The machine on which I installed Vista has an SATA RAID 1 array managed by my Intel motherboard’s on-board SATA controller. Unfortunately, the motherboard (a D865PERL) is based on the 865PE chipset, which uses the 82801ER (ICH5R) I/O controller hub for the RAID array, and the ICH5R’s RAID drivers don’t officially support Vista (the next-gen ICH6R does have RAID drivers for Vista).
Fortunately, the last ICH5R-compatible version of Intel’s RAID driver (Intel Matrix Storage Manager 5.5) does work with Vista. Or at least, it works for me. I grabbed the “Floppy Configuration Utility - Intel Matrix Storage Manager” download from Intel’s site, imaged a 3.5″ disk, inserted it during the Vista install, and it’s worked like a champ.
I’m blogging this for posterity as I didn’t find a lot of information when I Googled about this stuff.
