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SATA RAID Question

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BulletHole24

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 22, 2005
Messages
109
OK, so I had on SATA device running in my computer with Windows XP running on it. I just bought another one and have it installed. Now comes the tricky part, adding it to my system to make it usable. Is there anyway I can partition this hard drive and add it to my RAID without having to wipe everything off the first hard drive?

Other Info:
My MOBO has 4 SATA ports. 2 are RAID and 2 are just regular SATA. When I built this machine, the SATA ports worked but Windows XP wasn't picking up my hard drive even when I had the correct drivers. So then I tried plugging the drive into the RAID port and it worked. Windows installed and now 3 months later, everything is still working fine.

What should I do?
 
BulletHole24 said:
Is there anyway I can partition this hard drive and add it to my RAID without having to wipe everything off the first hard drive?
Click to expand...
Nope. Sorry. You'll have to backup and reformat, then restore from backups.

You may not want to make them into a raid array at all, since losing either of the 2 drives will lose all of your data, and the chances of losing data go up. You can mount the new drive as a folder with NTFS (eg, keep all your movies on it or whatever) or just use it as another seperate drive. That's my suggestion.
 
you're right. i dont want it as RAID, but it seems that's the only way windows will actually pick my drives up.
 
What motherboard is this on? Make sure the non-RAID controller is enabled in the BIOS & you're using the correct / up-to-date drivers.

Failing that, Syba PCI SATA cards are pretty cheap.
 
yeah, i was using the correct up-to-date drivers. i got them straight off the Promise website. when i have some free time, i'll back up everything i need and reformat and i'll try to do everything with the SATA drivers (nonraid). i know they're working because when i boot up my computer, they show up in the booting stages, but windows just wont pick them up.
 
Showing up in the boot sequence but invisible to Windows Setup, you need to give it a driver disk when it asks for one at the beginning of setup.

If you're trying to add it to an existing Windows install, go into Disk Management (Control Panel, Admin Tools, Computer Management) and initialize the disk and so forth.
 
i went through all that. i had the drivers on disk and everything (pressed F6 when windows began to setup). it still wouldnt find the HD when i had it plugged into the non RAID port.
 
BulletHole24 said:
yeah, i was using the correct up-to-date drivers. i got them straight off the Promise website. when i have some free time, i'll back up everything i need and reformat and i'll try to do everything with the SATA drivers (nonraid). i know they're working because when i boot up my computer, they show up in the booting stages, but windows just wont pick them up.
Click to expand...

Odds are that you're not using the correct drivers if you got them off the Promise site...
For an intergrated controller. Get the drivers from the motherboard manufacturer site.
Motherboard manufacturers have a tendency to mess with the reference drivers from the chipset makers... Turning them into their own so to speak.
Now when you install windows the first thing you do is hit F6. As soon as you see a blue screen. This tells setup that you need to install aftermarket drive controller drivers. Install both the RAID and the non-RAID drivers here, from the floppy that you made of them. Yes you'll have to do it twice.

Make sure that your BIOS is setup correctly... My abit IC7-MAX3 would link the onchip sata raid ports with the onchip IDE ports. and it also had a second raid controller. It was a bitch to get setup correctly in the BIOS.

Good luck!


 
i tried getting them off of ASUS, but at the time, their driver support was down. yeah, somone told me i'd have to disable RAID in my BIOS

EDIT: actually now that i revisist ASUS and look at the page with all the drivers/utilities/manuals, i realize that i DID get the drivers from ASUS.
 
BulletHole24 said:
i tried getting them off of ASUS, but at the time, their driver support was down. yeah, somone told me i'd have to disable RAID in my BIOS

EDIT: actually now that i revisist ASUS and look at the page with all the drivers/utilities/manuals, i realize that i DID get the drivers from ASUS.
Click to expand...

Well... that's one variable eliminated. :D

Just a million more to go! :eek:


 
A quick look at your motherboard's specs shows that 2 of the SATA ports are Promise, and 2 are VIA...?
 
i dont think you realize how utterly stupid you just made me feel. the RAID ports are promise, the non RAID are VIA. I was trying to install Promise for both of them :( :( :(
 
BulletHole24 said:
i dont think you realize how utterly stupid you just made me feel. the RAID ports are promise, the non RAID are VIA. I was trying to install Promise for both of them :( :( :(
Click to expand...

QFT...

We've all been there done that ...got the Tshirt. :D

 
well. i have everything i need backed up. i have the Promise RAID drivers on one disk. the Promise SATA drivers on another. and the VIA drivers on the other. im ready to wipe clean and get on with the show. wish me luck.
 
now i dont think you realize how much i want to drive a nail through my head. i built this rig back in february and trying to figure out why Windows wouldnt pickup my drives in non RAID drove me nuts. 3 months later i find out i could have saved the hassle of reformatting if I just noticed the fact that my nonRAID ports were VIA and not Promise. I just installed windows no problems at all with the VIA drivers with my HDDs plugged into the nonRAID ports

where's my hammer... :D :D

EDIT: ok so now that I have windows installed on drive C, how do i get the other hard drive working on this thing?

EDIT 2: Nevermind, I finally got it working and I finally have two fully functional/operating hard drives that aren't in a RAID setup. WOOHOO!!!!
 
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