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Old July 25th 04, 10:46 PM
Rich Elgin
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Hi Tim,
I read your post in the ASUS news group and I though it would fix my exact
problem. I have the ASUS P4C800E-D and have a single Maxtor 120GB
running on one SATA port on the ICH5R chipset in IDE mode (RAID OFF) and it
has been running fine. I wanted to switch to RAID ready mode with
this one drive so I can add a second drive to create a RAID 1 configuration.
I used Drive Image 7 to backup the full drive.

I tried the WIN/XP Repair with the F6 option but it failed after it erased
some files and failed stating that it could NOT create a C:\Windows
directory. So I tried to do a Restore of Drive Image still in RAID Bios mode
and Drive Image fails with a strange error (E7C30010 Can't write
2,048 sectors starting at LBA 63). Then I switched back to NO RAID and
restored with Drive Image. Hard drive is back to normal running as
a single SATA non RAID drive.

After searching the WEB and looking at some other Forums I am trying to pin
down what my problem could be. The one thing that I didn't mention
is that my Maxtor 120BG drive is a PATA drive and I am using a PATA to SATA
adapter to use it on the ICH5R chipset. What are your thoughts on
using a PATA to SATA adapter ? Have you heard of anyone else having problems
using SATA adapters in a RAID configuration ?

Before I restored my drive back I tried to do a fresh WIN/XP install and the
install failed after a format of the Primary partition while still in
RAID mode. For whatever reason it seems that Writes fail while in RAID mode
but works fine in Non Raid mode.

Thanks for your time,

Rich

"Tim" wrote in message ...
The procedure I would follow is below.

It uses the supposed ability of the Intel ICH5R raid driver and Intel IAA

to
create a raid volume while windows is running. I suggest you download the
latest Intel Application Accelerator (IAA) from Intel and read the Help

File
before proceding. Check the bios settings section of the mobo manual too.

0. Take a drive image using either ghost, Drive Image or whatever is your
choice. If the online raid mirror create fails, your regression step will

be
to do the process as you would have done anyway - you will manually create

a
RAID 1 config and restore this image onto the new RAID 1 volume. You will
not lose any time doing this as all these steps (except attempting the
online raid 1 create) should / must be done anyway.

1. Check bios verion: is it the most recent stable?
If not, are later versions refered to as pre-requisites for raid

driver
update?
If so then you will have to update bios.

2. Check raid driver at the asus site. If a more recent (IE 3.5 or 3.51
version driver) is there and you are not running it then upgrade - check
readme, notes & required bios comments. Make a raid driver floppy disc -
check it.

3. Upgrade the IAA either from asus or from intel downloads. There is a

new
version 4.1 out which is mainly aimed at the new ICH6R equiped boards but

is
also an update for ICH5R boards. Install that - it is an improvement on

the
older version & actually has some readable documentation now. The older

IAA
install would not let you install if the ICH5R was not configured as raid
(it would complain about EB chip instead of ER chip - all that means is

the
raid controller is either disabled or set as Non Raid in bios). If this
happens, you will need to install IAA after step 5 and before step 6.

4b. shut down, add the new disc drive. Go into bios and configure the bios
Intel RAID as RAID. At this point you will need to have the RAID drivers
installed into XP otherwise it will BSOD - that is next step - do not boot
this config until you are ready to do a repair install. While in the BIOS
set the boot order so CD is first as Repair is next step. Later you will
need to revise your boot order as you will now be booting off a RAID
controller which is sometimes regarded as a SCSI controller.

4c. Perform a windows XP repair. During repair press F6 at the earliest
opportunity and load the intel raid drivers. Leave the floppy with the
drivers on in the drive until the system reboots. If you are not familiar
with Repair installs, then do some research or ask back here. Some believe
Repairs are error prone - but it is only error prone on flakey systems and
for people that don't know how to do one.

5. boot into windows. Ignore raid during boot.

6. fire up IAA and using the online help, create your raid 1 volume and

let
it synchonise. This will take an hour per 100GB or so - perhaps a lot
longer.

7. If this does not work as per IAA documentation, then it will likely

fail
in the first few seconds, so shut down and create the raid 1 manually and
restore the image created in Step 0. onto the raid volume. Follow the XP
repair procedure above so that the raid drivers are installed into Windows
XP.

8. Don't forget to check your boot menu and boot order when doing the XP
Repair and going to RAID boot.


HTH
- Tim



"Mr Mister" wrote in message
...
PS, I also have an A7N8Xe-d that I want to do this with; is the

proceedure
much different?


"Mr Mister" wrote in message
...
I have a current working WinXP installation on a P4P800e Deluxe with

Seagate
160Gb SATA drive, and I want to add another identical drive to create a

RAID
1 mirror. I need to avoid losing data or bootability on my current
drive.
Last time I tried this on a P4P800-d, I lost access and had to

reinstall.

What is the best proceedure to add 2nd SATA drive and create RAID1

while
not
destroying the parent drive?

Thanks.