Setting up RAID 0 after the OS has been installed

[kmcferrin]

OK, this is on an Asus K8N mainboard. It has the nForce 3 250 chipset, the usual 2 PATA channels plus 2 SATA ports. It has the nVidia RAID controller on it to support 0,1, and 0+1. At the moment I only have a single PATA drive that I have been using for over a year. Windows XP was installed with the RAID controller disabled in the BIOS and everything works fine.

I want to buy a pair of SATA drives and set them up as RAID 0, then copy/move my current installation from the PATA to the RAID set. I went into the BIOS and enabled the RAID controller, booted into Windows, and when it prompted me for the drivers for the new hardware I pointed it to them. The RAID controller seems to be installed correctly.

At this point it would seem that all I would need to do is attach the SATA drives, set up the RAID set in the BIOS, then use Ghost to clone my current PATA disk to the RAID volume. Is that all I would need to do? I am assuming that since I just installed the drives for the RAID controller that I wouldn't have to mess with the "loading mass storage drivers via a floppy disk" scenario. Any thoughts?

And before anyone asks, I intend to use my PATA disk to store backups of the RAID array, so no worries about catastrophic data loss.

 

[rvnguy]

This is not the standard recommended method of installation.

What you have outlined is plausible with the addition of after you do the cloning you will have to set in bios that the sata raid is the boot drive.

If this is not sucessful you still have the IDE to reset to boot to.

The problem that I could see is that you will have to get the array assigned as "C:" for all your installed apps & registry pointers to be capable of locating everything.

I might add removing the IDE HD after the cloning, booting to bios to set as boot drive. It might remember the drive letter that was set when it was created (in the MBR of the array). You can research resetting drive assignments at the MS site

I was going to suggest using the cmd line diskpart but:

You can use Diskpart to convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk. The basic disk can either be empty or contain either primary partitions or logical drives. The basic disk can be a data disk or system or boot drive. The basic disk cannot have fault-tolerant disk driver (FtDisk) sets such as stripes or mirrors. To convert basic disks that have FtDisk driver sets, use Disk Management on Windows 2000 or convert the disk before you upgrade to Windows XP.

Looks like you might have to do it the recommended way.

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

 

[jurgen36]

Remove your IDE, install the sata raid in the bios and it should give you a sreen for raid setup on boot. Set it up and format the raid system. Then install windows on the raid system using F6 and a floppy for the drivers. Once the install is finished ghost your original installation to the sata drives. Probably windows will make problems as the copy protection kicks in. If thats the case remove the IDE drive and do a repair installation of windows. You should then have your system properly transferred, praying would help as well. Good luck.
Regards

Jurgen

 

[wolluf]

kmcferrin - assuming the ghost from PATA to RAID volume works ok, 2 things:-

1. Disconnect the PATA drive before trying to boot the RAID volume.

2. Despite you adding RAID drivers to the XP installation - it almost certainly won't boot. In that case you will need to do a repair reinstall, and you will need to have the drivers on a floppy and use F6 during that repair reinstall.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341