Seagate SATAII 80gb Raid 0 Problem

There is a very good tutorial on how to set up an Array over at DFI-Street.com

I can't seem to get to it now (site may be down) or I would post you a link.

Let me know please, how it turns out as I will be doing the same thing next week

well, i plugged the harddrives in loaded into windows formatted the both of them once with quick and then again with full

that ruled one of the drives being buggered.

i built the array form the SIL3114 raid chipset which is onboard, it seemed to work, last time i tried it was set to 64kb, i changed it to 16kb and it seemed to work, as the array was set up in the hardware wouldn't that be controlling the two devices and making it seem as one??

when i didn't load the 3rd party drivers the two drives showed up as two, when i did load them, they showed up as one being 149gb which is about right for 2 80gbs,

either way i'm up and running with them now don't notice too much of a difference system is a little smoother though, i'm not finished building this machine yet, my ram is unmatched and generic crud, just waiting for the G.Skill 2gb dual channel kit to come

The Sillicon Controller is OK but use the nF4 controller as it is faster for RAID as it lives on the PCIe bus. Plus then you can disable the Sillicon and have one less device interupting the CPU.

You will need to enable nF4 RAID in the BIOS and connect the drives to the appropiate ports. ENter the RAID BIOS and configure the drives for Striping - use 16K stripe for overall best speed.

Save and Exit and make sure that the BIOS reports the array.... on loading the OS use F6 to install the drivers - there are two for the Nf4 both of which must be loaded. Install the OS.

Once the OS is installed and before loading other apps etc.. install nF4 Chipset drivers v6.70 or later - do not install the Firewall SW.

Also make sure the Expert is on 12-07 BIOS version.

EDIT:

Another aspect to check is the Dirves and make sure they are set for SATA I - this may require a jumper setting... you can then sort out the SATA II controller to drive support later.

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ok so i got it all setup using the silicon image controller, it seemed to not work at all on the nvraid, i wanted to use that as they are sata II HDDs and the nvraid is sata II when i did get it installed on the Nvraid, it was freezing and glitching all the time.. could barely even install windows.. as my first post explains... i will try again on the nvraid as it should give better performance

and one of the first things i did was update the bios, i'm on the 12/07 bios at the moment

i only just got all my windows installed..

do you think there is any way i can switch it to the nvraid?? without whiping it all???

all the nvraid drivers are installed..

yeah i tried it, the nforce controller detects it and everything.. but well it just says NTLDR is missing which means it obviously can't read the disc for some strange reason...

i guess i'll just have to keep trying, it does get picked up in the bios, and should i have the drives plugged in in any order??

The nVidia controller on the Expert operates the same as the older nF4. So you need to set in Genie which of the 4 ports are enabled (all should be on by default) and then under the RAID Option enable RAID and then also which ports are available for use.

Reboot and then enter the RAID BIOS to ensure the drives are set for RAID type and stripe - reboot.

Array should be detected.

If the BIOS shows on the Main screen the Drives connected then the RAID in BIOS is not set correctly. Any drive in an array will not appear on the Main MB BIOS screen.

Use the drivers on the supplied disk at the F6 prompt if reinstalling the OS

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yeah i've done all that, as far as i can see everything s set up just fine, except the system won't boot into windows i've definately installed the drivers from the floppy, as i installed the NVraid ones and the SIL3114 one also

i'm really unsure why it's doing this...

Try removing any other PATA or SATA drive that is not to be used as part of the RAID-0 which will have the OS.

Delete the Array and rebuild from new - use 16K stripe esp if using XP Pro SP2 as this will cause you some issues and then install the OS again.

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