1st time raider 1

[raindancer]

I have an asus A7V333 motherboard(raid), xp1900 proc., maxtor 60 gig ata133 hard drive and am running winXP.I have just bought an identical maxter 60 gig(and a raid cable kit) .I want to hook up a raid 0 configuration. I have not only never hooked up a raid config.,I've never even touched a computer that had one.I have done all the simple stuff memory, video, sound card,and reformatting but this would be the most complex a job as i've every done but I feel the need to do it myself. I would appreciate any and all warnings, tips or "no don't do it it will hurt"'s that are offerd. And no tip is a stupid tip.thanx for the help

 

[GoLdFiNgeR]

if you go through with the directions in your mobo manual you should be fine, i have an asus a7v266 with raid, and the manual gave a lot of great tips and hints, etc. that was my first time ever doing raid, it was very easy.

some tips:
use a seperate cable for each drive, set them to master

make sure your manual coexists with your mobo revision
(mine was different, i had two raid jumpers instead of one, it just took trial and error basically to figure out the correct combo of them)

know your raid levels, o is striping so with your 60gb drives you will total 120 (close to it)
level 1 is mirroring, self explanitory,
there are more but i wont go into detail

that should help a little
enjoy your raid

 

[raindancer]

thanx goldfinger,
one thing i cant find in the manual,if i put the 2 hard drives in promise IDE1 and promise IDE2, then should my cable with dvd and cdrw(one 2 device round cable) go into primary IDE or secondary ide as near as i can tell i have one in each now,but i am changing cables with instillation. any thoughts would be appriciated.BTW im going for a raid 0 if i didnt make that clear.
raindancer

Xp1900
windows XP
asus A7V333
2 maxtor 60 gig
1 gig ddr2700
geforce 3

 

[GoLdFiNgeR]

yeah i konw raid 0, i was just saying what if...
im not understanding how your cabling is but here is the optimal solution,

your hdd's on primary raid, and secondary raid, each with their own cable, as master, and jumper on hdd to master,

your cd rom and cd rw, each on their own channel so obviously each with their own cable, which will help with cd recording, and each set to master, although ive never had a problem with it, i dont like using my cdrom and cdrw on the same cable, plus it is not recommended,

hope this helps
will

 

[raindancer]

O.K. I ordered a raid combo kit(on the recomendation of the site service dept)here is the product i ordered. do I need to order another cable?

http://www.xpcgear.com/rouncabsilra.html

thanx again goldfinger

 

[GoLdFiNgeR]

One Round Floppy Cable (Support 2 Devices, Silver, Grade A) 24" and

Two ATA 133/100 Round IDE Cable ( 1 Device, Silver Mesh, Grade A) 18" and

One ATA 133/100 Round IDE Cable ( 2 Devices, Silver Mesh, Grade A) 18"

i would recommend it, because the floppy cable use is obvious, the two ata 133/100 1 device will be used with the 2 hdd

then the ata 133/100 2 device could be used for the cdrom and rw, but it is usually better to have seperate cables, so no you dont have to buy another cable, but yes i would recommend it

http://www.plycon.com

http://www.colerguys.com

sometimes they have pretty good deals

 

[raindancer]

thanx goldfinger(again) I think i got it ,now its just the doing part, but i fell much more confident.ill let ya know how it goes

 

[GoLdFiNgeR]

thanks, i think youll find that it is quite easy for the most part, unless there is a hardware problem or something, you really dont do much except thell the computer what raid config you want and then let it go,

good luck

 

[raindancer]

well I got it all set up,set the promise utility to raid "0" all seemed well, raid config was recognized, windows started to set up then said it could not find any hard drive. i think i have bios set correctly but nothing says RAID. promis utilty says 120 gig array active. i'm not sure how to get windows to recognize the array

 

[craigey]

have you installed the driver for the raid controller??

You should be able to get it from ASUS

 

[raindancer]

I have the asus disk with driver, I thought since it recognized the array that it was installed. should i remove the windows XP disk after I (F6)<define third party raid/scsi> and install drver for promise? I was afraid to remove the disk(XP) during instillation.

 

[craigey]

should i remove the windows XP disk after I (F6)<define third party raid/scsi> and install drver for promise?

You only need to do the above if the Raid Array is already set-up and you want to install/reinstall/repair XP.

If you insert the disk when your in xp, see if there is an setup.exe file to install the drivers in XP. If there is only a dll you can go to the device manager and update the device driver from there.

 

[GoLdFiNgeR]

make sure you have the updated raid drivers from asus, it may not work with the ones on the cd,

http://www.asus.com,

after you hit f6 it will load some other stuff, then it gets to a screen asking what to define, choose raid and install your driver, make sure you put the txtsetup.oem file on the root of your floppy, and for safe measure i put all my files on the root, which obviously means not in a folder, if windows doesnt see the txtsetup.oem file it wont recognize the disk as a raid driver disk.

then your raid drivers will install. at this point your raid array should already be created from the utility asus provides. and you should now be able to install windows

 

[raindancer]

ok,Thanx i'll try that and let you(all) know!

 

[GoLdFiNgeR]

good, hope it works for ya