Gateway FX7026

M

Maglio

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 15, 2008
Messages
64
ok...so i just bought this computer yesterday, as my old one died. i noticed that there are 2 HDDs in it, but they show as 2 seperate drives in vista. is there a way to put these into raid w/o screwing up the system? would they need to be in raid before i install the OS?

also, if i can put them into raid, 1)how is it done, and 2) would using the restore disks work? or will the restore disk look for 2 drives.

any help/suggestions would be great. i tried googling the issue, but nothing came up that i could find. i tried posting in the general hardware section, but i don't know if i'm going to get anywhere. as the group is gaming and hardware, i'm hoping someone here will be able to help.

thanks,
Maglio
 
The only reason you go with a company like Gateway is for the warranty. You should have built your own pc for cheaper and setup raid on install.
 
actually, i was going to build my own. the only reason i didn't was the fact that my other pc suddenly stopped working and i needed a new one. the gateway was actually about $100 diff from what i was going to build, and it had everything in it that i was planning on buying anyway. thanks anyway.

so now that we have the reasoning for not building my own, does anyone know how to fix my issue other than to tell me to build my own?
 
Maglio said:
ok...so i just bought this computer yesterday, as my old one died. i noticed that there are 2 HDDs in it, but they show as 2 seperate drives in vista. is there a way to put these into raid w/o screwing up the system? would they need to be in raid before i install the OS?

also, if i can put them into raid, 1)how is it done, and 2) would using the restore disks work? or will the restore disk look for 2 drives.

any help/suggestions would be great. i tried googling the issue, but nothing came up that i could find. i tried posting in the general hardware section, but i don't know if i'm going to get anywhere. as the group is gaming and hardware, i'm hoping someone here will be able to help.

thanks,
Maglio
Click to expand...

1) its either done with a hardware raid card, or software emulation. It's best done with identical drives from the same batch.
2) the restore disk might work, but youd first have to get a raid card, or see if your motherboard handles software RAID, and see if the drives are identical. its not recomended to proceed with mismatched drives. then create the raid array from the BIOS, and then boot off the restore disk.

Youre in over your head tho, lurk more.
 
how am i in over my head and lurking? because the first response was not constructive at all and i responded to it? i know people are all about building their own pcs here, but i couldn't wait for that, so i bought one and now i'm looking for some help.

the drives as far as i can tell are matched. i didn't know if they needed to be in specific sata ports or not to enable the raid.
 
The drives must be identical in size, platter speed, cache, etc etc.

You will have to read the motherboard's manual to find out if you need to be plugged into specific ports to enable RAID, you will also have to read the manual to see if RAID is supported, otherwise you will need to purchase a RAID card.
 
You don't ever go RAID with prebuilt computer hd's....unless you are buying 2 completely new harddrives that are identical to do so.

If you don't know this kind of basic information I would advise you to shy away from going RAID.

Why are you so hellbent on doing it anyways? :D

You should also try asking something like this in the Disk Storage section of the forums next time.

I'm not sure why you said you didn't have time to build your own pc. It takes 3-5 days for the parts to ship to your house compared to buying it in the store. A few days you can't go without a computer? If I'm wrong, I'm sorry upfront, but it sounds like you don't know how to build your own computer. Which is fine! Theres nothing wrong with that. It just doesn't sound like you should mess around with RAID in your situation.
 
Looking through the atrocious Gateway user manuals and the sites that list the system, there seem to be zero references to this system supporting RAID out of the box. If you are desperate to do it, you will definitely need an add-in SATA RAID controller card.
 
Maglio said:
ok...so i just bought this computer yesterday, as my old one died. i noticed that there are 2 HDDs in it, but they show as 2 seperate drives in vista. is there a way to put these into raid w/o screwing up the system? would they need to be in raid before i install the OS?

also, if i can put them into raid, 1)how is it done, and 2) would using the restore disks work? or will the restore disk look for 2 drives.

any help/suggestions would be great. i tried googling the issue, but nothing came up that i could find. i tried posting in the general hardware section, but i don't know if i'm going to get anywhere. as the group is gaming and hardware, i'm hoping someone here will be able to help.

thanks,
Maglio
Click to expand...

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Maybe, but a waste of time, money and effort. You are not going to see any performance gain, don't bother.
 
aeonrevolution said:
If you don't know this kind of basic information I would advise you to shy away from going RAID.

Why are you so hellbent on doing it anyways? :D

You should also try asking something like this in the Disk Storage section of the forums next time.
Click to expand...

not really hellbent on doing it. just thought it was supposed to be faster than single drives. just trying to figure out the options. and looking through gateway's info was not that helpful. i looked up the chipset info, and it says the g33 does support it, only if it's already set up. sounds like the manufacturer can choose to turn this feature off. i checked in the bios, and there is an option for raid listed, although i didn't really have time to look to see what it was in reference to.

the disks are identical as far as brand, size and speed go. not sure if they need more than that.

i actually needed it to finish up some work i was doing that needed to be done. that's why i needed it right away. figured it would be a waste to buy something cheap and order a good computer right after that would have all the same parts as the one i got.

i have actually built several computers before, just never anything with raid. i am new to that part, so i figured i'd ask about it here.

thanks for the help guys. from your suggestions, i'll just leave it alone. would've been nice to try, but no big deal.

didn't know where exactly to post this, but i'll keep in mind the disk forums next time.
 
Good idea. I wouldn't suggest it either. But you always have the option of buying a RAID card and two identical HDD's next time if you ever became hellbent on doing it.
 
Mr. Stryker said:
Good idea. I wouldn't suggest it either. But you always have the option of buying a RAID card and two identical HDD's next time if you ever became hellbent on doing it.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Most big box computers (Gateway/dell/hp/etc) wont support RAID stock, you will usually have to buy a card as the mobo wont support RAID, plus matching harddrives, and at this point you might be interested in beefing up the PSU, as OEM psus are usually crappy and underpowered.

This is why we prefer to build our own systems rather than ordering. Can get specifically what one wants.
 
ok...i'm actually an idiot. even though there is no documentation in the gateway ref books, and i couldn't find it online, but i can run it in raid. going through my start menu, i found an intel matrix storage program. all i would have to do is click a button to make it either raid0, or raid1. i don't really need a back up (as i already have a 500gb external), so i wouldn't run in raid1.

since this is all it takes, i think i might give it a shot. i have nothing important on the drive at this point yet, so i should be ok if it goes fubar.

thanks for the help from everyone though.
 
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