installing RAID

I could use some help with getting my RAID working.

I'm runing an asus p4c800-e and trying to RAID 2*250 Gb drives

the raid is physically set up and the bios utility tells me it has created the 500 GB drive. Winxp cannot see it though.

something suggested to use fdisk... does fdisk really support HDs that large? if so, where can I find a bootable copy


big thanks for any help

EDIT: sorry.... me being absolute prat.... hardware needs these funny things called drivers:S..... need to remember that
-mark

Did you buy those two hard drives at the same time, from the same company? If so, when one goes down, the other probably will too since they're from the same lot.

:confused:

Are you trying to setup a RAID as your system disk or a RAID as your "main disk" with a third disk as your system disk?

It makes a big difference. XP supports RAID natively, but you can't boot off the RAID, you need Windows up, in order to access the RAID set. Many people will use a fast disk, a Raptor for example, as their system disk, and some big disks RAID'd as their main disk.

I presume also that as you have 2x250 and have established a 500GB drive you are simply looking to stripe the drives, rather then have any kind of redundency?

it's working now, drivers were just being screwy, the ones from the support CD refused to work, but the ones off the asus stie were fine.

for reference it's a pair of 250 WD caviars being striped in RAID0, from different batches though (bought a mongth apart), and it's just a storage drive. the main drive is indeed a 74Gb raptor.

just one thing I've found is that the multi tasking ability seems to be terrible. if I copy something that would take 4 min on it's own and have any other process running it takes well over an hour, the drives on their own are far more effective.

thanks
-mark

Quote:

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Originally Posted by adrianxw

I presume also that as you have 2x250 and have established a 500GB drive you are simply looking to stripe the drives, rather then have any kind of redundency?

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well a minimum of 3 drives are required to stripe it..... and its not technically a RAID then since there is no redundency..

actually you can stripe the data with two drives, you just don't get the redundancy. may not be a true RAID, but it runs through a RAID chipset, maybe call it an AID :P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Markallen85

actually you can stripe the data with two drives, you just don't get the redundancy. may not be a true RAID, but it runs through a RAID chipset, maybe call it an AID :P

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No redendancy, not raid. Not that its not "true" raid, its not raid period.

Technically, no redundency then I agree, it is not what RAID is all about. That does not alter the fact that striping is called RAID 0, and can be reduced to a pair of disks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by adrianxw

Technically, no redundency then I agree, it is not what RAID is all about. That does not alter the fact that striping is called RAID 0, and can be reduced to a pair of disks.

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i agree ;)

well, technically RAID is all about redundancy (Redundant Array of Independant Drives), heance my use of AID :P, though the term has a wider meaning now.

not sure why multitasking is so slow, perhaps the drivers are just crappy...does your controller support any of the other striping modes?

I've never had any luck with RAID, especially with VIA chipset and drivers. In fact...it quite sucked. Would write spurious data to my hard drive, corrupt other files, and in general hose my system.

Perhaps its been improved but I'll probably never use it again. I took all my drives off of the RAID controller and put them back on the standard IDEs on the board.

I had trouble with it just because if you want to remove a mirror set (on my SIS controller) you lose everything on the primary too