SATA/RAID 0 Help

[blinker0]

the stripe you set up In the Raid configuration.., The cluster is the size blocks the drive it formated for.. I:e Cluster Size = How much data the block will hold... If you are doing video You want a large Stripe and cluster.. = The more data a block will hold the less a harddrive has to search other blocks for corresponding data.. For games a Medium size stripe and cluster. As most games are memory and CPU intence and dont rely as much on the H/D for information

Small Stripe amd cluster Is for small files (pictures,Letters, And such)

Hope this helps

 

And If you are setting a nondefault stripe and cluster . You should either do it with WINDOWS XP SP1. Or do it on 98 se and then upgrade to windows XP SP2.

 

If you do a 98SE to XP SP2 dont upgrade to a NTFS partition format till you have it all installed And running right... This is a less favoritable way to do it.

 

If you can get hold of a non SP XP disk you are better off

[ixtapalapaquetl]

Does anyone know how to resolve the following issue?

 

If Windows installation CD is in, the computer boots to RAIDed OS just fine.

When no CD is present, the HAL.DLL missing/corrupted error appears, and the computer will not boot to OS.

 

Thanks much.

[blinker0]

Normaly when it does that there were erros when installing WINDOWS... Drivers fail to load. I could tell you how to install and register the .DLL file but beleive me It would be easier for you to do anouther Install. Most common reasons for this type of problem Is system not being stable through install.

Heres how I always install

1 Drop CPU multiplier down 1 multiplier(I:E If it defaults to 11, Drop it to 10)

2 I increase the voltage to cpu and Memory(not alot just enough to Make sure things are stable I:E if cpu defaults to 1.44v I will take it to 1.47 v , Memory defaults to 2.6v Raise it to 2.7v

3 If any time during the Install There is a dissruption, or BSOD.. I always start over(it takes less time to start over at that point than complete the install and have to do it again)

4 I defrag H/D before I install drivers. Then defrag after each driver install( even though Windows tells me it dont need it)

5 Do driver updates If there are any.

6 Do Windows updates and defrag again

Hope this helps

[Guest Scarface]

1)have you tried unplugging your ide drive? that solved serious issues with my previous socket939 mobo.

2) did you set the array as the first boot device

3) what raid drivers are you using? I've found that the raid drivers that come with the nVidia 5.10 driver bundle work like a charm. Here's the files you need to extract to create your own raid driver diskette.

[blinker0]

If you didnt remove IDE drive before install that is the problem.. The boot files are on it.. Do a reinstalll. But make sure you dissconnect the IDE drive before installing windows on your raid set up..

[ixtapalapaquetl]

I disabled the IDE PATA drives via BIOS when I installed Windows; guess that wasn't good enough! Will try the following:

 

1) reformat RAID array

2) defrag array (though probably not necessary after format!)

3) physically disconnect all other IDE devices except CD/DVD

4) install pre-SP1 Windows XP Pro on array

5) defrag

5) install remaining drivers, defragging as I proceed

 

Thanks for all your advice. Crossing my fingers...

[blinker0]

yeah disconnect it completely

[ixtapalapaquetl]

It worked! After reconnecting the IDE drives, I had to edit the boot.ini file to get the OS's on the PATA drives to become available during the boot, but it wasn't a big deal.

 

Thank you all so much for getting me through this!

 

ix

[Katch]

Just digging this up coz I'm having some similar issues setting up a new raid 0 array on this board.

 

I just picked up 2 x Seagate Baracuda 120Gb SATA drives for my system. I want to have them in Raid 0 with a 20GB Partition for XP and Core Applications and then the remainder for Music and Video applications.

 

I then want to use my old 250Gb PATA and 60Gb PATA as storage for Audio and Video work.

 

Sounds easy enough.

 

711 BIOS atm.

 

So I avoided all the unable to save BIOS and no F10 raid setup menu stuff my setting up the BIOS how I wanted it and then installing the drives (channels 3 and 4 by the CPU)

 

Everything else is at stock for now and is bomb proof stable in the last installation of XP I had.

 

After setting up my Raid Array on the F10 menu I boot off my XP CD and hit F6. After a while it asks me to pop in the Raid driver disk and select my drivers. I select both the Nvraid and SATA Storage drivers as normal and installation continues.

 

After setting up partitions and formating for the installation I have a problem. Just after the format completes before files start copying over XP reports it is unable to copy files nvraid.sys or something like that (the drivers of the disk basically) - thing is it doesn't even try to read the disk.

 

I have been trouble shooting this all day now I have tried just having my SATA drives in and the PATA disconnected. I have tried partitioning into one drive instead of my 20gb 200gb split) Still no joy.

 

I'm just burning off a Slipstreamed CD to see if that helps or not, other than that... any ideas or help appreciated.

EDITED --

 

Slipstream completes first section then reports Bootdisk failure

[blinker0]

Just digging this up coz I'm having some similar issues setting up a new raid 0 array on this board.

 

I just picked up 2 x Seagate Baracuda 120Gb SATA drives for my system. I want to have them in Raid 0 with a 20GB Partition for XP and Core Applications and then the remainder for Music and Video applications.

 

I then want to use my old 250Gb PATA and 60Gb PATA as storage for Audio and Video work.

 

Sounds easy enough.

 

711 BIOS atm.

 

So I avoided all the unable to save BIOS and no F10 raid setup menu stuff my setting up the BIOS how I wanted it and then installing the drives (channels 3 and 4 by the CPU)

 

Everything else is at stock for now and is bomb proof stable in the last installation of XP I had.

 

After setting up my Raid Array on the F10 menu I boot off my XP CD and hit F6. After a while it asks me to pop in the Raid driver disk and select my drivers. I select both the Nvraid and SATA Storage drivers as normal and installation continues.

 

After setting up partitions and formating for the installation I have a problem. Just after the format completes before files start copying over XP reports it is unable to copy files nvraid.sys or something like that (the drivers of the disk basically) - thing is it doesn't even try to read the disk.

 

I have been trouble shooting this all day now I have tried just having my SATA drives in and the PATA disconnected. I have tried partitioning into one drive instead of my 20gb 200gb split) Still no joy.

 

I'm just burning off a Slipstreamed CD to see if that helps or not, other than that... any ideas or help appreciated.

EDITED --

 

Slipstream completes first section then reports Bootdisk failure

Hey Katch.. This is common on alot of boards. I usualy in this case

1 Dissconnect any IDE drives

2 Set the Max mem to 166

3 Bump up the voltage on CPU , Chipset. And memory(memory to atleast 2.8v and 2.9v is even better.

4 make sure all PCi cards are took out.

After installation boot into windows.. BLA BLA BLA. then set settings back to stock after restart

[Katch]

:shake: You know what it was just me being a tool. After slipstreaming the RAID drivers everything works fine, my problem is I had left 2 SATA options disabled in the BIOS.

 

Without even looking at them properly I assumed they were to enable/disable channel 1&2 and the 2 options bellow were for channel 3&4 when infact they were vital for enabling SATA correctly.

 

Moral of the story - RTFM