I've used my current rig for 3 years (including the raid 0 setup). I've upgraded the cpu, video and ram over time. But I've always had a rock solid rig. Jan 08 I overclocked my Opteron 175 for the first time. It's been rock stable since then. But I recently had a problem with my USB ports locking up my pc (problem listed in a seperate post in this forum - was a driver issue).
While trouble shooting the USB problem I 1) updated the bios to the 301, 2) installed Win XP on a single hard drive (my backup hd) to verify that it was a driver issue. The fresh install of Win XP work flawlessly - I was able to transfer about 100Gb of data back an forth across the USB ports for a few hours without a lock up.
So, I went to re-install Win XP back on my raid set up.
I did the following:
1) Entered the Bios and changed cpu and ram timings to default.
2) Verified RAID was selected in the bios, and that the correct SATA ports were enabled for RAID.
3) Unplugged the backup 640Gb hard drive.
4) Verified that my raid was still working via the Raid utility during boot.
This is where I started to run into problems.
1) I had downloaded the nvRaid driver from here, I extracted these files to a floppy (automatic extraction, format and file transfer from the file utility). When prompted for a raid driver in Win XP setup, I hit the F6 key, inserted the disc and Win XP setup told me that the floppy had an unrecognized format (what the ????).
2) After much trouble I was able to get one of the regulars over at the OverclockersClub Forums to email an extraction of the nvRaid drivers from the latest nVidia nForce drivers download. Used a work pc to format a floppy and transfer the files. Win XP accepted these drivers when I hit F6.
3) So in the Win XP setup I repartioned my RAID setup, formatted my RAID setup, selected the RAID for Win XP installation.
4) Win XP installs all the way up to the First Load (after all the files are transferred for setup, then reboots, then Win XP setups up on the hard drive by installing all the file, you select your time zone and all that, then it reboots to load Win XP for the first time - there, the Win XP First Load). Right before Win XP kicks in, BOOM! Blue screen and the pc reboots before I can read a **** word.
5) The PC will reboot then hit the blue screen in an infinite loop.
So what did I do wrong? And what's wrong with the DFI nvRaid drivers? Could the latest nvRaid drivers be conflicting with Win XP since at that point it would have been able to update?
Because I couldn't install Win XP on my raid, I ended up just installing it on one of the 80Gb hard drives. Compared to the RAID system I WAS running, Windows now loads a bit slower, and games take a little bit longer to load. Overall the system seems a bit sluggish. If I can't figure this out, I'm going to buy a MSI Neo3-F mobo, E7200 and 2Gb of DDR2 memory from my local Fry's and be done with this headache.
While trouble shooting the USB problem I 1) updated the bios to the 301, 2) installed Win XP on a single hard drive (my backup hd) to verify that it was a driver issue. The fresh install of Win XP work flawlessly - I was able to transfer about 100Gb of data back an forth across the USB ports for a few hours without a lock up.
So, I went to re-install Win XP back on my raid set up.
I did the following:
1) Entered the Bios and changed cpu and ram timings to default.
2) Verified RAID was selected in the bios, and that the correct SATA ports were enabled for RAID.
3) Unplugged the backup 640Gb hard drive.
4) Verified that my raid was still working via the Raid utility during boot.
This is where I started to run into problems.
1) I had downloaded the nvRaid driver from here, I extracted these files to a floppy (automatic extraction, format and file transfer from the file utility). When prompted for a raid driver in Win XP setup, I hit the F6 key, inserted the disc and Win XP setup told me that the floppy had an unrecognized format (what the ????).
2) After much trouble I was able to get one of the regulars over at the OverclockersClub Forums to email an extraction of the nvRaid drivers from the latest nVidia nForce drivers download. Used a work pc to format a floppy and transfer the files. Win XP accepted these drivers when I hit F6.
3) So in the Win XP setup I repartioned my RAID setup, formatted my RAID setup, selected the RAID for Win XP installation.
4) Win XP installs all the way up to the First Load (after all the files are transferred for setup, then reboots, then Win XP setups up on the hard drive by installing all the file, you select your time zone and all that, then it reboots to load Win XP for the first time - there, the Win XP First Load). Right before Win XP kicks in, BOOM! Blue screen and the pc reboots before I can read a **** word.
5) The PC will reboot then hit the blue screen in an infinite loop.
So what did I do wrong? And what's wrong with the DFI nvRaid drivers? Could the latest nvRaid drivers be conflicting with Win XP since at that point it would have been able to update?
Because I couldn't install Win XP on my raid, I ended up just installing it on one of the 80Gb hard drives. Compared to the RAID system I WAS running, Windows now loads a bit slower, and games take a little bit longer to load. Overall the system seems a bit sluggish. If I can't figure this out, I'm going to buy a MSI Neo3-F mobo, E7200 and 2Gb of DDR2 memory from my local Fry's and be done with this headache.
