samsung disk.

After the POST screen do you have a second "boot" screen for the SATA controller? I remember my old A7N8x had one where you had to press F(?) to configure RAID. You might have to do that and make sure there is no more RAID array configured.

I have a boot screen and a raid utility screen.

I've given up on trying to remove the raid.
Instead I'm just trying to install windows but it's not going so well... it refuses to boot from my drive.

Now I have a single jbod raid on my drive. I provided the raid drivers on a floppy during the windows install. It found my drive and installed windows and rebooted.
Failure!

I even got to see the windows boot screen for a few seconds before I got a blue screen saying windows encountered some problem and shut down for my own safety...

I'm lost.

It's because you have the generic Silicon Image chipset set as RAID as well, so the Silicon Image Raid BIOS is loading during POST. If you turn it off as well in the BIOS, you will not see the message to enter the RAID BIOS during POST, and your drives will show up as standard drives in the BIOS, and during POST. You need to find in your BIOS where you can set this chipset to standard IDE or native IDE mode as well. (This is mode you MUST use if you cannot load the drivers for the advanced modes) If you would invest $20 on a cheap floppy drive, you could set it to the higher modes and load the SATA drivers. Don't worry though, any mode you set it too will give you just about the same performance. You will not see a 50-60 meg a second difference as someone stated. In fact, you won't see hardly any difference at all no matter what mode you use.

Understand? There are 2 possible RAID configurations in your BIOS, the Nvidia one, and the Silicon Image one. To get away from RAID completely, you have to turn off the RAID feature on BOTH chipsets inside the BIOS, which can be tricky to figure out. Get out your manaul.

Ok I can try to turn both off later.

For now I'm trying to get this single jbod working but it's not!
I just opened the box and moved my sata cable to sata 1 because someone suggested it. No difference. Still get this blue screen.

You might not be able to get rid of it at all, but you might not have to. My old A7N8X had that screen as well, but I never used RAID. If the RAID controller is also the SATA controller, disabling it won't do much good anyway. Did you go into the RAID utility and removed all configured arrays/JBOD?

You say Windows installed, but now you have boot failure?

I couldn't remove the jbod because then windows would not detect the drive in the setup.
With the jbod it got detected, installed but during reboot I got the failure.

Now I've tried disableing both nvida raid and something called "silicon sata controller" in bios.
Then the raid boot F8 didn't show up! Perhaps got rid of it.
Still got the failure though.

So now I've moved my drives sata connector from the raid sata to a normal sata in my motherboard. I'm doing a new install of windows on the drive (not hitting f6 this time, shouldn't have to, no raid) and seeing how it goes.