GA-K8NS Ultra-939 RAID problems

I have a system using the GA-k8ns Ultra-939 board and booting from a RAID-0
mirrored array of two PATA disks. For the life of me I can't remember
exactly the steps to get this running but I started with a single disk
installation, got the array going, and then copied the system onto the new
array. Then I removed the single disk and started running off the array.

So that's the background. Here's the problem. Yesterday I bought a pair of
SATA disks with the goal of adding these to the system as a striped RAID 1
array. I installed them on the nvidia sata ports, enabled the two disks as
Raid in BIOS, and then created the array in the nvidia BIOS. Botted the
system and saw the two disks in the windows disk manager but the nvidia raid
manager didn't see them. As expected.

So, I got out the mbd manual and followed the instructions, made the driver
diskette, booted from windows CD, pressed f6, chose the two drivers, BUT was
unclear how far I should let Windows setup go. After all, The system HAS
windows installed with updates through and beyond SP2.

Much fiddling ensued, the disks never appeard in the nvidia raid manager,
and eventually I got the system into a state where it wouldn't complete the
windows startup. It just gets into the Windows splash screen and then hard
reboots.

So here's where I am now. The system does a hard reboot during startup if
ANY hdd other is attached, even a 1394 drive. If I remove all other disks,
Windows loads from the original mirrored array. After Windows has loaded, I
can add 1394 drives. The system runs fine.

I ran system restore and backed up to a checkpoint from before I started
trying to add the new disks. No change, so I think that the problem isn't in
Windows itself. Maybe I've somehow messed up the boot record of the mirrored
disks?

At this point I think I'll have to ghost the entire system to a different
disk-in a 1394 enclosure since that's the only way I can attach another disk
at the moment. Then I can take that disk out of the enclosure and use it as
a boot disk. That should at least answer the boot record question, and
hopefully allow me to nuke the array disks and get everything running. It'll
take time but...ah well.

I could use some clarification on installing the drivers in a working
system, though. How far should I let Windows setup go with the install
considering that a newer version of windows (sp2) is already istalled and
working? Do I need to let the setup disk run it's entire course?

Rob Mack