- Joined
- Dec 29, 2001
- Location
- Erie, PA
OK, I know this is the old F7 but just bare with me. I have yet to see anything newer and yes, I tried extracting the raid module from the F7 and tried to insert it into the F11 with no success. So I will explain in detail how to use F11 with full raid (variable stripe sizes).
WHEN CHANGING THE STRIPE SIZE, YOU WILL LOOSE ALL DATA. AFTER YOUR ARRAY IS CREATED, YOU WILL NEED TO REFORMAT IT USING THE CORRECT CLUSTER SIZE!!!
1.) Backup your current bios(s) to a good floppy disk.
2.) Flash your MAIN bios with the "full raid F7" bios.
3.) Restart your computer and make sure the "Promise Chip" setting in the bios is set to RAID and not ATA.
4.) Then Enter the Fastbuild utility and setup the array as you wish. The stripe sizes are now variable where as before they were locked to 64k. I recomend 16k stripe/ 16k cluster.
5.) After the utility creates the array. you will need to restart and make sure it accepted the new changes.
6.) After you have confirmed it accepted the changes, simply reflash the main bios back to F11 or whatever you prefer. The array will remain the same even though you replaced it back to the factory "lite" bios.
Now the question arises, how do I change the cluster size in Windows XP during the installation?
Well you can't, (default is 4k) so what you will need to do is put a bootable hard drive w/windows XP on IDE1. Still leave the two raid drives connected (IDE3/IDE4) during this. Then you will need to install the factory raid drivers so XP can recongnize the new raid array.
After XP find the array, you will need to format the new array with using the disk manager. Make sure you select 16k for the cluster size, or what ever you made your stripe size.
My computer| Manage| Disk Managment|
Here is the Full Raid F7 Bios:
http://www.lumberjacker.de/Downloads/downloads.html
Here is the unlocked F11 Bios:
http://members.cox.net/nd4spd/Bios/7VRXP_M11.zip
Here is the untouched factory F11 Bios:
http://ftp.gigabyte.com.tw/support/temp/7vrxp_f11.zip
Good luck!!!!!, I noticed a difference in performance using the 16k/16k vs 64k/64k. I hope you do to!
WHEN CHANGING THE STRIPE SIZE, YOU WILL LOOSE ALL DATA. AFTER YOUR ARRAY IS CREATED, YOU WILL NEED TO REFORMAT IT USING THE CORRECT CLUSTER SIZE!!!
1.) Backup your current bios(s) to a good floppy disk.
2.) Flash your MAIN bios with the "full raid F7" bios.
3.) Restart your computer and make sure the "Promise Chip" setting in the bios is set to RAID and not ATA.
4.) Then Enter the Fastbuild utility and setup the array as you wish. The stripe sizes are now variable where as before they were locked to 64k. I recomend 16k stripe/ 16k cluster.
5.) After the utility creates the array. you will need to restart and make sure it accepted the new changes.
6.) After you have confirmed it accepted the changes, simply reflash the main bios back to F11 or whatever you prefer. The array will remain the same even though you replaced it back to the factory "lite" bios.
Now the question arises, how do I change the cluster size in Windows XP during the installation?
Well you can't, (default is 4k) so what you will need to do is put a bootable hard drive w/windows XP on IDE1. Still leave the two raid drives connected (IDE3/IDE4) during this. Then you will need to install the factory raid drivers so XP can recongnize the new raid array.
After XP find the array, you will need to format the new array with using the disk manager. Make sure you select 16k for the cluster size, or what ever you made your stripe size.
My computer| Manage| Disk Managment|
Here is the Full Raid F7 Bios:
http://www.lumberjacker.de/Downloads/downloads.html
Here is the unlocked F11 Bios:
http://members.cox.net/nd4spd/Bios/7VRXP_M11.zip
Here is the untouched factory F11 Bios:
http://ftp.gigabyte.com.tw/support/temp/7vrxp_f11.zip
Good luck!!!!!, I noticed a difference in performance using the 16k/16k vs 64k/64k. I hope you do to!
