GA-EP45-DS3R and pair of X25-m G2 in raid 0

[Ronski]

I've got a pair of X25-M G2's on their way which I plan on installing as raid 0 and putting Windows 7 Proffesional on.

I have a couple of questions as I'm a raid noob.

1. Will I still be able to access my data that's currently on my two sata drives, can I just set these in the raid bios so the O/S can still see them. They are currently set in IDE mode I believe (not raid or AHCI)
2. When updating the motherboard bios in the future is there any precautions to take regarding the raid array - don't won't to lose it?

I've just answered question 2 myself - http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/bios...h-guide-27576/ so, really just need an answer for 1 above or any tips really.

[jrazor247]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3R and pair of X25-m G2 in raid 0

I flashed BIOS before from F10 to F11c, a brief beta BIOS, and I believe it created HPA to store backup BIOS when it was not configured to do so before. My drives were striped, and it made my array data inaccessible. Thought just the MBR or loader was overwritten, could not recover. Had to reinstall everything. So DISCONNECT DRIVES when flashing BIOS is something I learned the hard way.

[Ronski]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3R and pair of X25-m G2 in raid 0

Only posting to answer my own question really, as I now have my two X25-m's in Raid 0 with W7 installed tripple boot with Vista and XP, although XP won't work as there's no ICH10 drivers in it.

Here's what I did, after backing up eveything.

I changed a setting in Vista's Registry to enable ICH10 as per post here, this worked a treat and Vista installed the drivers on next reboot after I changed the Sata mode to raid.

Next I installed my two SSD's, set then up as a Raid 0 array.

Now I tried to boot from the W7 CD, but it was going straight to Windows, turns out I needed to press F12 during booting.

Then it was just a case of installing W7 to the new Partition (Raid 0 array), once done I could still boot into Vista, so I can now take my time setting up all my programs in W7, before switching permantly to it.

[KayossZero]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3R and pair of X25-m G2 in raid 0

Only posting to answer my own question really, as I now have my two X25-m's in Raid 0 with W7 installed tripple boot with Vista and XP, although XP won't work as there's no ICH10 drivers in it.

Here's what I did, after backing up eveything.

I changed a setting in Vista's Registry to enable ICH10 as per post here, this worked a treat and Vista installed the drivers on next reboot after I changed the Sata mode to raid.

Next I installed my two SSD's, set then up as a Raid 0 array.

Now I tried to boot from the W7 CD, but it was going straight to Windows, turns out I needed to press F12 during booting.

Then it was just a case of installing W7 to the new Partition (Raid 0 array), once done I could still boot into Vista, so I can now take my time setting up all my programs in W7, before switching permantly to it.

If you want XP to work you can integrate the drivers with Nlite or look for a Distro that has them in it already if that helps.

[Ronski]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3R and pair of X25-m G2 in raid 0

If you want XP to work you can integrate the drivers with Nlite or look for a Distro that has them in it already if that helps.

Thanks, but that would mean reinstalling XP, which I presume will muck up my boot options, which could be setup again, but I'd have to work out how to do that.

I wonder if it's possible to put them in with out re-installing XP? I may not even bother as I only used XP for benching as it was a clean install.

[Ronski]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3R and pair of X25-m G2 in raid 0

I forgot to mention, I flashed the bios to the latest beta, and instantly got the dreaded continuous reboot cycle, removed three sticks of ram and it booted fine, went into the Bios, loaded optimized setting and changed the memory voltage, refitted all the sticks and it's working OK now.

I really hate these constant reboot cylces, but at least I know now to take out 3 sticks of memory when it does it! Which is a bit of a faff as I have to remove the graphics card, so I can remove the memory cooler and then remove the memory

Oh, and here's my Crystal Diskmark results.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-EP45-DS3R and pair of X25-m G2 in raid 0

I flashed BIOS before from F10 to F11c, a brief beta BIOS, and I believe it created HPA to store backup BIOS when it was not configured to do so before. My drives were striped, and it made my array data inaccessible. Thought just the MBR or loader was overwritten, could not recover. Had to reinstall everything. So DISCONNECT DRIVES when flashing BIOS is something I learned the hard way.

This has now been changed, due to this issue, the new default in all new BIOS for this setting is disabled. So from now on you do not need to be scared of this

Thanks, but that would mean reinstalling XP, which I presume will muck up my boot options, which could be setup again, but I'd have to work out how to do that.

I wonder if it's possible to put them in with out re-installing XP? I may not even bother as I only used XP for benching as it was a clean install.

You can simply perform a XP repair install to your installation, and while doing so load the F6 RAID Drivers. This would leave your OS as you have it now, and you would only need to reinstall windows updates.

You would then from inside XP have to use VistabootPro to reinstall the vitsa bootloader though, or use the vista disk and do startup repair which would reinstall the bootloader for you. Or manually do so with the disk and command prompt from the repair screen using "bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd"