RAID 0 - let the confusion begin!

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DellAxim

Gawd
Joined
Feb 14, 2003
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So it's already 2010...I've been thinking about setting up a RAID system for at least a decade now...the hard drive has always been the slowest part of my system. FINALLY time to do it, I have two matching 500gb Seagate Momentus SATA drives. My motherboard (crappy GeForce 7050M) supports raid with Nvidia hardware. (Athlon 64 dual core, if that matters)

Anyway, I hooked up both the new drives, turned on RAID in the bios, and then went into the RAID setup utility to stripe the two drives. It seemed to work, it showed a total of just under 1TB.

Then I tried to install XP Pro 64 bit. It will get to the point where it just starts asking you setup questions, before I get the "blue screen of death" saying windows has shut down to avoid damaging my computer or something like that.

This is a copied CD, to which I have a real license, I just can't find the real CD. (that's why I always make several copies of the expensive ones, LOL) I tried installing windows on a single 500gb drive, and it worked 100%. Try the same thing on the striped drives and I can't even agree to the setup terms.

Anybody have any idea why??! Is there some kind of extra RAID driver I need to use with the XP setup?

(PS - I'm using the same computer now with the same OS but my old hard drive, and everything works fine, so I see no other hardware problems)
 
So when the windows install says something like "Press F6 to install 3rd party RAID drivers", that's what I need to do?

Is there anyway I can image a copy of XP from a single drive onto 2 RAID drives?
 
DellAxim said:
So when the windows install says something like "Press F6 to install 3rd party RAID drivers", that's what I need to do?

Is there anyway I can image a copy of XP from a single drive onto 2 RAID drives?
Click to expand...

Possibly, but Windows is finicky about its underlying hardware. I think it's hard to give a definite answer on that one, though I wouldn't say it is so unlikely that it's not worth a shot. Were you unable to get the drivers to work using the F6 method? That's worked for me in the past.
 
if you tried to put the image of a single drive, onto the raid setup, youd still get a BSOD because th eraid drivers arent installed.
F6 during the install process to install the drivers.....
 
If you can put the old single-drive install into the PC with RAID enabled, you may be able to install the necessary drivers into the old install, then copy the drive to the RAID array. Vista and 7 seem to be a little easier about bootup stuff (better SATA support, allowing you to install Mass Storage Drivers from USB, etc.), so this may or may not work well with XP. You could try it, but don't be surprised if you end up needing to do a fresh install.
 
Ok, I found the specific driver I need for XP 64 install. When I press F6 during setup to use the RAID driver, it tells me to put it in the A: drive. The WHAT?! I haven't had one of those in years. I copied the driver to another SATA drive thinking I could use that, but it gives me no option besides the (non existant) A: drive.

Is there no way I can do this with a USB flash card, CF card, USB hard drive, SATA drive, CD...ANYTHING besides a floppy?!


Damnit, I thought this was going to be easy. *sigh*
 
Try this. Looks like it might be what you need.

Or, since you're reinstalling anyway, you could upgrade to Win 7, which likely includes the drivers on the install disk itself without additional headaches. Maybe it's time to upgrade anyway?
 
you need to use nlite to slipstream the raid drivers into your install, or get a floppy.

or get Windows 7 :)
 
I bought a USB floppy drive years ago for dealing with installs on systems with no floppy drive, one £10 drive and all OS setup driver issues sorted.

Or as MrGuvernment said, use nlite to create a custom install CD complete with any drivers you care to add (http://www.nliteos.com/).
 
umm you know that RAID0 isnt going to make your computer faster right?
 
Neme said:
I bought a USB floppy drive years ago for dealing with installs on systems with no floppy drive, one £10 drive and all OS setup driver issues sorted.

Or as MrGuvernment said, use nlite to create a custom install CD complete with any drivers you care to add (http://www.nliteos.com/).
Click to expand...

XP wont let you boot from a USB drive, only floppy.


Raid 0 can make your computer faster, pending on what you do with it, if you like to move larger files around and such but really, your OS isnt suddenyl going to be super duper fast, raid 0 is okay for larger work, but most OS and applications are smaller files that only 2 drive will serve up anyways.
 
nitrobass24 said:
umm you know that RAID0 isnt going to make your computer faster right?
Click to expand...
Oh, so it was invented entirely for fun and headaches? I currently spend a lot of time waiting while my 90/MB/s hard drive makes a bunch of noise. It only stands to reason that is the slow point of my system...and parallel hard drives go faster. I may even go with quad drives after I get this setup crap figured out...
 
