How do I install Windows on this rig?

[john_lickman]

Help, I seem to have painted myself into a corner!

I'm building a new PC with the following spec:
- ASUS Maximus Extreme MB
- QX9650
- 4 x OCZ DDR3 1Gb RAM
- 4 x Maxstor SATA disks
- Pioneer SATA Blu-ray Drive
- Floppy disk drive (I'm old fashioned like that)

I want to configure the disks as RAID 5, and to do this I've set the disks to SATA mode in the BIOS. However, when I do this I can no longer boot from the Blu-ray drive. I can boot from the Blu-ray drive when the disks are set to IDE compatibility mode, but then I can't configure my disks as a RAID. This means I can't find a way to install windows on the RAID!

Any ideas how I can load Windows onto this system?

Thanks in anticipation

John

 

[mame]

couldn't you plug in an IDE DVD-ROM just to install windows?

 

[mp260767]

have you got the raid drivers to install ?

 

[john_lickman]

couldn't you plug in an IDE DVD-ROM just to install windows?

Well, yes, as a last resourt. But the IDE connector is a b*gger to get. It would mean draining and dismantling the the water cooling plumbing just to get to it.

I was hoping someone could come up with a smarter solution...

 

[john_lickman]

have you got the raid drivers to install ?

Thanks for the reply. Yes I have the drivers, but I can't get the Windows install CD to boot, so I can't load the drivers.

 

[Grumpy]

External drive? USB/Firewire maybe?

 

[fobose]

I have an asus P5K with the Intel ICH9 controller ports set to RAID and my SATA DVDRW connected to it worked fine. I Set up RAID 1 on 2 SATA hard drives, then continued to install windows Vista without any hiccups.

 

[IAmATeaf]

I'm sure my Gigabyte mobo has an option to configure some of the ICHR ports as RAID and some as native or then again maybe I'm dreaming.

The only other option I can think of is to use a cheap PCI SATA card to run the BD drive off.