My RAID 0 setup isnt working

Executor

Senior member
Aug 7, 2001
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What are the requirements for RAID0? I have a Iwill SIDE RAID100 card with 2x WD600BB HDDs. My first (partion is a primary partition) and my second is a logical partition. Neither seem to be using my raid setup. My Raid card BIOS recognizes my drives and all. I am pretty sure I have my settings right, but I guess I could be missing something. I am running Win XP btw. Thanks for any help.
 

thomsbrain

Lifer
Dec 4, 2001
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You have to create a RAID array from within the BIOS of your controller card. The card then tells the computer it only has one (big) drive. Windows will format the whole array as one drive, as one giant partition (unless you want smaller ones, too). You cannot save any data on the drives when you do this: i.e. creating the array will wipe the drives and require them to be formated.

Edit: PS -- if you just connect the drives to the controller and don't create the array in the BIOS, the card will simply function as a normal ATA controller card (no RAID). That's why your "RAID" isn't working. You didn't tell it use RAID. If Windows sees two drives (or even lets you format two drives), then you do not have a RAID array setup.
 

RanDum72

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2001
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First step is to go into the IWILL controller BIOS and create the RAID 0 stripping drive (the instructions within the BIOS are pretty straightforward
and clear so there should be no problems). Doing so will erase everything in the drive.
After this, reboot to a WinME start-up disk (you should have one handy), run with (or without CD support to make it faster), then run FDISK.
Create the maximum drive partition size available ( I havent tried doing several partitions) and then reboot to the start-up disk again. At this point you
will format the RAID drive ( format c: ). After formating, restart, enter the mobo BIOS, and set it up to boot to a CD. Then insert your WinXP CD, reboot
and install it.
Note: You should also go to VIAHARDWARE.com and download the drivers for the Highpoint RAID controller. After downloading, expand it to a floppy.
When the WinXP setup asks you if you want to set-up a SCSI or RAID controller, choose yes and when it asks for a floppy, insert the Highpoint disk.
I also have this IWILL RAID controller and it will not work with the built-in drivers in XP; I have to use the new drivers.
 

Executor

Senior member
Aug 7, 2001
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I have windows XP already installed, but I didnt select the special drivers when installing the OS (it wouldnt work right). So a cuople of minutes ago I installed the new highpoint drivers for windows xp but it still doesnt work. Any suggestions? Any settings for raid in the device manager? thx
 

RanDum72

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2001
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How did you set it up? Did you install XP first on one drive and added another drive (it won't work this way)? I'm kinda confused on what your saying,
you have two partitions on one drive? How big are your drives anyway? If both are, example, 40gigs, you will have one big 80gig drive. It
seems like you created a partition from each harddrive ( I'm not even sure what you did) or did something wrong during the whole process.
You will have to redo it again then.
1. go to IWILL controller BIOS and delete the RAID partitions. restart, enter the IWILL BIOS again and redo the options for RAID 0.
2. reboot with start-up disk and use FDISK to create partition. Just make one large partition.
3. Reboot with start-up disk again and format.
4. after format, boot to WinXP CD and use the controller diskette driver.
 

Executor

Senior member
Aug 7, 2001
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I have 2 WD600BBs (60 GB). Before installing any OS I went into the RAID BIOS and made a RAID0 Array. Then I booted from CD-ROM and proceeded to install XP. During the first part of the install, where it says to hit F6, the installation kept crashing when I tried to install the RAID 0 drivers that came with the RAID card. So I installed Win XP without hitting F6 and everything went fine. Win XP reconizes one big 120 GB disk, which leads me to believe my array is good. I am not getting RAID0 performance though. Win XP doesnt seem to be using RAID0. So today I went to HighPoints site and downloaded the new XP drivers. I have them installed but I am still not getting RAID0 functionality. Any hints? I dont want to erase everything I have :( Thx
 

RanDum72

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2001
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You need to partition, then format the RAID drive first before WinXP will recognize it.
As for the crashing during the first part of the install, thats where the new drivers come into place. The drivers that came with XP or with the
the controller itself will give errors about a bad disk. Check out the downloads here.
I used the 2.0.0925 drivers,(you can try the others too), download them, put them in a floppy and press F6 during the install process to setup
the controller. After that, everything should be smooth sailing.
 

JayBones1

Junior Member
Oct 5, 2001
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I have a RAID setup with XP Pro.When I first set it up with home addition it didn't work
Called Microsoft,They said home edition didn' t support it ,but pro did
 

RanDum72

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2001
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If XP is seeing 120gig, its probably working. What do you mean RAID functionality? As in visibly faster performance? The only time you will see this
is when you are streaming data ( such as encoding Divx) or other disk intensive stuff. Just use SiSoft Sandra and run the drive benchmark,
If you get higher scores( from 25-50% more) than a 7200rpm drive, then RAID is fine and working.
 

thomsbrain

Lifer
Dec 4, 2001
18,148
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Yes, Randum is right. If Windows sees a 120 GB drive, your RAID array is working. Just don't expect to perform any miracles except for big files (like video or audio editing).
 

Executor

Senior member
Aug 7, 2001
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I benched using SiSoft Sandra drive benchmark and got speed comparable to a single ATA100 HDD without raid.
 

mschell

Senior member
Oct 9, 1999
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Instead of hassling a W2K/XP install onto a RAID array, you can install the OS the normal way on a spare hard drive (you do have a spare don't you??). Without loading any apps or anything, shut down the system, add the RAID drives and set the MB jumper (if present) to enable the RAID chip. Reboot and enter the RAID setup to configure the array. Now let the system boot into Windows and install the RAID controllers software. At this point you can continue in a few different ways depending if you have Partition Magic 7.0 or not. If you don't then open the disk management section under Admin tools, you should see the drive and the space listed within as unallocated. Right click on it and choose new partition and follow the instructions.

Now you should have a workable RAID drive, test it by copying some large folders from the C: drive, rename them and move them back to the C: and check them for corruption. If all is OK then you can use late version disk cloning/imaging software to transfer the partition to the RAID drive. If you had PM 7.0 you could have avoided some of the above and just copied the C: partition to the RAID drive and made other sizing or additional partitions as well. Now upon rebooting, change the boot order to RAID before any other hard disk drives and the system should boot from the RAID drive.

A few words about RAID 0.
Raid arrays have a higher chance of becoming corrupt and unbootable than a single drive hooked to the motherboards native IDE controller. This is why it's a good idea to have that spare drive I was talking about and software to regularly backup your RAID boot drive. Another benefit is you can modify the stripe/cluster sizes by just changing the boot order in the BIOS, rebuild the array with different parameters and copy the backup drive's contents to the new array.
 

Executor

Senior member
Aug 7, 2001
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Heres why I am confused. Windows I recognizing my array as a 120GB drive. All seems good. But when I run SiSoft Sandra's Drive Benchmark I get scores parallel to a single HDD without raid0. I dont understand how this is happening? Any explanation?
 

Executor

Senior member
Aug 7, 2001
333
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Ok I got RAID 0 working (eveident in sisoft sandro). I recreated my array and installed the OS without the F6 option. Once the system was up I uninstalled the HighPoint 370 driver packaged with Win XP. I restarted and installed the new driver. Thx for the help.