Trying to make a raid0

[banditfz1]

Hi everyone. I'm trying to make a raid0 array on my system without having to do a clean install of windows. Is it possible? I would like to use a pata drive to boot from and use the raid to stripe my games. I already have the raid & drives turned on in the bios but I'm pretty sure they aren't doing what they should be. Not sure what route to take. :confused: Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

ps. I have already looked at angry's contribution to the subject.

[Angry_Games]

if you boot to an IDE drive, then once in Windows go into the Control Panel - Administrator Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management and see if your unformatted, unpartitioned RAID array is there

 

if so, partition it and format it

[banditfz1]

How will I know that it is raid? I assume 2 different drive letters for striped? I thought i had it previously when I cut and pasted some files from a storage drive to 1 of the sata but noticed after it was done, only the drive I pasted it to changed drive space quantity.

[hmf]

No, only 1 drive letter unless you partition your raid array. Your array should be recognized in bios. Check out the boot order of your hdds and you should see it if its set up correctly. If so then as AG says check out Administrative ToolsComputer ManagementStorageDisk Management. Format your array and you are ready to go.

[banditfz1]

Have included a couple of shots. Is HD Tach supposed to show the array type in the title? Is there a guide out there that is step by step for a system that is already running with WinXP installed? Still don't think I have it right.

[banditfz1]

Dang. Looks like my attachment didn't attach.

[soundx98]

I'm not sure if this helps as the arrays are partitioned.

 

boot drive is IDE with 32 and x64 OSes plus storage area

 

the Raptor array has two page file partitons at the beginning as well as additional partitions. Hitachi array is one big partition. but I think you get the idea.

 

just a little to big to post a pic

http://premium1.uploadit.org/soundx98//HDDsetup.JPG

[banditfz1]

This is gettin' painful. At post, I have 4.84 driver showing; array shows as healthy and striped 467 Gb; am using sata 1 and 2 for the drives.

After boot to windows, the 2 drives show in the disk manager graph section as 'unallocated' and 'basic' not dynamic. Windows asks me if I want to convert them to dynamic. If I say yes and make them striped, it will assign a single drive letter to the 2 of them and then colours them green to show as striped. HD Tach sees this(these) drives as 2 separate ones with the same letter. Run the tests and it appears to only use one drive; perf. sucks and I can't tell if the array really is working or not. HD Tach isn't saying if there is an array or not. If I partition them as pri or ext, they get different drive letters and don't seem to be in any array at all. Note: when I first open disk manager the section at the top that lists the drives(above the graphs), does not show the unallocated drives that I'm trying to make into the raid. In the device manager, it shows the scsi/raid controller there with the NV nForce raid class controller showing and enabled. How much configuring do I have to do with windows? Please note that I installed windows a while ago and did not do F6 at that time. Hmm. workaround, maybe?

Any ideas?

 

(sigh)

[madian225]

Hi

 

I think you must be going wrong somewhere.

 

I am guessing that you will 1st need to set up a new RAID array via the BIOS initially then press F10 during the 1st boot up to indicate which drives you want to use as a RAID array. This may well be the reason as to why your drives are showing as 2 seperate drives rather than just 1.

 

Then you will be able to format the RAID drive as it will show up as one huge drive 500 GB in your case and then you can partition as well if you want to.

 

I have partitioned my RAID 0 into 2 partitions and it works fine, hope this is of help.

[banditfz1]

Well folks, I solved my problem!

 

My first mistake was to not put in the 'F6' driver for the raid when I first put this system together. At the time I didn't have any sata drives and didn't know when/if I would put them in. So, after a lot of piddling around and getting no results, I decided to clear some room on a drive and install XP Pro on that empty spot. This time I did F6 and installed the drivers. Well whadda ya know! The array shows up as 1 big drive. So, armed with my newfound info, I did a repair to windows with my original disk, to the os I had installed way back. After it all went in and got booted to desktop, I opened the disk manager and sure enough, there it is. Ran HD Tach and it sees it as striped and tests out as a raid 0. Whew! :nod:

 

So 'thanks' to all who threw in the two bits and hopefully this will help somebody in their time of need.