MrGuvernment said:
XP wont let you boot from a USB drive, only floppy.
Click to expand...


Ahh, but this is a USB Floppy drive, and it works fine, windows just sees it as a normal FDD :) Perfect for getting OS build drivers on (often for first builds before I have a chance to build a slipstream CD). And saves having a damn floppy drive in all my systems for silly things like installs, some firmware flashes etc.
 
DellAxim said:
nitrobass24 said:
umm you know that RAID0 isnt going to make your computer faster right?
Click to expand...
Oh, so it was invented entirely for fun and headaches? I currently spend a lot of time waiting while my 90/MB/s hard drive makes a bunch of noise. It only stands to reason that is the slow point of my system...and parallel hard drives go faster. I may even go with quad drives after I get this setup crap figured out...
Click to expand...

RAID0 will speed up your transfers of large amounts of data. If you're hitting the upper limit of one drive, adding a second drive in parallel will make things faster. Back in the EQ days, my girl and I had very similar PCs, but mine had RAID0. I consistently loaded zones noticeably faster than she did. For dealing with big chunks of data, it helps.

However, in regular OS-type usage, the major slowdown of HDDs is the latency for finding small random bits of data. This is where SSDs shine due to their near-instant access times, but RAID0 HDDs will do nothing for this problem.

So depending on exactly what aspect of your single HDD is causing system slowness, RAID0 HDDs might be a tremendous boost, or go completely unnoticed.

P.S. Remember to make backups. With RAID0, all of your data is split over two drives. If one drive fails, you lose two drives' worth of data. You're doubling your risk of data loss due to disk failure.
 
Right, so with quad drives in R0, you are asking for big problems. Any one of those 4 fails and you lose them all. The only way I would even attempt it was if you image your drive regularly (daily) and have a place to store the complete image separate from those 4 disks, Otherwise the chance for failure is just too high, especially if you are using motherboard-based RAID, which is more prone to problems than using a true RAID card.
 
Yeah, I definately plan on backing everything up. I have a 1TB USB drive (I may rip off the case and directly connect to sata for speed) that I will keep seperate. I also store a few of my most important files on various other computers....
 
Neme said:
Ahh, but this is a USB Floppy drive, and it works fine, windows just sees it as a normal FDD :) Perfect for getting OS build drivers on (often for first builds before I have a chance to build a slipstream CD). And saves having a damn floppy drive in all my systems for silly things like installs, some firmware flashes etc.
Click to expand...

interesting i would of thought it would of showed as a USB storage device :)
 
Ok, I used nLite to slipstream all my motherboard drivers, and SP2 into XP64. The resulting image was too big for a CD, so I had to use a DVD if that makes any difference. When I try to use it, it says "INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing, status 14. Setup cannot continue."

Now WTF?!


Why does my computer hate me? I just bought it three new hard drives!
 
you added a driver that isnt there or something, dont do mobo drivers ONLY add the raid drivers, that is it.
 
MrGuvernment said:
you added a driver that isnt there or something, dont do mobo drivers ONLY add the raid drivers, that is it.
Click to expand...

What he said, Don't try to be too clever with slipstream CDs, just go for the minimum you need to get running otherwise you usually just end up tripping yourself up somewhere along the build.

I usually just dump on the RAID drivers and maybe a few of the setup options so i can run a semi un-attended install.
 
DellAxim said:
Oh, so it was invented entirely for fun and headaches?
Click to expand...
nope, it was invented so that we could have endless discussions about its benefits in the Disk Storage Systems subforum :D

It does help with "large" linear loads.
 
OK what you wont to do is 4 drives in raid 0+1 this means they are stripped before they are mirrored raid 1+0 (raid 10) is mirror then stripped

this should keep the data safe if a drive was to fail
 
raid 0 is worthless for mech drives.

Just buy a 10k rpm WD raptor. Just by itself it will run faster than your 5400 rpm laptop drives.

Heck, I bet a 1 TB WD Black would be faster.
 
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