How to RAID Harddrives???

[khashyar7]

Hi,

I just managed to hook up my 2 brand new 300 Gb Maxtor Hard drives. Now my question is how do I raid them?

When I start the computer, it says:

Press <ctrl+S> or F4 to enter RAID utility
and as I do I get the following:

No device detected, Utitility disabled ! Press any key to continue...

Do I RAID them before I install Windows on them or you can do it afterwards too? Please help!

Thanks,

 

[dakota81]

I would advise against raiding the hard drives.

If you want raid 0, it must be done before installation.

Raid 1 can be set up at any time.

But again, unless the drives are strickly for temporary storage of data, I would not advise raiding them. There is far too much that could go wrong, versus a very meager return on application speed.

Link:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=11

 

[khashyar7]

Thanks for your quick response !
I was under the impression that RAIDing would improve productivity immensely, but that article and your tips kinda totally vetoed my idea (even though I still do not know if it's just due to the reliability issue or something else -like if one of the hard drives dies, you're scerewed)

but about RAID 1: Isn't that going to cut your actual capacity in half... I mean one hard drive would just have to serve as the back up of the other one right? If that is the case, I'd rather run the risk of loosing my data, but use all my storage capacity!

lemme know what you think.

Thanks,

Kash

 

[dakota81]

RAID 0 allows you to use the full 600gb, but at an increased risk of total data loss for extremely little performance benifit. It's not just physical drive damage, but at times software errors can take down a drive & again you have nothing left.

RAID 1 gives you just 300gb capacity with a backup of all data. However, the RAID controllers on motherboards are extremely cheap solutions that use software to emulate RAID functionality. Depending on the drivers, even if one drive fails, it can be difficult to still run the system on the other working drive.

If you are serious about wanting to use RAID on drives you are going to put data that you cannot lose, get a good PCI hardware RAID controller, go with nothing cheaper than the base 3Ware cards that run for ~$130.

 

[rvnguy]

khashyar7,

but about RAID 1: Isn't that going to cut your actual capacity in half

Correct, but as you have noticed you have a redundant(copy) of the drive. We all think that "I'll risk losing my data" until it happens, although there are other ways of backing up.

RAID: Depending on your mobo & RAID implemented on it; You might only have RAID support for SATA drives. But the msg indicates "utility disabled.....check BIOS for RAID settings like "enable".

Taking into account what you have read, and how you use the PC; RAID "0", effectively doubles the read/write speed minus a small amount of overhead. I do not Game, but I understand there are a few high end games that benefit from this speed.

Reliability; We are all at risk of a device failure. Always have a backup routine that you follow. This is a downside of RAID "0", one drive can always fail. Weigh it out for yourself; speed vs losing half of your data.

The choice is yours.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[dakota81]

rvnguy - raid 0 is striping, if one drive goes down, you lose everything on both drives. What you're thinking of is jbod, but that gives you absolutely no performance benefit.

The real point I'm trying to make is, these are cheap raid controllers relying purely on software drivers. It doesn't take a failed hard drive to break the array, it could be as easy as a software hiccup, and you loose access to all data.

 

[rvnguy]

dakota81,

Thanks, but that is why I stated:

This is a downside of RAID "0", one drive can always fail.

As you stated,you lose all data.

speed(with RAID "0") vs losing half of your data(with RAID "1"), or actually the failed drive as it is a copy.

these are cheap raid controllers relying purely on software drivers

I do not recall the poster specifying what the mobo was so I would not comment on this as there are a few "hardware" implemented on board controllers, while RAID "5" on these is soft.

In general, you are correct but there are exceptions.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[dakota81]

Ah, I appologize, I thought when you said "speed vs. loosing half your data", you were weighing the pros & cons of just raid 0.

As for onboard raid controllers, I have seen only a very select few that used a Promise chip for ide raid, I believe all other ide raid controllers are software based, VIA, nVidia, intel, Highpoint, etc.

 

[Bozz]

If you still want to RAID, check that you are using the correct motherboard connection. My ECS PF21 has 6 SATA connections on the mainboard but only 2 are for RAID.

