Promise RAID pains

[iggythebrush]

Hi, This may be a stupid question - forgive me, I'm a RAID virgin. I have an Elite L7VTA MB, which includes a Promise Fasttrak 100 'Lite' RAID controller. I am running XP SP1, and I want to run a simple mirror system off the RAID. I enable the RAID and install the driver with XP running off my IDE0 master Maxtor 80GB HD. I then get an identical HD, and connect the two as mirrored (RAID-1) drives by connecting them both as masters to the 2 IDE connectors of the RAID controller, rebooting, building a RAID-1 array using the Promise utility. Now XP doesn't boot. I reconnect the first drive as master to the MB IDE0, XP boots (but finds some problems on the drive, which it corrects).
I repeat this ad infinitum, trying every combination of BIOS boot settings, etc. All to no avail. XP will not boot.
I boot from the XP installation CD, install the RAID driver from floppy and use Recovery Console to try and recreate the boot sector on the HDs. Although I get the C:> cursor, I cannot access the drive this way, checkdisk reports one or more unrecoverable errors. I start sweating. I reconnect the original drive as master on MB IDE0. XP boots happily. I give up and get a stiff drink. What am I doing wrong?

 

[Grenage]

Okay, have you done the following (Just to be sure):

1) Disconnect the working drive and place it aside.
2) Connect the two drives to Promise IDE 0 and 1 (As Masters).
3) Boot using the XP CD, pressing F6 at the appropriate time.
4) Install RAID drivers using supplied Promise disk.
5) Install XP.

Does it allow you to install windows this way, or am I just reiterating what you have already done?

 

[iggythebrush]

Hi Grenage,

I haven't reinstalled XP - I have some data and settings on the drive, but they could be backed up if necessary. Will a reinstall work, even if checkdisk reports unrecoverable errors from Recovery Console (with the F6 option and driver installed from floppy)?

 

[Grenage]

Ah I see, you have your original drive, which you want to mirror across to the identicle drive. I don't know why but I read that you had your original drive and 2 new ones.

Disregard what I wrote prveiously then.

If you already have a drive with data on it I do not know if you can mirror that across using RAID, since I have never used Raid Mirroring (I do not see why not though).

What I would do personally is backup the information and settings, delete the array, clear the drives with fdisk, re-create the array and install a fresh XP.