Raid difficulties

[hennethannun]

So, specs first:

E8400 Wolfdale
Asus P5K-E Wi/fi
4GB OCZ titanium DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 (i think) 2x2GB
7800 GTX
2 x Western Digital 320GB SATA hdd (Caviar SE16)
XP SP2
NEC Floppy drive

I've built several computers over the past years, so I'm well versed with the basics, but I've never set up a RAID array before. The idea was to set this system up with RAID 0.

I got everything installed and the system posted perfectly. (I have run all of these components together before EXCEPT the hard drives, which are new. So I KNOW that the motherboard, CPU, RAM and gfx card are all reliable).

I activated RAID in bios (at least I think i did. I set the RAID controller to RAID and also set the SATA configuration to RAID. do i need to do anything else?). Then I entered the RAID utility and set up a RAID 0 array in side.

That all seemed to work properly, so I got my RAID driver floppy ready (downloaded the newest version directly from ASUS.com) and started to install windows. Again, things started off well. I F6'd and installed the drivers seemingly without trouble. And Windows began to install, but when i got the portion where i had to choose a partition, i was only able to see two 'unknown disk's. IE windows wasn't recognizing the array as a hard drive. In fact, if I tried to select one of those unknown disks then the whole setup would crash immediately. I probably have the wrong drivers, but as i said i downloaded the newest drivers for this motherboard directly from ASUS, so I can't imagine how i could have the wrong ones.

And the more troubling thing is that now, Windows refuses to recognize either of these WD hard drives AT ALL. even after I went back into the RAID utility and reset both drives for normal operation. OTHER blank hard drives will work in the computer. and both WD drives work in OTHER computers. Both WD drives show up in the BIOS, but will not be recognized by Windows setup.

Do I just have bad drives? Did i forget some important step in setting up the RAID array? This is getting really frustrating and I would really appreciate any advice.

thanks

 

[cubby1223]

Unless you *desperately* need the extra speed of raid 0 - for the love of all things holy, don't use raid. It just ain't worth it for the minuscule performance increase in everyday applications & gaming.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
Unless you *desperately* need the extra speed of raid 0 - for the love of all things holy, don't use raid. It just ain't worth it for the minuscule performance increase in everyday applications & gaming.

I was going to tell him that his problems are his computer telling him not to use a pointless non-redundant array.

 

[hennethannun]

the thinking behind the RAID 0 array was as follows:

This machine will be a workstation, used mainly with mapping and GIS software, often used remotely over the internet. RAM and Hard Drive access speed will be the most critical bottlenecks on this machine; hence 4GB of RAM and a RAID 0 array. Even a marginal increase in hard drive performance is worthwhile when the machine will be accessing the hard drives all day every day. I would have kept things simple and gone with a 10,000 Raptor, but with so many large images (GIS mapping) storage capacity is important and 600+ GB of raid 0 is WAY cheaper than a 300GB (veloci)raptor.

Anyway, now that RAID has been such a pain in the ass I may just return both drives and buy that raptor afterall...