Hi effigy3,
welcome to the forum..
First of all, thankyou for providing all the detail concerning your problem, it really is a great help.
The thing is I can't understand why vista is not picking up the array once the install has completed especially when the system needs to reboot during the install.
I run a RAID set-up and have used a Nforce system so I know that they are fairly straight forward to use... In fact I'm pretty sure vista should see the array by default as vista is more RAID friendly than XP (apparently....?) I know when I ran an nforce board vista would see the array no problem and I could've ran it without installing the drivers but anyway I digress..
The only thing I can think of trying is...
Check the jumper settings on the drives (if the have them) Check this thread out:
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and this one:
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Removing all HDDs apart from the drives used for RAID. Then rebuild a new array and totally wipe off all those extra copies of vista.
Set the boot order to boot from disk and install vista to the RAID array using the drivers if prompted. During the install when the first reboot happens quickly nip into the bios and change the boot order back to boot from HDD first.
Good luck!
Please post back if you need any more help...