Question on Partition Magic , Raid and Win 98SE

Happy New Year to all. My first post in this esteemed forum.
I wonder if someone can clarify the following for me please.
I am running 2 hard disks on the mobos raid controller (promise). They are both set as masters on their individual IDE's (3&4) acting as separate HDD with each entry showing up as 1+0 stripe in raid bios, this in RAID 0. I am having problems with partition magic and Win98SE. I am trying to rig my hardware so that my children (2) each have a HDD that is there own. I have Win98SE loaded on each HDD as primary and each has their own data partition. I was trying to dual boot by use of Boot magic.
I seems to be getting problems with Partition Magic giving me an error 116 message this issue relating to disk geometry.
Can anybody please let me know if PM can be used in the setup i have described above. Any helpful tips whatsoever would be much appreciated.

risk_reversal said:

Happy New Year to all. My first post in this esteemed forum.
I wonder if someone can clarify the following for me please.
I am running 2 hard disks on the mobos raid controller (promise). They are both set as masters on their individual IDE's (3&4) acting as separate HDD with each entry showing up as 1+0 stripe in raid bios, this in RAID 0. I am having problems with partition magic and Win98SE. I am trying to rig my hardware so that my children (2) each have a HDD that is there own. I have Win98SE loaded on each HDD as primary and each has their own data partition. I was trying to dual boot by use of Boot magic.
I seems to be getting problems with Partition Magic giving me an error 116 message this issue relating to disk geometry.

Click to expand...

Welcome to the forums.

If your setup is showing each drive as a 1+0 stripe, then your raid configuration is not setup properly. A properly setup Raid would report a 2+0 stripe. For Raid 0 to work it needs to have 2 drives configured in the Array, yours are setup seperatly, so you might as well Disable the Raid and just use the drives as a normal setup. It probably because of the improper array setup that Partition magic is giving you the error.

Al

for some more info, you can hit the "Search" button at the top right of the screen and search using "Raid Array" as a subject. That will show you all the threads in the forum with probs/solutions on the subject.

Many thanks for your reply Al. This is my first stab at a Raid board.
I have been searching this forum for an answer to my problem. You say that my array may be incorrectly setup. Perhaps if i tell you what i did by way of retracing my steps you could point me in the right direction.
I connected first HDD into IDE 3 (on raid) booted after enabling raid in main bios. The Raid bios confirmed 'no array defined', then rebooted auto detected my hard drive correctly and set 1+0 stripe.
Once this was done i did the same thing for second HDD on IDE4, raid bios identified drive and also assigned 1+0 stripe to that 'array'.
I understand that normally an array would consist of at least 2 drives but as i said before wanted to use Raid IDE 3 & 4 to work as normal IDE for hard drive.
Is there anything wrong in what i did so far ...............

risk_reversal said:

Many thanks for your reply Al. This is my first stab at a Raid board.
I have been searching this forum for an answer to my problem. You say that my array may be incorrectly setup. Perhaps if i tell you what i did by way of retracing my steps you could point me in the right direction.
I connected first HDD into IDE 3 (on raid) booted after enabling raid in main bios. The Raid bios confirmed 'no array defined', then rebooted auto detected my hard drive correctly and set 1+0 stripe.
Once this was done i did the same thing for second HDD on IDE4, raid bios identified drive and also assigned 1+0 stripe to that 'array'.
I understand that normally an array would consist of at least 2 drives but as i said before wanted to use Raid IDE 3 & 4 to work as normal IDE for hard drive.
Is there anything wrong in what i did so far ...............

Click to expand...

Ok, what you dont want to do is setup each drive like that. basically, Raid 0 Needs two drives to function properly and from your reply it appears you really dont want the Raid function.

So.
Check your manual, you may get lucky...You may be able to just disable the Raid function in Bios and use ports 3 & 4 as regular IDE ports. I would give that a check and post what results you get and we can work from there.

What board is it, BTW?

Good Luck.

Al

Welcome To The Forums!!!!!

.....and to the addiction

risk_reversal said:

Happy New Year to all. My first post in this esteemed forum.
I wonder if someone can clarify the following for me please.

Click to expand...

Happy New Year

First thing is to list down the complete system specs so we have a better idea on how to guide you. It will be counter productive if you don't.

risk_reversal said:

I am running 2 hard disks on the mobos raid controller (promise). They are both set as masters on their individual IDE's (3&4) acting as separate HDD with each entry showing up as 1+0 stripe in raid bios, this in RAID 0.

Click to expand...

Setup problem here. If you want to run them as separate|independent HDDs you can do so with the RAID Controllers, on most boards, & all you have to do is to make sure the RAID BIOS recognizes them both. You DO NOT create an ARRAY. Either you made a mistake calling them "this is in RAID 0" or you have them striped & not acting independent.

