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ASUS Commando - Need RAID Help!

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Lonely Raven

If you traded with me please leave me Heatware Sen
Joined
Feb 2, 2002
Location
Wheaton, IL
Howdy all. It's been a while since I been around, but I figure I can count on you all to give an old blue star a little guidance.

My fiance is building up a new machine.

Asus Commando
Core 2 Duo 2.66
74GB Raptor
Pair of Seagate Perpendicular Drives (SATA)

Well, the matched pair of Seagates didn't show up for a week after the rest of the system showed up, so she installed XP on the Raptor and everything is fine.

Now that the Seagate drives have shown up, she's switching to RAID to get them in RAID-0, and the system bluescreens and reboots during boot up.

She's got the latest BIOS and drivers, everything seems to be OK and runs fine until we start up the RAID.

I can only figure it's an issue or a setting that won't allow the Raptor to be a C drive while the other drives are setup as RAID-0...but that doesn't make sense does it. It would be stupid to have to reinstall windows just because we changed the BIOS setting to RAID.

Any suggestions?
 
OK, the Raptor *is* setup as first, but the problem is; as soon as we set the BIOS to RAID, it causes BSOD. The Seagates run fine as single drives.

Now, are you saying I can get the *exact* same performance using the Intel Matrix as I would if it flip the RAID switch in the BIOS?

I was hoping that's the case, but being an Old Skooler, I don't trust software as much as I trust hardware. Maybe things have changed...I've not been a real overclocker in at least 4 years.
 
you can do more with raid by using matrix manager than u can using the raid manager in bios, for example you can set up 2 raid volumes instaed of .1

I don't trust software as much as I trust hardware
well what's controlling the raid manager in bios :D

When u set up the raptor originally how did u have the the sata set up in bios??
see ide configuration
there are 3 options under configure sata as:-
ide
raid
ahci

ide is waste of time it coinfigures your sata as a pata storage device.
raid is the best to use even if not using a raid array. this enables both single sata & raid drives
AHCI can be used but diesn't support raid on this mobo.

now the bad news when changing from 1 to the other data drives appear ok but an os drive won't boot. the only way round it if u want to keep the current install is to switch back to what it was , i'm guessing ide, and using acronis drive image or something similar, backup your install. switch bios option to raid & then restore the partition.

another alternative worth trying is a xp repair install which will at least preserve your progrqmmes etc.,
 
OK, sounds like I'm thinking the same way you are.

She installed XP on the Raptor when the BIOS was set to IDE since the machine doesn't have a floppy drive to load a RAID driver (F6) during the Windows install.

I was thinking we could Ghost an image, switch to RAID, then start over...or just flat out to a fresh reinstall, but I wanted to ask first and make sure I wasn't missing anything.

So you think the drive clone or fresh install after switching RAID in the bios is the only way for me to do this then??
 
Repair doesn't work in this scenario, I tried it last week on a P5B. Whats even stupider is you will not be able to install onto an array (or even a single drive on port-1 with an active array), unless all the other drives are unplugged. At least thats the way it worked out for me and I spent a whole day fighting it.

Don't forget to pull the jumpers off those drives Raven, 1.5gbs with, 3.0gbs without ;)
 
What i found was a neat trick that worked on the commando, to get xp cd to see the HD i wanted to install xp on 1st was to disable all all other drives from the hd boot order, worked a treat. Previously i'd had to unplug all other drives.
 
I was having the same problem as the original poster. I havent figured it out yet because I had to rma one of my drives. But I think the problem is that when I originally installed windows I left sata as ide instead of changing it to raid before the installation. I will be trying a new install later on this week when I get my hdd back.
 
Wow, the forum didn't tell me I had any more responses to this thread up until today!

Thanks for the extra tips guys. My fiance has been using the machine for the past two weeks without the added RAID drives. She'll be happy to finish it up if one of these tips works!

Thanks for the tip on jumpers. Another thing I didn't realize.

Man, I'm so out of it...4 years since my last full system build!!
 
I am assuming that you did Cntrl-I at boot and set the pair of drives as RAID member drives and then set the IDE configs ti RAID instead of IDE in the BIOS?
 
Bah!

We have a LAN party today and I'm trying to get these drives working as a proper raid rather then regular drives. After 10 frakken hours I still don't have it working correctly.

I backed up her data and formatted her Raptor (C Drive). Formatted the two Seagates and set them up for RAID-1 (which my fiance said she preferred over RAID-0). Updated the bios to the latest 15xx or whatever the current version is, and installed a floppy.

I can't get the friggen RAID driver to load as it keeps giving me an error that one particular file (on a D Drive!?!) can't be found.

And of course if I don't load this driver doing the F6 during reboot, I get BSOD and reboot again.

This is a friggen PITA!

I'm right back where I started. I can deactivated RAID and just run all the drives as Standard drives, but as soon as I activate the RAID and try to install windows, or even Ghost her backup onto the C Drive is BSOD and reboot!

I've even gone as far as to run a Drive diagnotic on each drive and Memtest86+ to remove the possibility of bad parts...no problems found anywhere.

I'm really loving the features of this board, and want one for myself...but I can't ever remember a setup being this difficult before!
 
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