SATA RAID0 Question
 

Guys.

Finally got my new Neo2 based box built and running xp. However, I had some issues during the install, and continue to have some now.

1.) During the install, my RAID would show up as 2 seperate drives in the partition dialog - one that's about 70GB, and one that's 139GB. The RAID0 is made up of 2 74GB 10k Raptors on SATA 3/4. Now when I try to access C: in drive manager, it says its corrupted. The system has labeled the 70BG partition as c: and the 139GB as E:.

2.) Warm reboots as well as some cold reboots are rewarded with the Detecting Raid Array message for a very long time. I can reboot a few times and eventually get by this.


As an aside, can anyone make some basic performance tweaking suggestions for the mobo with OCZ3200 Plat2 Dual Channel? I can't figure out the whole timing thing, and am pretty freaked about baking this new box.

I'm a total newb to building machines, I usually just program. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks!

__________________
K8N Neo2 Platinum
AMD Athlon 64 FX-53(OEM-939 PIN)
1 GB OCZ4001024ELDCPER2-K
Antec True Power 550W Power Supply
LIAN-LI PC 6070B
LITE ON DVD
WD 740GD 74 GB SATA 10K Raptor X 2 RAID0

Welcome! :hello:

When Windows asked you if you want to add a specific hardware (F6), did you add both the nVIDIA nForce Storage Controller and nVIDIA RAID Class Driver? This is during the "blue screen part" of the WinXP-setup. Both of them must be installed or XP setup will see two separate drives.

Yes sir, i did in fact select both.

Is there really that much to gain by doing RAID 0?

Edit: If not much is to be gained, can I un-RAID this box without reinstalling XP?
E: is for some reason the "system" drive.

Are there other drives in your system? Because I find it very strange you have a 70 Gb drive and a 139 Gb drive?

Please, don't call me sir :) I feel old now :)
Off course, there's gain in speed if you have RAID 0 but the actual question is, what do you want to do with this PC? Video-editing?
If you "only" want to run some office-aplications, do some gaming, etc, I personnaly find RAID-0 not very usefull. Especially because if one of your HD fails, all the data is lost even if the other drive still works fine.

No, if you make changes in a RAID-config, you need to re-install everything. The data is lost, except if you make a backup of course.
Dit you partition the drives?

I attempted to partition the drives, but apparently failed in a most miserable display of my lacking hardware prowess.

I just told XP to format the 139GB drive with NTFS, and now it shows it as a 69GB drive, just like the one above it.

Any chance that this will work out?

Furthermore, can I switch the drive letters and mark the other drive active, seeing that the OS is on E: right now?


Thanks!

sounds like a corrupted RAID array .. how can you have a c: of 73gb and an e: of 137gb while you only use 2x73gb HDD's?

sounds dodgy.

try recreating the RAID array by selecting the correct SATA controllers in the BIOS to enable the raid, and then after the bootscreen hitting the correct keys to enter the raid setup and configure the 2 drives as RAID-0; this will scratch both disks, so windows reinstall will be necassary.

however... you say you have 73gb 10k RPM raptors in there; those are extremely fast; I would, if I were you, use them in a NONE raid setup and configure as follow.

Windows + games + progs on DISK1
Windows Page File AND data on DISK2

risk of losing data with RAID0 is quite large and I would advise against it UNLESS you would use that raid array as a temporary array for a video scratch disk or something a-like.

my 2 cents

jmke explains everything much better then I do ;p

woops sorry there Laagvlieger, must have flown over your reply, I pretty much repeated everthing you said.

"great minds..:D"

offtopic:
LOL! "Laagvlieger", "flown over" :D

But like I said, you explained it better. I really can't explain things to people... It's a gift! Really! :D

probably why I'm stuck at a helpdes/support job. ah well, at least have access to server room to experiment with more advanced stuff, as long as it doesn't interfer with commission's servers:)