Single Hard Drive Raid Setup Question

Hello Group,

I just ordered a brand spanking new AMD Socket 939 rig and am
currently awaiting its arrival. I decided to forgo using RAID 0
because I have concerns about one disk biting the dust and causing me
more misery than I could ever possibly want.

Now, on to my question, how on earth should I set up my Western
Digital Raptor Hard Drive on the SATA Raid controller, being it will
be the sole drive on that controller?

Following are the specs of my "in transit" system:

Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-K8NSNXP-939 NF3 250
CPU - AMD 64 3500+ ATHLON 64 939 RT
Hard drive 1 - 74GB WD 10,000RPM 8MB WD740GD (for the OS; I haven't
the slightest clue how to configure one hard drive on the raid
controller, hence the purpose of this post)
Hard drive 2 - 200GB WD 7200 WD2000JD 8MB (for backup and storage and
I plan to put this drive on the Silicon Image Controller - set this up
in BASE mode?????)
Memory - CORSAIR 1GB PC3200XLPRO
CASE - COOLERMASTER WAVE MASTER
POWER - ENERMAX 470W EG475AX-VE-SFMA
VIDEO CARD - GAINWARD GEFORCE FX5900XT GS 1100 128M
DVDROM - LITE ON 16X SOHD-167T BLACK
DVDRW - LITEON SOHW-812S BLACK
FLOPPY/CARD READER - MITSUMI FA404A/404M
Sound - SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 ZS PLTM

Lastly, this new machine better outperform my 2.5 year old AMD Athlon
XP 2000+ on a Gigabyte GA 7DX+ motherboard with one gig of Corsair
memory otherwise my wife will kill me for "needing" a new computer.

Thanks for any assistance provided.
Chris

On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 11:59:43 -0500, Chris
wrote:

Hello Group,

I just ordered a brand spanking new AMD Socket 939 rig and am
currently awaiting its arrival. I decided to forgo using RAID 0
because I have concerns about one disk biting the dust and causing me
more misery than I could ever possibly want.

Now, on to my question, how on earth should I set up my Western
Digital Raptor Hard Drive on the SATA Raid controller, being it will
be the sole drive on that controller?

Following are the specs of my "in transit" system:

Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-K8NSNXP-939 NF3 250
CPU - AMD 64 3500+ ATHLON 64 939 RT
Hard drive 1 - 74GB WD 10,000RPM 8MB WD740GD (for the OS; I haven't
the slightest clue how to configure one hard drive on the raid
controller, hence the purpose of this post)
Hard drive 2 - 200GB WD 7200 WD2000JD 8MB (for backup and storage and
I plan to put this drive on the Silicon Image Controller - set this up
in BASE mode?????)
Memory - CORSAIR 1GB PC3200XLPRO
CASE - COOLERMASTER WAVE MASTER
POWER - ENERMAX 470W EG475AX-VE-SFMA
VIDEO CARD - GAINWARD GEFORCE FX5900XT GS 1100 128M
DVDROM - LITE ON 16X SOHD-167T BLACK
DVDRW - LITEON SOHW-812S BLACK
FLOPPY/CARD READER - MITSUMI FA404A/404M
Sound - SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 ZS PLTM

Lastly, this new machine better outperform my 2.5 year old AMD Athlon
XP 2000+ on a Gigabyte GA 7DX+ motherboard with one gig of Corsair
memory otherwise my wife will kill me for "needing" a new computer.

Thanks for any assistance provided.
Chris

Doh, I hate to follow up on my own post, but, I believe I am going to
just use the Silicon Image SATA Controller and not even bother with
the Nvidia RAID controller. I am guessing all using both SATA
controllers would do is add more time to the boot process for the BIOS
to detect each controller, then detect the drives on each controller,
and so on.

Aside note: I managed to come up with the dumbest question after
staying up all night agonizing over which components to purchase

Pardon my stupid question,
Chris

You are correct...you will use the BASE driver vs. the RAID. The drivers
are on the installation CD (unless Gigabyte has changed the way they do
things), and you will have to extract them to a floppy.

Don't install the ATA drive until you get the SATA up and running and the OS
installed, otherwise you're likely to have the Windows copy the setup files
to the ATA drive....don't know why.

If it's not too late, I would consider changing the RAM to PC3500. The GA
board has a "Performance" option in the BIOS that slightly overclocks the
system (takes mine from 200 MHz to 208, resulting in a memory speed of 416
MHz). The AMD64 system is pretty demanding of memory, and the Kingston
HyperX PC3200 I originally installed didn't do the trick (even at 200 MHz).
Mushkin Level 1 PC3500 fixed the problem (constant crashes to the desktop,
or system rebooting).

