PATA Drive Raid-0 Setup

[no_nonsense4857]

Hi all,

 

I have two Seagate barracudas (both bought at different times and the model numbers are different too).

 

1> 40GB Barracuda ATA III (IDE)

2> 40GB Barracuda ATA IV (IDE)

 

Right now I am planning to buy one HITACHI T7250K SATA II drive.

 

My question is,

 

Can I have the two IDE drives in a raid array, and the single hitachi drive working like a normal hdd?

[hmf]

Yes

[no_nonsense4857]

Really sorry if my question was wague.......... but how??

[suspekt]

Enter RAID-bios while starting your system up, create the array, and reboot.

 

I think Angry games has a tutorial on his website.

[Reinvented]

http://www.angrygames.com/nf4raid-1.htm

[suspekt]

How nice

 

I was too lazy this time to search for it.

[no_nonsense4857]

Thnx for the link.

 

Angry to my rescue then

 

My plan is to see the two 40GB drives as ONE 80GB drive and load all my games there. Dont care bout data criticality (just games right?!).

 

I will have two operating systems (XP SP2 and 2K SP4) along with SAP on my SATAII drive.

 

Hope it works. N I find raid very tricky (my first till date) so, would be shooting some more n00b questions :nod:

[suspekt]

It's easy, really. I thought it was difficult at first too, but you will get the hang of it pretty soon.

 

If it's not going to be a system partition, and you only have games and larger files, I would recommend going for 64kb stripe size (The "Optimal" setting in the RAID bios) and then when you format the partitions in Windows Disk Management, select Cluster size of of 8kb or 16kb.

 

I would personally go for 16kb cluster size.

 

Had you been planning to use this RAID array for a system partition, I would recommend 16kb stripe size and 4kb cluster size, since there are alot smaller files involved in the operating system.

[no_nonsense4857]

Went through the tutorial and also downloaded the nv_raid_manual from the dfi site. Seems pretty easy. But I could not find anything even remotely referring to dual operating systems.

 

I will have XP as my primary OS (every thing is fine with me if I have one OS), but its necessary that I have my Win2K ready too. Now, how would I get Win2K to recognize the raid disks when I load it after installing XP first?

[CPDMF]

The first problem you are going to run into is that you can't use IDE master and slave for an array, and if you use IDE 0 and 1 master you will not be able to run your optical on those channels. My advice, pick up an IDE raid PCI card.

[no_nonsense4857]

You mean to say that if I have to run a raid array on the IDE channels, I will have to use up both the masters on the only two channels on my DFI and once I do that, the 'Slaves' are useless????

 

I'm already over budget (raid cards dont cost that much, but I just wanted to use the feature thats all)......

 

So,

The conclusion is that if I run a raid array using my barracudas (IDE) then I will not be able to use my optical drives right???

 

Is there any way out without the extra raid card? If not, then me trashing the idea

[no_nonsense4857]

Just check this snapshot from the raid manual. Any comments on this. Cos it contradicts to what you are suggesting.