I think I screwed up my RAID O setup

Hi all:

I hope this is the correct place for this thread.

Before me I am looking at a new system I just completed putting together. I’m a newbie here so please remember that.

I’m looking at my Abit IX38 Quad GT book and followed the directions on how to set up a RAID 0 configurations. Made the floppy, and inserted it when windows XP Pro 32 bit asked for it (F6).

Windows loaded the driver’s fine (I think); however I think I didn’t take regarding my RAID 0. My book tells me squat on any settings I should have made in the BIOS before any windows install.

On top of this it does not see my two WD drives when you go to my computer. I have four drives total. It just shows me drive C.

I looked all over the forum for previous threads on this but it’s hard to find any hand holding threads through the entire process with this board.

Can some tell me what I did wrong?

How can you tell if I set up RAID correctly when looking within windows or is there another way?

How do I start all over?

Should I start all over?

Thanks

In bios you need to set drives to raid, reboot, go to ctrl - i when booting, set up raid 0 on the drives you want, save, it will reboot, go to bios make sure boot hard drive is set to the raid drive you want, save reboot, load driver in xp (f6) then install windows.

Your RAID 0 array is seen by Windows as one volume, hence why it assigned the drive letter C: - which is the root volume. Your WD drives need to be partitioned and formatted, which can be done via the Computer Management console from within Windows... Start | Run | Type diskmgmt.msc, and click OK | Right click each of the HDD"s for a list of available options.

redduc900 said:

Your RAID 0 array is seen by Windows as one volume, hence why it assigned the drive letter C: - which is the root volume. Your WD drives need to be partitioned and formatted, which can be done via the Computer Management console from within Windows... Start | Run | Type diskmgmt.msc, and click OK | Right click each of the HDD"s for a list of available options.

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that just about covers it... windows only mounts drives that have windows readable partitions and RAID shows up as 1 logical drive unless if software RAIDed in windows in which case one drive would show in My Computer but disk management would show all...

jmorgan:

It will not let me stay in the window to chage the RAID when I use ctrl I. It flashes for second and goes right to windows log in screen.

redduc900:

Did the adiskmgmt.msc. It shows only one disk as partitioned. That tells me I did not set up RAID is that correct?

asusradeon: Where do I find the disk management?

as it is booting just keep pressing crtl - i you have to enter that screen to set up the raid, set your boot drive to your cd drive that will also delay the boot and give you a few more seconds, sounds like you never setup the raid.

I don't know if this is true for the Abit board, but some mobos will not recogie both pata and sata drives at the same time.

Also you need to make sure the bios recognizes the drives (i think someone mentioned that, but i'm using my palm and checking the whole post is a PITA)

I'm using all SATA.

Can someone tell me what I have to set in my BIOS to get a true SATA II 3.0? I've been strugeling all weekend. Don't know if I have it set up correctly. Cant find any real detailed how to's for setting up a RAID 0.

When I run diskmgmt.msc it only shows one drive as formated and the other three as not. When I go to properties on my desk top and click on hardware it shows two seagate drives. Any help for this noob would be great.

jrank001, I am right there w/ you. Just installed 2 500GB Seagate SATA II drives in a RAID 0 on an ASUS P5N32. Updated the RAID drivers, Seagate drivers, drive shows up in RAID utility and Windows Vist Ult 64 "sees" the drive in disk managment. I partitoned it and selected quick format (tried w/ and w/out this option). AND NO LUCK!!!

I have all but given up on EGGXPERT and am not finding too many answers here.

If you do find the answer please post

Weswood151

jrank001 said:

I'm using all SATA.

Can someone tell me what I have to set in my BIOS to get a true SATA II 3.0? I've been strugeling all weekend. Don't know if I have it set up correctly. Cant find any real detailed how to's for setting up a RAID 0.

When I run diskmgmt.msc it only shows one drive as formated and the other three as not. When I go to properties on my desk top and click on hardware it shows two seagate drives. Any help for this noob would be great.

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There's nothing you have to set up on the mobo SATA ports to run at SATA3.0Gb/s. You may have a jumper on your hard drive that limits it's throughput to 1.5Gb/s, just pull that jumper off and you're done. If you could post some screen shots of your drives shown in Disk Management and File Exlporer/My Computer, that would help us help you.

