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Adding a third HDD to a RAID system???

Thira28

Member
My system:
Abit KG7 RAID
Two 40 GB IBM Deskstar 7200 RPM ATA 100, partitioned to 10 GB "C" & "70 GB "D" drives
Athlon 1.4 GHz processor
650 MB PC2100 RAM
GeForce2 MX 400 64 MB vide0
Creative SoundBlaster Live 5.1 MP3
Advansys UltraWide SCSI card
PlexWriter 12x4x32x SCSI CDRW
Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM
Seagate 8800 Tape Backup
Win98 SE
Linksys LNE 100 Network card

I want to add a 20 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM ATA 100 IDE hard Disk drive to a vacant IDE slot on the motherboard. This drive will be used only as a backup to the RAID drive.
The drive came with MAX-Blast PLUS.
MY questions:
Should I install (ie FDISK & Format) the Maxtor drive using the MAX-BLAST PLUS in Windows?
Should I disconnect the two RAID drives when doing the above?
After installing the maxtor drive, will my system try to boot from the Maxtor drive (i want to boot from the RAID HDD.
What drive letter will the Maxtor HDD be assigned?
Thanks

 
u are fine. here's what to do:

1. unplug the raid card after powering down your comp
2. connect the new hd to whatever ide slot u have open, but make sure it is in MASTER position with no other drives attached.
3. run the special maxtor software to get it formatted to what you want
4. power down and plug in the raid card
5. enter bios setup and make sure the order of booting is either floppy->cd->scsi (or raid card's name)
floppy->scsi
6. the new drive will be detected by windows and put at the end of your other drive letters/parition letters, most likely E: or something
 
Thanks "The Wart"
Another question. I have heard some good and some bad things about the maxtor software. Some say to use FDISK and others say to use the maxtor software. Which do you recommend?
 
never owned a maxtor myself, can't say. if u aren't going to use any of the "special" features of the software (write zeroes, test integrity) then i would say just do fdisk via win98SE startup floppy. however, i would update fdisk (and there is another link somewhere about reporting size correctly in fdisk) so that it reads out correct data, even tho the "old" fdisk would perform the operation successfully, it might not report the drive's full size to you.
 
The Wart:
Just to clarify, I do not have a RAID card. The Abit KG7 motherboard is a RAID motherboard. There are two IDE slots, one of which is empty and I plan to place the Maaxtor here. The second IDE slot has my Pioneer DVD-ROM and the Tape backup as master & slave. Additionally, there are two "special" IDE slots which are used for the RAID, each of which has an IBM HDD as "Cable Select".
 
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