Ok, I am trying to set up two 1+0 RAID Arrays on my file server. I have made several attempts with different hardware configurations, but so far, nothing has worked. The machine is a 750 PIII on a VIA Chipset (exact type escapes me).
Round 1:
RAID Card 1: Promise Fasttrak 100
RAID Card 2: Promise Fasttrak 66
Result: Windows driver conflicts. I couldn't resolve this for the life of me. I think the main issue is that both of these models rely on different versions of fasttrak.sys and only one can be in the system32 directory. I tried modifying the inf and other driver pointing files of the fasttrack66 and renamed its fasttrak.sys file to fasttrak66.sys, but it didn't work. An email to tech support resulted in a reply that basically said they don't support two versions of their cards in a single machine and my problems were to be expected.
Round 2:
RAID Card 1: Fasttrak 100
RAID Card 2: SLI 680
Result: Bios on whichever card is detected second will lock up. I tried a hundred thousand combinations of PCI slots, # devices connected to each card, etc etc, but could not get the system to boot with both active. That's ok, I thought. I still have one more combination. On to round 3.
Round 3:
RAID Card 1: SLI 680
RAID Card 2: SLI 680
Result: This combination failed faster than either of the others. After the first card was detected and its bios checked the arrays, it locked up my system.
Conclusion:
WTF. Am I the only one who has tried to run two RAID controller cards in a single machine. This has eaten up weeks of my time and I am starting to get really pissed. The only thing I can think of is to buy a new mobo (+cpu & mem) that has an onboard raid controller and then try again with adding any of the second cards. The only thing that worries me is that I really have no idea whether or not I won't run into the same problems as above.
Round 1:
RAID Card 1: Promise Fasttrak 100
RAID Card 2: Promise Fasttrak 66
Result: Windows driver conflicts. I couldn't resolve this for the life of me. I think the main issue is that both of these models rely on different versions of fasttrak.sys and only one can be in the system32 directory. I tried modifying the inf and other driver pointing files of the fasttrack66 and renamed its fasttrak.sys file to fasttrak66.sys, but it didn't work. An email to tech support resulted in a reply that basically said they don't support two versions of their cards in a single machine and my problems were to be expected.
Round 2:
RAID Card 1: Fasttrak 100
RAID Card 2: SLI 680
Result: Bios on whichever card is detected second will lock up. I tried a hundred thousand combinations of PCI slots, # devices connected to each card, etc etc, but could not get the system to boot with both active. That's ok, I thought. I still have one more combination. On to round 3.
Round 3:
RAID Card 1: SLI 680
RAID Card 2: SLI 680
Result: This combination failed faster than either of the others. After the first card was detected and its bios checked the arrays, it locked up my system.
Conclusion:
WTF. Am I the only one who has tried to run two RAID controller cards in a single machine. This has eaten up weeks of my time and I am starting to get really pissed. The only thing I can think of is to buy a new mobo (+cpu & mem) that has an onboard raid controller and then try again with adding any of the second cards. The only thing that worries me is that I really have no idea whether or not I won't run into the same problems as above.
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