Hardware Analysis Community Forums http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/ 2008-08-20T07:39:21-05:00 http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/ http://media.hardwareanalysis.com/halogo.gif text/html 2008-04-09T08:54:03-05:00 Tad Cook http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#533127 Good to get an alert message that this thread is active again, because it turns out what I wrote 2.5 years ago is info I need right now. I am installing new Western Digital Enterprise Class drives, 320GB, everything else the same (Abit AS8 mobo).<br /> <br /> Western Digital says that the drives I bought have a special feature for RAID:<br /> <br /> RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER) - A feature pioneered by WD, significantly reduces drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives. <br /> <br /> Q: What is time-limited error recovery and why do I need it? <br /> A: Desktop drives are designed to protect and recover data, at times pausing for as much as a few minutes to make sure that data is recovered. Inside a RAID system, where the RAID controller handles error recovery, the drive needn't pause for extended periods to recover data. In fact, heroic error recovery attempts can cause a RAID system to drop a drive out of the array. WD RE2 is engineered to prevent hard drive error recovery fallout by limiting the drive's error recovery time. With error recovery factory set to seven seconds, the drive has time to attempt a recovery, allow the RAID controller to log the error, and still stay online. <br /> <br /> <br /> I think the lack of this feature may be what caused the error indications with the Seagate drives.<br /> <br /> Right now I can't get the system to see the drives, but I am working with Western Digital on this.<br /> text/html 2008-04-09T01:57:01-05:00 ee . http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#533112 Tad, <br /> I too was amazed to see a posting reply in my emal.. after two and a half years..<br /> wow, I so much fatter back then too.<br /> Two words: DIET AND EXERCISE!<br /> well see ya...in another two and a half years... I guess. text/html 2008-02-29T20:51:07-05:00 Tad Cook http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#530410 Amazing to discover 2 more replies after all this time! I don't remember much about the RAID installation, except that things went much smoother after I installed the Intel tool for RAID.<br /> <br /> I said originally that I was using a seperate drive for the OS, but instead I used a seperate partition. Also had seperate partitions for Applications, and Data. Makes backup smooth.<br /> <br /> Amazingly (to me), I have had two drive failures in the past 2.5 years, since the RAID installation. I have two Seagate 160 GB SATA drives mirrored. But recovering is easy. The Intel app alerts me that a drive has failed, I pull it out, stick in an identical drive, reboot, and the utility does the rest. Finding an identical drive was tough though. The drives were originally purchased at the late CompUSA. I had to search long and hard, and paid a premium.<br /> <br /> I just had the second failure. I don't know if it was the replacement drive or the old one, but I have decided to purchase three new 250 or 300 GB drives, I hope more reliable. I will keep one as a replacement spare. The old 160GB that still functions I will install for holding the Windows PageFile only! Currently I have it on a seperate partition, and that doesn't really make sense.<br /> text/html 2008-02-29T20:41:13-05:00 BoT http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#530409 integrating the driver via slipstream would also be an option text/html 2008-02-29T20:39:08-05:00 Tad Cook http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#530407 text/html 2008-02-29T20:12:41-05:00 William Wilson http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#530403 Wow this is really old now, and at this time I'm a technician for a small computer repair shop. Brock that is a good input on checking the keyboard locks, but I found out now that when pressing F6 to install the sata drivers when the XP disc is loading, it won't do anything untill after the initial setup files were loaded. It then asks you for the sata floppy disc drivers, (make sure you use sata if you're not going through raid, and use raid drivers if you're setting up two hard drives on raid). It loads the drivers from the disc and then windows will recognize the sata hard drive. <br /> Some bios have a setting to set SATA drives to a [combination] and with that setting you do not need a drivers disc. text/html 2008-02-29T02:18:43-05:00 Brock Overberg http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#530352 Check if your keyboard has an F mode button. If it does, press it once while it is on and try it again. You also might want to check and see if your Caps Lock button is on and also your Num Lock button. Num Lock button you want on and Caps Lock you want off. text/html 2005-09-04T23:15:00-05:00 Tad Cook http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#320224 Thanks for the advice on looking to Windows for disk management. I will check that out.<br /> <br /> Regarding why I am running Windows on the non-RAID drive. It is because I wanted to segregate all the data that I back up, and since all the apps and the OS are easy to re-install, I have those seperate.<br /> <br /> What lead to putting the OS on a seperate IDE drive was, I had trouble changing my SATA drives over to RAID-1 while running already-installed WinXp on one of them. So while I knew it was doable if I reinstalled Windows (once I got the instructions from someone on one of the Abit forums), it seemed like a good idea to install Windows on the IDE drive, then configure the mirrored RAID-1 array, then install the data. So Windows runs on the IDE, and on the RAID-1 array with mirrored 160 GB Seagate Serial ATA drives I have an APPS partition and a DATA partition. One goal is to be able to back up by just ghosting (or by some other backup utility) the DATA partition. Also, I thought it would be cool if applications were in a separate partition, so if one becomes unstable the OS and the data are perhaps safer.