RAID 5 problem

[UnknownTBeast]

I'm going to go insane over this!

Here's my problem. I originally set up 5 ssd's in a RAID 5 array. It worked. I set up the RAID config, popped in the Win7 install disk and loaded the RAID drivers, Win7 installed, all good. Then about a week later a drive screws up. It still showed as a single disk in both Windows and BIOS, and even the RAID config. It was unaccessable until I formatted, which I did. When the drive first screwed up, I had no data loss thanks to the RAID, but formatting this caused Windows from being able to reboot. So I decided to start from scratch, following the same steps as I originally did, and added all 5 disk (including that screwy one) in to the RAID config, popped in the Win7 install disk and I get the “Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition” error. No matter what I did I would always get this error. I made a new topic about this cause I have no idea how this error works with RAID.

So after trying about 5 different times, I finally just installed Win7 on to just one ssd for the time being, until I get this under wraps. I checked in the "Common install problems" thread for this error and it said to make sure they are all formatted, active, and maked as primary. But does that matter with RAID? Any help would be grand. In the meantime, I am going to try on more thing, hopefully it will work. I have a second computer so I can check back here if anyone got any ideas.

 

[UnknownTBeast]

That was a really bad idea that I just tried. I followed the instructions explained in the common install problems thread made everything active and primary and formatted them all. I then remade the RAID config and put in the Win7 install disk and what came up perplexes me more than a clown eating tacos on a Tuesday night in Dallas. I saw 1 line of charactors, including a music symbol, a smiley face, greater than or equal, something that looks like the Aztec sun god symbol, an arrow and a few other things that I haven't the slightest idea what to call them. This was not an error from the Win7 setup, it was before it even got to the loading files part at the very beginging of setup. It was a black screen, white text, looks like something the computer or BIOS spit out. Ideas?