Ian Boys
DTE Systems Ltd

 

[khashyar7]

OK taking all of these comments into consideration, I'm not gonna RAID these guys anymore, but there's another major issue now:

I boot up the hard drives with WIN XP CD, after it launches the setup and loads the files, it crashes with a Blue Screen with the following message:

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
(note that sometimes it crashes with an IRQ error or something like that)

Is that probably a hard drive defect or the way I've set them up???

Based on my antiquated knowledge, I first instended to make one of the hard drives Master and the other one Slave, but didn't have the Slave option there, instead there are:

DS (Mater)
CS ENABLED
CAP LIMIT

So I went with one Mater and the other one CS ENABLED, but the computer would autoomatically shut down with that configuration, so I went with both "CS ENABLED".

That way, the setup launches and gives me a blue screen or shuts down automatically while loading the files etc.

I appreacite your quick responses, since tomorrow is the last day I can return these hard drives or exchange them (in case they are deffective)

 

[Freestone]

Page Fault in Nonpaged Area and IRQL errors are usually a result of bad memory. I suggest trying some memory diagnostics, such as provided by memtest86 (

http://www.memtest86.com/).

 

[khashyar7]

so you suspect something's wrong with one of the RAMs as opposed to the hard drives?

These are usually not hard drive errors?

 

[khashyar7]

ok it looks like you were right about that one, 'cos I took out one of the RAMs and it's not crashing anymore, but now the problem is that with this configuration only one of the Hard Drives is getting recognized by Windows.

Is it perhaps because not both hard drives can be set as "CS ENABLED"???

Lemme know please,

Thanks,

Kash

 

[Freestone]

What model are the hard drives so I can look up the jumper settings.

I'm betting CS is Cable Select, DS is Drive Select (Master) and the lack of either jumpered probably means Slave.

If using Cable Select, they must both be jumpered as such.

 

[Freestone]

http://service.maxtor.com/rightnow/images/maxtor_quantum jumpers.htm

This page confirms my guess. DS will be master, lack of a jumper means Slave, and CS will be Cable Select.

 

[khashyar7]

Oh man ! This is giving me such a hard time !!! I took out the jumpers and tried them one by one, still no luck !!!

now I get:

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Plus, I was using these RAMs with my 80Gb hard drives before too, but never had any issues like these !!!

The Hard drives are Maxtor ! So did you say both should be Cable Select? Both of them are CS now, but only one gets recognized (if it doesn't crash !!!)

 

[khashyar7]

sorry for the oversight, by "jumpers" I meant "RAMs"
in

I took out the jumpers and tried them one by one, still no luck !!!

 

[Freestone]

Have you tried a different IDE cable? How about trying each drive on a separate IDE channel on its own?

I am assuming you are using an 80-Conductor ULTRA ATA cable similar to the one pictured here:

http://www.plextor.com/english/news/images/80cable.jpg

The blue end goes to the motherboard, the black connector will go to the Master drive, the gray to the slave drive. Both drives should be jumpered for CS, or one for DS (Master) and the other with no jumper.

Does BIOS see both drives? If so, does Windows? You should look in Disk Management in order to see if Windows recognizes the second drive. I'm not sure if you are even getting to the point of Windows being installed.

If this doesn't work, jumper one drive for CS or Master and totally remove the other drive. Then, does BIOS see the drive? Will Windows install with only one drive installed?

If all goes well with one drive, remove it, and repeat the process with the other drive.

If it goes well again then it sounds as if the two drives don't want to coexist with each other. If that is the case, then maybe you could try one of your 80GB drives with one of the 300GB and isolate the problem that way.

 

[rvnguy]

khashyar7,

Butting in here,

the drive at the end of your IDE cable; jumper as Master (DS)

the drive attached to the middle IDE cable connector: jumper as slave (no jumper)

Also, insure that the IDE cable long side connector (Farthest from other connectors) is connected to the "Primary" IDE channel on the mobo.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[Freestone]

And do yourself a favor and at least try running memtest86. I know the ram worked before, but at least this would give you a good indication as to the current fitness of the memory.