Raiding 2 Sata drives

[Spongebob]

I have 2 Maxtor 160 GB Sata drives for my new system that I'll be putting together next week when the rest of my parts come.
I have this mainboard.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-503&depa=0

I've never used raid or Sata before so some pointers would help. Do I need to set jumpers on a Sata drive? Is the raid controller going to work on the mainboard or do I need to somehow install a driver for it first? I'm only planning on using these two drives for now, maybe later on I'll get another IDE or Raid drive for extra storage, will that work?

[Yawgm0th]

Re: Raiding 2 Sata drives

You'll need SATA drivers on a floppy, which can generally be made from a program on the drivers CD of the motherboard or by manually copying the drivers, assuming you're trying to install Windows on a SATA drive (which you are, in this case). Otherwise, you'd just need the drivers for the SATA controller off of the CD or from the manufacturer's web site.

BTW, there's no such thing as a "RAID drive." Try reading up on RAID at www.acnc.com

[Spongebob]

Re: Raiding 2 Sata drives

How about the jumpers? How should I set this up? Also, I have an exta IDE drive l can use for storage. Will that affect speed on my raid setup on the 2 Sata drives?

[Doomboy]

Re: Raiding 2 Sata drives

As far as i know, if you are creating a Raid 0 Array, you are at twice the risk of disk failure. (Backup more regularly if there is information you dont want to lose).

As far as jumpers, well, there is no master or slave settings since its Serial ATA and not Parallel.

both drives must be exatly the same size
(Check)

No partitions, created it a regular new partition.

And you should be set.

oh, Becarefull with the power connector
(only 1 should be used per drive)

Hope this helps.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: Raiding 2 Sata drives

How about the jumpers? How should I set this up? Also, I have an exta IDE drive l can use for storage. Will that affect speed on my raid setup on the 2 Sata drives?

Are you actually using a RAID 0 or 1 setup? Just because it's a SATA/RAID controller doesn't mean any RAID is involved. It's probably preferable to stick with single drive configurations.

As for the IDE drive, it will not effect the speed of a RAID array it's not in or any SATA drive.

[Spongebob]

Re: Raiding 2 Sata drives

Thanks Doomboy you answered some questions of mine. Strange that these drives have a jumper though. Also on the mainboard I have 2 master sata plugins and 2 slave plugins. Do I use both masters then?

Yawgm0th, I'm definitly planning on going with raid 0. I want speed not the backup ability of raid 1. I kinda figured the IDE drive would be O.K., can't wait to get my last part tomorrow or the next day so I can put this baby together. Got a feeling raiding the 2 drives will give me a challenge since I want the O.S. on them.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: Raiding 2 Sata drives

Just get the proper drivers on a floppy and there's no challenge. There will probably be an executable file somewhere on the CD (probably in the same directory as the SATA controller's drivers) that will make the disk for you.

[Spongebob]

Re: Raiding 2 Sata drives

Just get the proper drivers on a floppy and there's no challenge. There will probably be an executable file somewhere on the CD (probably in the same directory as the SATA controller's drivers) that will make the disk for you.

I slipstreamed the newest raid controller drivers for the mainboard onto a copy of Windows XP along with service pack#2, so I'm hoping this baby will do the whole works but maybe I'll still need a seperate driver disk for the sata\raid???. I'm just waiting on the ATX 12v v2.0 PSU to come via UPS\pony express, then I can start with the software stuff. Hopefully tomorrow will be the day (fingures crossed).

[Spongebob]

Re: Raiding 2 Sata drives

Raiding the drives was fairly simple after I found the correct Raid drivers (Bad information in manual for this and ASUS tech support doesn't call back:()... Anyway, thanks to a Google search on a missing file (iastor.sys) with my initial attempt, I was able to find the correct file and slipsteam everything onto a Windows XP disc along with all the WinXP updates for a flawless OS install on my 2 new raided harddrives. I'll post a pic of the new P.C. and some 3D mark scores when I find time. Thanks for the help everyone:)!



P.S. Got pics of the new PC..
It's really smooth! Got all this stuff for the same amount I sold my P4 2.4 GHZ system with an ATI Radeon 9500 pro video card, 160 GB IDE harddrive, 512 MB system Ram and a Biostar Mainboard.

The new system has the ASUS Mainboard I mentioned earlier
ATI Radeon x700 pro Graphics card
1 Gb dual Channel system Ram (modded with blue led lights)
a pair of 160 GB maxtor Sata harddrives Raided together
1 IDE Seagate 120 GB harddrive
The case
500 watt ATX 12V v2.0 PSU
Liteon 16X DVD Burner
Keyboard and mouse

[Spongebob]

Re: Raiding 2 Sata drives

Heres one more pic in the dark.

I can't wait to put the system to the test but I still have about 200 Gb of video games to install on it first.

[Amd_Lover2004]

Re: Raiding 2 Sata drives

I want a keyboard like that one...
And 200GB's of games!!!