RAID 1 with 2 SATA Drives on P4C800-E Deluxe

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Electron1996

Help! I'm confused. I have XP Pro with 1 SATA Drive installed. I
want to set-up RAID 1 with another SATA Drive. Question - Can this
ONLY be done at the time of initial installation or can you 'add' the
mirror and activated it after the inaital installation of XP Pro.
 
from the said:
Help! I'm confused. I have XP Pro with 1 SATA Drive installed. I
want to set-up RAID 1 with another SATA Drive. Question - Can this
ONLY be done at the time of initial installation or can you 'add' the
mirror and activated it after the inaital installation of XP Pro.

Normally you have to do it before you install anything - basically it
comes down to how smart the RAID card/chip/BIOS etc. it. A 'proper' RAID
card should be able to cope with replacing a dead drive or extending the
array, but most cheapo firmware versions won't.

Another solution - just mount the drive as a separate volume and use
something like 'second copy' to copy whatever you need across on a
regular basis. Less secure, and some things won't be able to be copied,
but you won't have to start over.

The other question you need to answer (before you start) is how,
exactly, you determine which of the two mirrors is 'wrong' if they
disagree, and
how you recover from a dead one. Again, only the RAID card in question
can answer this (and you may not like the answers).
 
Electron1996 said:
Help! I'm confused. I have XP Pro with 1 SATA Drive installed. I
want to set-up RAID 1 with another SATA Drive. Question - Can this
ONLY be done at the time of initial installation or can you 'add' the
mirror and activated it after the inaital installation of XP Pro.

Won't don't you pick up an inexpensive 80GB IDE drive and boot off that one.
You should be able to set up your RAID1 without problems as long as you
don't have to boot to the SATA drive.
 
Help! I'm confused. I have XP Pro with 1 SATA Drive installed. I
want to set-up RAID 1 with another SATA Drive. Question - Can this
ONLY be done at the time of initial installation or can you 'add' the
mirror and activated it after the inaital installation of XP Pro.

Thanks for the input. I am using a P4E800-Deluxe with on-board
Promise RAID 378. I can get the bios to ID the new H/D but I am
unable to get to the Fast-track menus, no prompt for anything - it
just keeps on booting up! Am I Hooped?
 
Did you enable Promise RAID in BIOS?

(e-mail address removed) (Electron1996) wrote in message


Thanks for the input. I am using a P4E800-Deluxe with on-board
Promise RAID 378. I can get the bios to ID the new H/D but I am
unable to get to the Fast-track menus, no prompt for anything - it
just keeps on booting up! Am I Hooped?
 
Did you enable Promise RAID in BIOS?

Yes! I have RAID Turned on in BIOS and BIOS sees the drive - it ID's
in bootup, but it never prompts for the Fasttrack setup screens - just
keeps booting up! The Drive is 'there', XP saids it has a RAID
Controller present in the system - no red or yellow warnings. Like I
said, Do you have to have the BIOS switch set BEFORE you initally
install the OS, or can you simply add the drive and RAID will
function?
 
Yes! I have RAID Turned on in BIOS and BIOS sees the drive - it ID's
in bootup, but it never prompts for the Fasttrack setup screens - just
keeps booting up! The Drive is 'there', XP saids it has a RAID
Controller present in the system - no red or yellow warnings. Like I
said, Do you have to have the BIOS switch set BEFORE you initally
install the OS, or can you simply add the drive and RAID will
function?
 
For RAID 0 or 1 on the Promise controller you should get a ctrl F prompt during
bootup if you have the Promise raid controller enabled under
BIOS Setup | Advanced tab | Onboard Devices Configuration | OnBoard Promise
Controller [Enabled] | Operating Mode [RAID]

Not to be confused with the Intel chipset RAID, which only does RAID 0, under
BIOS Setup | MAIN tab | IDE Configuration [Enhanced Mode] | Enhanced Mode
Support On [S_ATA] | Configure S-ATA as RAID [YES]

To answer your question, in theory you should be able to add a Promise RAID 1
array after the installation of Windows XP, provided you setup your array under
the Promise BIOS setup at the ctrl F prompt.
However you may run into issues using the array as your system drive.
The key here is setting up the array at the ctrl F prompt that you are currently
not seeing.

After loading the Promise driver in XP, you should see in Device Manager | SCSI
and RAID controllers | Win XP Promise FastTrak 378 ™ Controller

The preferred installation sequence is
Enable Promise Controller in BIOS
Setup the array at the ctrl F prompt
Press F6 when prompted at the very beginning of XP setup, to tell XP that you
have a driver diskette
(Use the make diskette utility in the Promise folder on the ASUS CD)
XP will use the driver on the diskette when it is setting up the hardware
During XP setup, XP will prompt you to partition and format the array

The first time I tried this XP wanted to put it's boot.ini file on an SATA drive
I have connected to the Intel chipset SATA controller. I had to change the drive
order under the BIOS Setup | Boot tab | Hard Disk Drives.

Please let us know how it goes.
Later …


(e-mail address removed) (Jim Inacker) wrote in message
 
For RAID 0 or 1 on the Promise controller you should get a ctrl F prompt during
bootup if you have the Promise raid controller enabled under
BIOS Setup | Advanced tab | Onboard Devices Configuration | OnBoard Promise
Controller [Enabled] | Operating Mode [RAID]

Not to be confused with the Intel chipset RAID, which only does RAID 0, under
BIOS Setup | MAIN tab | IDE Configuration [Enhanced Mode] | Enhanced Mode
Support On [S_ATA] | Configure S-ATA as RAID [YES]

To answer your question, in theory you should be able to add a Promise RAID 1
array after the installation of Windows XP, provided you setup your array under
the Promise BIOS setup at the ctrl F prompt.
However you may run into issues using the array as your system drive.
The key here is setting up the array at the ctrl F prompt that you are currently
not seeing.

After loading the Promise driver in XP, you should see in Device Manager | SCSI
and RAID controllers | Win XP Promise FastTrak 378 ? Controller

The preferred installation sequence is
Enable Promise Controller in BIOS
Setup the array at the ctrl F prompt
Press F6 when prompted at the very beginning of XP setup, to tell XP that you
have a driver diskette
(Use the make diskette utility in the Promise folder on the ASUS CD)
XP will use the driver on the diskette when it is setting up the hardware
During XP setup, XP will prompt you to partition and format the array

The first time I tried this XP wanted to put it's boot.ini file on an SATA drive
I have connected to the Intel chipset SATA controller. I had to change the drive
order under the BIOS Setup | Boot tab | Hard Disk Drives.

Please let us know how it goes.
Later ?


(e-mail address removed) (Jim Inacker) wrote in message
Did you enable Promise RAID in BIOS?

Thanks for your interest. Client is out of town for a couple of
weeks. I am sure that I have the BIOS setup correctly - but will
check again. I have conflicting info - but the consensis seems to be
that a RAID 1 should be set-up BEFORE the installation of XP. Like I
said all I get is the BIOS identifing the drive, but no CTRL-F prompt
- will check the setup and get back to you all. Thanks again!
 
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