In microsoft.public.windowsxp.general Stan Hilliard said:
Q1) Is the on-board RAID 0 controller of the KU8 motherboard
considered hardware or software?
it's SW. you need a driver that does it for you, it gets installed at xp
setup time by pressing F6 and supplying the driver on a floppy.
Q2) Can I install WinXP first. I think I want to have the WinXP OS on
a non-RAID partition.
sure, but I would put xp on the raid, that's where you get the most
speed benefit. don't worry too much about it, the dire predictions about
"if you loose one drive you loose it all" are true regardless of whether
it's a raid 0 volume or just a normal drive. if disk crashes really
concern you and your operation, then use raid 1; 250 GB of raid 1 is a lot
of "worry free" storage [two 250GB drives in raid 1 is seen as a 250 GB
volume]. But raid 0 gives you performance that you WILL notice!
Q3) Can I arrange my hard drives as follows?
Partition the two WD-SATA 250GB hard drives into two partitions each.
Drive 1, partition 1(C
=Operating system, not RAID. Partition 2 RAID
striped with partition 2 of drive 2.
Drive 2, partition 1(D
=Program Files, not RAID. Partition 2 RAID
striped with partition 2 of drive 1.
No, you've got it wrong. First you create the raid volume by "joining"
the 2 disk drives into one "RAID Volume" (using a utility outside of XP,
usually in the bios itself); basically they then look like one "drive" to
the OS. Then you partition that volume just like any other.
here's the steps (simplified):
0) leave all unneccessary HW unplugged during XP setup - have just your
main HDs, floppy, and your main optical drive installed. No extra HDs, USB
things like printers, ipods or palms, no extra opticals, no extra pci's,
etc. NO NETWORK PLUGGED IN, of course! Go into bios and make sure all
settings are what you want/need. TIP: for an AMD box, make sure any APIC
option (not ACPI, APIC) is set to enabled (ie, more than 16 interrupt
levels available), otherwise you won't get the ACPI HAL to install, which
you DO want (for XP at least). Run a memtest86+ to verify that RAM has
zero errors - an over-night run is recommended. Even one error is cause
for concern - don't install the OS until you get it resolved.
1) using raid utility/bios, define the raid volume. in your case, the 2
wd250's get combined into a 500gb volume. leave stripe size set to
default, typically 128K. [smaller stripe sizes MAY provide better
benchmark results, but not better overall system performance - use the
default]. If you plan on manipulating LARGE video files a lot, go to an
even larger stripe size.
2) boot xp setup from cd, w/ the raid driver floppy disk inserted; press
f6 when prompted "for installing additionall SCSI or RAID Drivers", and
wait (response to the f6 press can take a while, just hit it a couple of
times and wait; be sure any MS Keyboard F-Lock key is active so the F6 is
a real F6)). when the popup menu of additional drivers on the floppy is
displayed select your ULI driver (prob the only one listed) and let it
install it. Note: read motherboard directions carefully; some require
choosing more than one driver, in sequence. when you've choosen all
required drivers continue on...
3) When you get to the "drive to install to" selection screen you should
see that you have only the 500 GB volume to choose from - that's your
raid. I would choose it, create a partition on it, THEN DELETE THAT
PARTITION and recreate it (a precaution against a minor bug in setup that
can cause bad partition table entries and cumbersome disk drive letter
assignments; wiping all partitions and making a new one w/ xp setup cures
this issue). create just one active primary partition, say 40 or 80 GB
[this should end up as your C: drive if you took the above precaution. if
it ends up as E: that's not a big deal tho, it'll work fine anyway].
You'll install XP onto this, then once xp is up and running you can use it
[Disk Manager] to make additional partitions on the volume as needed.
Don't feel that you must allocate all 500 GB to partitions right away;
leaving unallocated space until the time when you actually need it is a
fine stratagy. Google around and understand the diff between a Primary
Partition and an Extended Partition, and the various partitioning schemes
that you can make. For an "All Windows" box, a single Primary w/ a single
Extended taking up the rest of the space is typical; the extended can then
itself be partitioned into multiple logical drives.
Good Luck, and don't proceed until you have a solid understanding and a
good plan! Of course, you can always wipe it and start over again in a
month if you're not happy. Makng mistakes is how we learn...
