Raid0

588 Views 15 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Old Hippie, Dec 3, 2009

NsRhea

Discussion Starter · Dec 3, 2009

I've read many posts on these forums about setting up a raid0, but I still seem to have trouble. I read Crash's beginners guide but when he states "go to your raid / flash" I get lost. I just purchased 2 750gig wd sata drives and this is my first raid setup attempt.

I have 1 drive on my A0 sata port and one on my A1 port. Both ports are raid enabled currently but I'm lost from there. When I reboot and enter my AWDFLASH a message box pops up saying

"File Name to Program: BCD_
BIOS Image File Check Sum Error

!! You Can't Update this Image File!!"

Jumpers are all currently off of the drives as stated by crash at the beginning of his post.

Anyway, please help if possible!

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IdPlease

· #2 · Dec 3, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by NsRhea

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I've read many posts on these forums about setting up a raid0, but I still seem to have trouble. I read Crash's beginners guide but when he states "go to your raid / flash" I get lost. I just purchased 2 750gig wd sata drives and this is my first raid setup attempt.

I have 1 drive on my A0 sata port and one on my A1 port. Both ports are raid enabled currently but I'm lost from there. When I reboot and enter my AWDFLASH a message box pops up saying

"File Name to Program: BCD_
BIOS Image File Check Sum Error

!! You Can't Update this Image File!!"

Jumpers are all currently off of the drives as stated by crash at the beginning of his post.

Anyway, please help if possible!

You don't want to be flashing your BIOS to make RAID work.

Once you enable RAID in your BIOS, and reboot, after the BIOS screen, you should be presented with a secong screen. This displays information about your drives. From here you can press a key combination (normally CTRL+I) to enter the RAID BIOS screen.

From here you create your RAID using the two drives, set up the amount you wish to use. Save and exit, then install windows as normal.

If your using an os less than Vista, you will need to press F6 to load the RAID drivers from disk.

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dralb

· #3 · Dec 3, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by IdPlease

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You don't want to be flashing your BIOS to make RAID work.

Once you enable RAID in your BIOS, and reboot, after the BIOS screen, you should be presented with a secong screen. This displays information about your drives. From here you can press a key combination (normally CTRL+I) to enter the RAID BIOS screen.

From here you create your RAID using the two drives, set up the amount you wish to use. Save and exit, then install windows as normal.

If your using an os less than Vista, you will need to press F6 to load the RAID drivers from disk.

This. RAID is easy. Just enable in BIOS, hit the correct prompt at the correct time to enter the RAID menu to create the array or your choice. When you reboot, the PC will see the drives as one drive. Partition as deired and install.

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NsRhea

Discussion Starter · #4 · Dec 3, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by IdPlease

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You don't want to be flashing your BIOS to make RAID work.

Once you enable RAID in your BIOS, and reboot, after the BIOS screen, you should be presented with a secong screen. This displays information about your drives. From here you can press a key combination (normally CTRL+I) to enter the RAID BIOS screen.

From here you create your RAID using the two drives, set up the amount you wish to use. Save and exit, then install windows as normal.

If your using an os less than Vista, you will need to press F6 to load the RAID drivers from disk.

See after I enable raid in my BIOS and reboot, it goes through my normal bios loadout and then sits at the "press any key to boot from disk" option. It won't do anything until I enter a command or restart. And the OS i'll be using is W7. I'll try ctrl + I quick here.

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NsRhea

Discussion Starter · #5 · Dec 3, 2009

ok so I have my main BIOS screen disabled, the first screen to pop up is the HDD info. The only key commands listed are "Delete to enter BIOS, ESC to enter boot menu, and Alt+F2 to enter AWDFLASH." I have the manual next to me and it literally has 2 sentences of info on RAID. It just tells me to enable it in the BIOS, which I've done already.

dralb

· #6 · Dec 3, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by NsRhea

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See after I enable raid in my BIOS and reboot, it goes through my normal bios loadout and then sits at the "press any key to boot from disk" option. It won't do anything until I enter a command or restart. And the OS i'll be using is W7. I'll try ctrl + I quick here.

Have you set the SATA moce to RAID? I forget which section of the BIOS it is under. Once you set that, you will get a screen clearly prompting you to enter the RAID config menu. This is before boot to CD etc.

edit: Your prompt to get into the RAID set-up during boot is probably not ctrl+I. that is the prompt for Intel ICHxR controllers. Yours will be different, but still should be aparent.

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NsRhea

Discussion Starter · #7 · Dec 3, 2009

uhh, I don't think so. I'll run down through all my BIOS options quick.

NsRhea

Discussion Starter · #8 · Dec 3, 2009

The only other mention of any sata in my bios is the sata controller, which is set to "all enabled."

dralb

· #9 · Dec 3, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by NsRhea

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uhh, I don't think so. I'll run down through all my BIOS options quick.

Under integrated peripherals?

It may be shown as RAID or IDE function. You should see options for AHCI and RAID iirc. I have never used anything besides Intel controllers for RAID, but its there somewhere.

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IdPlease

· #10 · Dec 3, 2009

Yep, you'll need to enable RAID in the SATA section, Might be IDE by default, you can cycle through ACHI and RAID. Once done, reboot then you will see the drive RAID BIOS page.

Just follow the onscreen prompt / instructions once inside the RAID BIOS.

When you have set up your RAID, you must enter your main BIOS again and set the newly created RAID as second boot device.

NsRhea

Discussion Starter · #11 · Dec 3, 2009

ok I found the IDE function setup (sorry if I'm slow at this, I'm still quite new). What exactly am I changing here?

Onchip IDE CHannel0 [enabled]
Primary Master PI0 [auto]
Primary Slave PI0 [auto]
Primary Master UDMA [auto]
Primary Slave UDMA [auto]
IDE DMA transfer access [enabled]
Serial-ATA Controller [All enabled]
IDE Prefetch Mode [enabled]

NsRhea

Discussion Starter · #12 · Dec 3, 2009

ok... so when my first screen would show up giving hdd info, it stated my drives were in A0 and A1, when in fact they were in B0 and B1, I'm now at the raid setup screen!

NsRhea

Discussion Starter · #13 · Dec 3, 2009

I only used about 200gigs of my last system (500 gig total) what's an optimal strip size? (Comp used mainly for gaming)

NsRhea

Discussion Starter · #14 · Dec 3, 2009

Nvm, I set it to 64k, not to large, and now I'm fully understanding how raid0 works. Thanks everyone for your patience and for your help!

dralb

· #15 · Dec 3, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by NsRhea

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Nvm, I set it to 64k, not to large, and now I'm fully understanding how raid0 works. Thanks everyone for your patience and for your help!

64K is the stripe size, not the array size. The array will be the size of both hdd's together. (so, 2x 250 gb hdd's would create one 500gb RAID0 array)

edit: As far as what stripe size is optimal, I am not sure what works best for gaming.

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Old Hippie

· #16 · Dec 3, 2009

Quote:

and now i'm fully understanding how raid0 works.

I'm sure you do.

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