Well Jrank I pulled my two HDs out of RAID 0 in the RAID Utility and just attempted to install them as seperate drives one of them installed and formated w/no issues and the second one would not format. Are you getting the message;

"WINDOWS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM INSTALLING THE DRIVER SOFTWARE FOR YOUR DEVICE

Windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it.

Generic Volume

This operation requires an interactive window station.

If you know the manufacture of yourdevice, you can visit it's website and check the support section for driver software."

This seems to be my issue w/ this second drive, I am almost at the point of ending this little expeiriment and returning the second drive, AAARGGHH

weswood151:
Yes I'm frustrated also. Will look deeper into it Monday morning. No time today with the playoff games getting ready to start.

tuskenraider:
Yes I'm trying to figure out how to capture and post those screen shots. I've never done that before. I realize once the expert help can see what I see it will be easier to help out. Is there a link for posting screen shots?

I'm surprised there is no real "HOW-TO" for how to do a RAID set up for newbies. I'm taking notes to hopefully post something decent once I become more knowledgeable. It's easy to forget how hard it was to learn once you've done it a million times in your sleep.

Thanks for the reply's. It's nice to get help. This site has many many smart people.

jrank001 said:

weswood151:
Yes I'm frustrated also. Will look deeper into it Monday morning. No time today with the playoff games getting ready to start.

tuskenraider:
Yes I'm trying to figure out how to capture and post those screen shots. I've never done that before. I realize once the expert help can see what I see it will be easier to help out. Is there a link for posting screen shots?

I'm surprised there is no real "HOW-TO" for how to do a RAID set up for newbies. I'm taking notes to hopefully post something decent once I become more knowledgeable. It's easy to forget how hard it was to learn once you've done it a million times in your sleep.

Thanks for the reply's. It's nice to get help. This site has many many smart people.

Click to expand...

I guess it is suprising there isn't a how-to here, but it would have to be pretty general. A search would certainly bring up lots of threads on it. It really is as simple as jmorgan responded to your first post. At this point, I'd have only the drives to RAID on the system. Enable the RAID controller in the BIOS. Reboot into RAID BIOS(if that's control-i or whaterver), create your array. Reboot into the BIOS, set array as second boot device with optical drive with OS disk first. Reboot and have RAID controller drivers on floppy, start install, F6, install goes a little, select your recognized array as the place to install your OS and finish out. Your RAID0 array will be seen as one drive in Disk Management(the total capacity of both drives). The drives can both be viewed separately under Disks in the Device Manager.

As far as screen shots. In Windows it's easy as you can hit the PrtScrn button on your keyboard to capture the screen, Alt+PrtScrn will capture just the current active window, so you don't have to post a large pic if only showing a small application window. Once you take a screen shot, open MS paint and just paste it. Save it as whatever, wherever. You can then create an account at a free image hosting site like Image Shack or whatever and upload photos to it. Then you use the image icon when making post to insert the image by linking to the url of the picture. May sound complicated, but will be simple once you do it a couple times. Furthermore, if you have broadband internet service, you may have been given some web page space as well(usually like 10MB). You can use that for storing photos as well. This is getting into a whole different topic though........

Well I redid my setup just like jmorgan said to do and he was right on the money. Every thing looks to be perfect and working correctly. Working on screen shots now.

How are you doing weswood151?

jrank001 said:

weswood151:
Yes I'm frustrated also.....
...
I'm surprised there is no real "HOW-TO" for how to do a RAID set up for newbies. I'm taking notes to hopefully post something decent once I become more knowledgeable. It's easy to forget how hard it was to learn once you've done it a million times in your sleep...

Click to expand...

I agree - i was surprised too i couldn't find a how-to sticky for a RAID config. some people also get offended when you ask something that was covered in a post last year too, so i'm pretty much trying to read everything people say here.. it's not easy....

I'm with you svetko. Prior to creating a new thread I research the forum for what I'm looking for. To date, on this forum, with not much luck do I find what I'm looking for and that's no ones fault.

Like I mentioned, I think I did my RAID 0 correctly. I wish I had the knowledge I would be happy to write something up. Yet with every different brand of MOBO it will look different from BIOS to BIOS and most manuals that come with the mother boards are not that detailed. I know my was not.

If you haven't done a RAID before it does get frustrating. With time I will no longer be a noob. But I will always try to remember what it's like to be one. Take good notes as you go so you can relate down the road.