<br /> <br /> One complication of putting data on a seperate partition is that the registry has to be edited so that all references to C:\Documents and Settings\... and %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\... and \Device\HarddiskVoume1\Documents and Settings\... are changed to H:\Documents and Settings\... (H being the data partition in this installation). Otherwise, all the email and documents would still be stored where the OS is. I used a registry editor called Registry Workshop to do a quick search and replace.<br /> <br /> Only problem so far with the registry changes: Outlook Express is still looking in C:\Documents and Settings\ for the addressbook. But I'll figure out what to do with that.<br /> text/html 2005-09-04T16:33:46-05:00 William Wilson http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#320114 yeah thanks, I felt like a total moron, when I found that out, I them running now, on sata it's nice. text/html 2005-09-04T15:13:18-05:00 ee . http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#320095 Tad,<br /> Why would you put your old 80 GB IDE drive with the OS? Maybe you use this as a storage drive only and use the New 160 GB Seagate SATA drives in RAID 1. Just a thought.<br /> <br /> and William, <br /> It's too bad you could not run RAID 0, (losing so much space on the drives being different sizes) it's a noticeable performance increase. And again as stated above when you press F6 nothing happens until just a bit later on the install it will ask for the RAID drivers (you must press S to load the driver &amp; hit enter and then press S again to load the controller &amp; hit enter) then continue with the windows install with the floppy still in its drive.<br /> <br /> text/html 2005-09-04T04:29:12-05:00 William Wilson http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#320006 Sorry man, I have no idea how raid works, all I setup is regular sata drives.<br /> <br /> But one thing that might help you not sure though is, if you go to<br /> <br /> &gt;Control Panel<br /> <br /> &gt;Administrative Tools<br /> <br /> then double click on Computer Management<br /> <br /> and on the right you'll side you'll see Storage double click on that<br /> <br /> then you'll see Disk Management, double click on that<br /> <br /> and in there is all your drives, not sure if it will tell you anything about raid in there but thats them.<br /> <br /> text/html 2005-09-03T20:37:12-05:00 Tad Cook http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#319901 Thanks William. Everything went fine, with a couple of unexpected conditions, but it is all working. I disconnected the SATA drives and re-did the Windows installation on my IDE drive, loading the RAID drivers early in the install with F6. When Windows was installed, I then hooked up the two SATA drives after configuring the BIOS options for RAID according to instructions from someone on an Abit forum. When I rebooted and then used Ctrl-I, there was really nothing to do. I tried configuring the drives as RAID, but the response was there were no non-RAID drives to install on.....both were already working.<br /> <br /> One thing that was unexpected....when I rebooted with the RAID drives running, I would get this blue screen with plain text telling me Windows had to check the drives. It would go through each SATA drive with CHKDSK, &quot;fix&quot; a bunch of files each time, and otherwise boot OK. I think it was &quot;confused&quot; because left on these drives was an image of the original hard drive for this system, and a couple of other partitions, and mostly a huge unpartitioned space. I used Partition Commander to re-partition the array to three partitions, and finally after formatting each partition, the system boots normally.<br /> <br /> One creepy thing about RAID (this is a mirrored RAID-1 array, and this is my first experience with RAID), the drives are really invisible. Drive 0 is a reconditioned Western Digital 80 GB IDE drive with the OS, and Drives 1+2 are new 160 GB Seagate SATA drives for the array. There actually (AFAIK) is no way for me to tell how many physical drives there are, except to look in the box or page through the start-up routine prior to boot, which shows the physical drives. When I look at it with Windows Explorer, I just see a bunch of drive letters, one for each partition.<br /> <br /> This is also my first experience with a partitioning utility. I can see it will be easy to get confused if I don't keep records, unless I find some utility to map all the relationships. Any thoughts on this?<br /> <br /> Also, I am going along happily assuming that both drives are working and mirroring, but how do I check this? If one drive fails 5 years from now (unlikely, but that is why I am using RAID-1), does recovery involve just reconfiguring for non-RAID with the good drive until a replacement for the bad one is found?<br /> <br /> Any more info anyone can share or references I can read on strategies when running RAID-1 would be appreciated.<br /> <br /> Thanks!<br /> text/html 2005-09-03T06:14:05-05:00 William Wilson http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#319760 yeah man you're fine, just disconnect the drives, install windows on the ide. Then hook them back up and just load the drivers from inside windows, it's alot easier that way anyway. Because sometimes you don't even need to load the drivers, windows can locate the drivers fromthe internet. text/html 2005-09-02T22:44:02-05:00 Tad Cook http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#319649 Here is a question. Should I have the RAID disks already installed when I do the new Windows installation, and load the drivers? Here is my new setup. I want to set up two SATA drives to RAID-1 with an Abit AS8 motherboard. They will just hold data and applications. But I want to load my OS into a seperate IDE drive, which will not be RAID. Problem: somehow every time I try to install Windows XP Pro, it installs it to one of the SATA drives. The only way I seem to be able to reliably install to the IDE drives is to disconnect the SATA drives. The plan is to hook those up after Windows is installed. Is there a way to install the RAID drivers after Windows installation?<br /> text/html 2005-08-18T14:04:38-05:00 Steve Weller http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/47546/?l=1#313985 never mind i had to formatt my floppy disk the long way i did that and now it recconised it and is so far so good