Thanks for your feedback, guys. Your theory seems to make sense, although that is not good new for me. <g>
I am using LSI Logic's Megaraid 150-4 controller card. I have 4 SATA 200 Gb drives in a RAID-5 config.
LSI has Linux drivers; I could call LSI to confirm no risks in loading them but I would still need to know HOW to load them using knoppix.
I tried BartPE with UBCD and at first, it loaded the RAID fine but then stopped working after 1 day and I haven't gotten it to load it properly since.
I also installed XP on another internal 80 Gb IDE drive and that install went fine until I loaded the RAID card driver. After that, the XP install wouldn't load properly anymore!
Knoppix is the only bootable CD i have currently that continues to at least see my RAID drive, although in a wacky way.
This is crazy. Sometimes I think the safety of RAID-5 isn't worth all the problems in reading the drive in these types of situations; it adds another level of complexity.
Maybe I'll post on UBCD forums and try to troubleshoot there unless someone else can offer a suggestion here.