GA-7N400 Pro2 Rev2 - Raid Setup

[mplutodh1]

I've had my Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 Rev2 for a while now and a while back purchased pairs of drives to setup a RAID 1 however never got around to it. Now that I have a LITTLE more time on my hands I was considering giving it a go. After reading the manual though I am still a bit leary of what I am doing.

I can't seem to find the utility that is online (SATARAID Manual) , the windows GUI utility mentioned. And I honestly couldn't tell you what version my RAID driver is.

I already have two drives setup and using them on a regular basis, and empty pairs that match up to them just waiting to be mirrored onto.

I've heard horror stories of people erasing everything so I'm a little leary!

Any help, advice, guides, etc would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[mplutodh1]

Anyone?

 

[Stumps]

hmmm I have a system with a GA-7N400 PRO in it, they are very good mobo's...if you are going to use the Silicon Image SIL3112 SATA controller in RAID you will need to set it to RAID in the BIOS(it should be under the intergrated peripherals menu), you will also need to set the Boot seqeunce to SCSI (the order for that should be set to RAID, SCSI)to use the drives as a bootdrive.

Ok when your PC boots up, you will need to press CTRL + S(when prompted) to get to the RAID BIOS unless you are going to use the IDE ITE GIGARAID option then it's CTRL + G.

you will need to set up you RAID options here(it's pretty easy just select Mirrored, Striped or JBOD) ideally the cluster size should be set to 64k or if availible 128k(that ones not present on the older 7N400 PRO).

after that is setup, restart your PC, now if you are going to do a clean install of windows you will need the SATA RAID drivers on a floppy....the latest versions are availible at WWW.GIGABYTE.COM...just make sure you download the bootdisk drivers not the windows drivers.

if you are going to use an exsisting windows you will need to GHOST everything to another drive before seting up a RAID with these boards...the RAID bioses of these board erase all of the drives.

just make sure your Win2k or WinXP is setup to boot from the SATA controller, if not you will need to a reinstall.

 

[mplutodh1]

I've got the utility up and running because I have 2 pairs of drives currently. One pair of SATA running on that controller and another pair of IDE. An install of XP is already running on one of the SATA drives and has been for over a year now. To go back and change stuff right now is really not something I'm looking forward to doing.

I'm looking for more direction on the actual setup of the mirror. Things to watch out for, problems I may run into, etc. The manual and everything I have read is directed for those who are doing a fresh install of XP but I know I can just mirror the drives, theres just no info on that.

Thanks for the info though, appreciate it.