I have a raid 0 array with 2 60 gb harddrives on my computer, plus an extra 80gb one that is not part of the array.

I have a Promise FastTrak100 LP driver for mandrake 9.0 (perhaps since I'm using 9.2 this is the problem?) which you can get at the promise downloads site by pressing download, then selecting FastTrack 100 LP, Driver, and Other. (I would link to it directly but this fourm doesn't like that and caused me to lose my previous post that way) I followed all the instructions with it and it does not recognize my raid drive using the special command "linux ide0=0x1f0,0x3f6,14 ide1=0x170,0x376,15 ide2=0 ide3=0 ide4=0 ide5=0 ide6=0 ide7=0 ide8=0 ide9=0 expert" after pressing F1 at the begining of the install. (It only sees the 80 gb) I tried using another command I found on this fourm ( linux ide2=0x1c00,0xb002,10 ide3=0x1400,0xb802,10 ide4=0 ide5=0 ide6=0 ide7=0 ide8=0 ide9=0 expert) and this one recognizes it. Using this command that I found elsewhere on the fourms will recognize the two raid drives as 1 large drive (but strangely enough says 199% under Custom Partition)

So after the commands I go Alt Control F2 to enter a screen where I type some things in to run a driver script for the Promise controller on the floppy, and then alt control F7 to get back to the install. Everything goes fine until I get to the partition part of the install. It sees the 80gb and the 120 gb (the two 60 gb raid 0 drives) but if I go to select the raid drive I get this error "nfts resize failed. Error(5) ntfs_mount failed, input/output error" right after selecting it, be it custom or put it on the windows drive. On the 80gb drive, I get a shorter error that just says something like "nfts resize failed" after waiting a really long time and seeming like it's doing something. I don't know if this is related to the raid drive or not.

Please please please help. I really want to get Mandrake installed and I'm a complete Linux and Raid newbie I'll give any other information you need, please just help me if you can.

If you have a running version of windows, use acronis partition expert to define the partitions you want to use. Worked on my machine. Also make sure that your onboard controller is enabled in your bios.

So Mandrake cannot handle partitions on raid computers?

Oh yuck..I don't want to pay for a partition manager since this is like a one time thing and Mandrake SHOULD be able to do it on its own. Anyone know of a freeware partition manager or a demo that isn't totally restricted?

Bump...please help I am desperate

I'd say go with Partition Magic, although it's not cheap it's by far the best. I once used a cheapo partition manager (another comp thank God ) and had to reinstall both operating systems... PM 8.0 works charms in Windows XP and it's really easy and fast to use. One of the few programs I'd actually give money for.