A7N8X Deluxe: tutorial for setting up RAID 0??

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Q. Public
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J

John Q. Public

Using two of the 36 GB 10,000 rpm Raptors, WinXP, I'm in a real hurry
late for work :-(, will provide complete info later but if someone
could point me to a tutorial that would be great in the mean time...

I am wondering though, can I make the RAID array show up as C:\ or no?

thanks
 
John Q. Public said:
Using two of the 36 GB 10,000 rpm Raptors, WinXP, I'm in a real hurry
late for work :-(, will provide complete info later but if someone
could point me to a tutorial that would be great in the mean time...

I am wondering though, can I make the RAID array show up as C:\ or no?

thanks
Click to expand...
Yes.
You need to set the BIOS boot order to have 'SCSI first (basically _any_
controller using an add on BIOS, is considered to be 'SCSI'), set up the
array, and DOS, will then see the RAID array as drive C (once FDISKed and
formatted). For an OS, like XP/W2K, when installing, hit the F6 key during
boot (which enables the latter option to install third party drivers), and
when it asks you, point to the drivers (either on the CD, or copy them to a
floppy first) for the RAID. It'll normally offer you two 'sets' of drivers,
one to use the controller in RAID mode, and the other to use it as extra
normal IDE ports. Select the former drivers, and carry on installing. Once
installed, the array will again be drive C.

Best Wishes
 
Using two of the 36 GB 10,000 rpm Raptors, WinXP, I'm in a real hurry
late for work :-(, will provide complete info later but if someone
could point me to a tutorial that would be great in the mean time...

I am wondering though, can I make the RAID array show up as C:\ or no?

thanks
Click to expand...

I just set up raid-0 on my A7N8X. It couldn't be easier. The MB comes
with a little raid manual so it might be on their website, but the
only complexity is doing Raid-1. I was installing a fresh OS though;
if you're planning on transferring your current OS it might be a bit
more problematic. Make sure you install the sata/raid driver before
you ghost/backup your current drive.

All I did was get the drivers onto a floppy from the CD or the Asus
site. Then, I plugged the drives in, set the MB jumper to enable Sata,
and turned it on. The bios passes and the Raid bios shows - press F4
or Ctrl-R (I think) to enter - it's on the screen. Do it fast or
you'll miss it and have to reboot.

The raid utility offers a few choices, one of which is Create Raid
Set, or something like that. I selected the Non-Mirrored option
(Raid-0), and set the strip at 64 (lots of big files). For mostly
normal size file stuff you can select a smaller stripe size. Then
press, I think, Ctrl-S to save - whatever, it's on the screen. It
reboots.

I don't even think I used Fdisk. I think I just booted using the OS
CD. Press F6 when it asks if you need to install a driver and let it
load the Sata driver. It will ask twice during the process I think.
Then, unless you want just one 70gb drive, you tell it how large a
partition to use. OS installs, pretty much done.

If you don't use the whole thing as one disc (I sure didn't - not with
two 120gb drives) you can use XP's Disc Management function to
partition and format the drives.

It really was that easy.
 
I have that same setup, the two raptor drives in RAID 0, you will be very
pleased!
 
Yes.
You need to set the BIOS boot order to have 'SCSI first (basically _any_
controller using an add on BIOS, is considered to be 'SCSI'), set up the
array, and DOS, will then see the RAID array as drive C (once FDISKed and
formatted). For an OS, like XP/W2K, when installing, hit the F6 key during
boot (which enables the latter option to install third party drivers), and
when it asks you, point to the drivers (either on the CD, or copy them to a
floppy first) for the RAID. It'll normally offer you two 'sets' of drivers,
one to use the controller in RAID mode, and the other to use it as extra
normal IDE ports. Select the former drivers, and carry on installing. Once
installed, the array will again be drive C.

Best Wishes
Click to expand...

next question: Possible to have IDE raid 0 AND serial ATA raid 0 at
same time? Cant seem to get it to work, even after trying all
different BIOS options. WinXP keeps looking to the IDE RAID (Promise
TX2000 and two maxtors) for the OS, and it's not there, it's on the
raptors...so can they coexist? Two raid arrays, one IDE and the other
serial ATA?

Thanks
 
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