Many thanks again for your welcome. Yes you are correct and let me list my specs
MSI KT3 Ultra 2 R
XP +2000
512MB crucial PC2100 (2x256)
SB Audigy
Leadtek ti 4400 vivo
Liteon dvd 166s
Liteon cdrw 48125w
Pioneer cdrw 9700k
Seagate 60Gb
WD 20 Gb
Enermax 431w
Win 98SE via 4-1 v4.34

As i said in my first post this is my first stab at a RAID board. Yes i want to use the RAID function to set up 2 separate/ independant HDD on RAID IDE 3&4 (each as master). Apologies for any confusion in my terminology. I did this in the following way.
Firstly, attached first disk to IDE 3 enabled RAID controller in main system bios. Upon reboot (after main post screen) raid bios initialises and flashes 'no array defined' then system reboots. This time the raid bios confirm that an array was created and it shows up as 1+0 stripe. The 'array' if i can use that word loosely, consists of 1 disk(which is shown in raid setup).
Then connect the second disk to IDE 4 ditto happens and now i have 2 entries in raid bios each disk correctly detected and same entry 1+0 stripe. So now 2 independant/ separate disks set up.?
I suppose the confusion in my mind was triggered by the device manager listing in the o/s which showed (in hard disk) the entry 'promise 1+0 stripe / Raid 0' (this x2 of course).
I then proceed to load o/s on HDD1 but after further loading etc...if i boot into PM HDD1 registers no primary / ext partitions but a yellow band with error 116.
So 2 salient questions: have i correctly set up my hard drives in raid bios in accordance with what i want then to do (o/s has no queeries in device manager) and secondly, can PM operate in this environment or is this a nono. I am currently doing a fresh install (again) this time have only put 1 HDD on IDE 3 will load to a point then connect the other HDD on IDE4 and see what happens. I will let you know what this gives later today/tomorrow. Any further advice you can provide will be very welcomed though.

Let's not use the term Array describing a single drive as it is usually used for 2 drives acting as one or mirroring each other, it just adds to the confusion. You probably also do not mean that you want to use the "RAID Function" but only the controllers.

What is your Boot Sequence as setup in the BIOS?

Sonny, yes i think you are right the term 'Array' as i have defined it is confusing. Spot on in that i just want to use controllers.
My boot sequence as listed in main system BIOS is as follows
Floppy
BBS-0 (RAID):FT Ary1 (master on IDE3)
DVD rom
apologies for my lack of acuracy in this matter.

After partitioning the HDD try setting the boot sequence by having the CDROM as your 1st boot device then succeding 2 from the RAID Controller & see what that gets you. You can also copy the Win98 folder onto a second partition on the HDD then install from there but this time have your sytems boot sequence as RAID Controller for all 3.

Not sure that the boot sequence is the trouble here (i think) since system will boot from HDD1 on BBS-0 (RAID):FT Ary1 (master on IDE3). The problem occurs sometime after that. Let me explain, i have while posting this question, been reloading my o/s (3rd time now) on the disk referred to immediately above. The pattern is this, i load o/s on IDE3 , copy this to IDE4 (by way of PM) all seems ok at first. Then i use Boot magic to dual boot into each disk. At first this seems to operate properly. Prior to posting here, the last time the problem manifested itself was in the following way. I tried booting, as usual post screen comes up then windows98 screen, then the boot sequence seems to get caught in a 'loop', by that i mean there is disk activity and the boot process reaches the point where the desktop is about to be launched (ie last black screen) but then i go back to the windows98 screen then the process continues to the point just prior to desktop (last black screen) and loops again. I then use PM dos disks to boot and i see this error 116 problem on disk 1 to do with disk geometry and MBR problem.
PM at that stage will not allow me to delete/ create anything on disk 1. As regards my current fresh install so far all is ok, but i have not yet copied o/s to HDD2 and attempted dual booting.
Let me know if i am talking nonsense and whether i should just follow you instructions.....

So your not doing a clean install on each HDD but installing on one HDD then copying. Have you tried doing fresh installs on both but then again I don't think W98|SE likes to live with another W98|SE on the same system. This is probably the main issue you should be looking at. Have a look at Windows 2000|Pro or Windows XP Home|Pro so you can set different accounts for each son.

The Boot sequence I mentioned is correct but that is the least of your problems. If they were on removable HDDs you would have less of an issue & not have to use the RAID Controllers.

As you say doing fresh install on HDD1 then will be copying to HDD2. The PM web site has information regarding this and for Win98SE they suggest doing it this way. Must admit you read my mind as regards Win2000pro. However, in case this information is of use, i have carried on with my fresh install and have nearly finished. So far so good. The one thing i did differently this time is as follows. After HDD1 was detected by raid bios i loaded o/s and driver for raid controller. I then attached HDD2. Similarly this was well detected. I have subsequently been loading HDD1 and have copied this partition to end of HDD1 as test and this also (so far ) has been ok. I will leave HDD2 alone for now and just make sure over the next few days that HDD1 is stable. Once i gain a degree of confidence that HDD1 is stable, i will copy to HDD2 and that is when i expect trouble. If you like i can let you know what happens.