Good Luck,
Fitz

On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 01:46:59 -0800, "Fitz"
wrote:

Don't install the ATA drive until you get the SATA up and running and the OS
installed, otherwise you're likely to have the Windows copy the setup files
to the ATA drive....don't know why.

I was planning on playing it safe and starting the OS install with
only one hard drive on the SATA controller, then adding the other
drives and peripherals after Windows is fully installed. My pet peeve
is having Win XP show up on Drive F, with the exception of a
multi-boot system.

If it's not too late, I would consider changing the RAM to PC3500. The GA
board has a "Performance" option in the BIOS that slightly overclocks the
system (takes mine from 200 MHz to 208, resulting in a memory speed of 416
MHz).

Crappers, it is too late to do a change order at this time. Looks
like I am stuck with seeing if the Corsair 3200 will work or not. If
not, I will RMA it and go for my initial gut reaction - some OCZ PC
4200 Memory (or I will possibly try some Mushkin PC3500 as you
suggested).

Then again, if I encounter stability problems, I may dink around with
the timings on the Corsair Memory to see if that solves the problem.
If not, I will RMA, eat the restocking fee, and try another brand.

Good Luck,

Thanks for the advice

Very easily, make sure your bios boots to a cd-rom and put in a bootable cd
in the drive. When it first boots up it will say to hit F6 to install raid
drivers. Copy your raid drivers onto a floppy and when prompted by setup,
put the floopy into the drive and everything else is the same as usual. PS:
make sure your raid controler is enabled in your bios.



Juhan Leemet wrote:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 11:59:43 -0500, Chris wrote:
I just ordered a brand spanking new AMD Socket 939 rig and am
currently awaiting its arrival. I decided to forgo using RAID 0
because I have concerns about one disk biting the dust and causing me
more misery than I could ever possibly want.

Yes, RAID0 (striping) is designed for speed, but doubles your
probability of loss of data (2 disks, lose either one).

You could consider creating some equal sized partitions on your 2
disks and using RAID1 (mirroring). That could give you some speed
advantage on reading, and would give you redundancy for those
partitions.

Now, on to my question, how on earth should I set up my Western
Digital Raptor Hard Drive on the SATA Raid controller, being it will
be the sole drive on that controller?

Can't help you there. Haven't used that controller. Some other(s) will
have to step up to advise on configurations of that hardware.

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004 12:41:16 GMT, "JL" wrote:

Very easily, make sure your bios boots to a cd-rom and put in a bootable cd
in the drive. When it first boots up it will say to hit F6 to install raid
drivers. Copy your raid drivers onto a floppy and when prompted by setup,
put the floopy into the drive and everything else is the same as usual. PS:
make sure your raid controler is enabled in your bios.

So in other words, it is no different than the way I would install
Windows 2000 or XP on a Promise Ultra 100 TX ATA controller card
(which I currently have in my system). Very cool, now I am awaiting
the arrival of my new toy.

For some reason, having one hard drive on a RAID controller threw me
for a loop. I blame that on lack of sleep and I vow never to stay up
from 9:00 PM to 3:00 AM deciding on what computer parts to order (and
might I add changing my mind every time I got ready to hit the check
out button)!

I would like to take this moment to thank you and everyone else who
replied.

Thanks,
Chris

"Chris" == Chris writes:

Chris For some reason, having one hard drive on a RAID controller
Chris threw me for a loop. I blame that on lack of sleep and I vow
Chris never to stay up from 9:00 PM to 3:00 AM deciding on what
Chris computer parts to order (and might I add changing my mind
Chris every time I got ready to hit the check out button)!

Gee - I thought I was the only one that did that!

;-))

Alan

"Chris" wrote
I vow never to stay up
from 9:00 PM to 3:00 AM deciding on what computer parts to order

What! You'd give up the stuff of life? :-)

--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

Juhan Leemet wrote:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 11:59:43 -0500, Chris wrote:

I decided to forgo using RAID 0
because I have concerns about one disk biting the dust and causing me
more misery than I could ever possibly want.



I feel the same way about the fact that if one drive goes down you lose
everything.

Assuming drives wear out from use, I started thinking that the drives
should last twice as long

since they only work half as hard. Has anyone here ever had a raid 0
configured drive bite the dust and lose everything?

"BF" wrote in message
...
Juhan Leemet wrote:
On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 11:59:43 -0500, Chris wrote:

I decided to forgo using RAID 0
because I have concerns about one disk biting the dust and causing me
more misery than I could ever possibly want.



I feel the same way about the fact that if one drive goes down you lose
everything.

Assuming drives wear out from use, I started thinking that the drives
should last twice as long

since they only work half as hard. Has anyone here ever had a raid 0
configured drive bite the dust and lose everything?


Just back up the contents of the drive to another. The price of hard drives
is dirt cheap to do this.. why not ??