- Oct 19, 2000
- 17,860
- 4
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I built a system for my boss at work, and one of the things he specifically asked for was an automatic backup system. So I think of a RAID 1 setup, which I figured to be no problem. I have never personally used any kind of RAID system, so this would be my first time setting one up.
I chose a Biostar K8NHA Grand from Newegg, and a couple of Maxtor 160GB SATA hard drives for the RAID. Upon installing WindowsXP Pro, I copied the SATA/RAID drivers to a floppy, and installed them during the install process. After getting into Windows, I just kind of assumed it should work automatically, but low and behold, there were my 2 drives just sitting there, with nothing on the second. So I went into the BIOS, looked around, and found that I didn't even have the RAID enabled. So I enabled it, and was able to press F10 during bootup to enter a RAID setup menu. I choose the two hard drives to use a RAID 1 array. It was a pretty simple screen, there's no way I could've set something wrong. I then proceeded to reinstall Windows, and I figured again that I have it right this time. Wrong, still same thing, with no automatic writing to both drives.
My question is this, what did I do wrong? Should it just automatically work? During bootup, it shows me having a healthy array (on the screen where I can press F10). I searched through the mobo driver cd, and found a RAID folder with what seems to be some kind of setup file, but it gives me some weird message about stopping something before I can run it. Also, if I go back into the F10 screen during bootup, I have an option to rebuild. However, I'm too scared to mess up any data on the computer, as it's basically the server that holds all of our important data. If that data goes bye-bye, I might as well walk on out the door. I know I can simply back it up, but that will mean some downtime for our CSR's. This isn't entirely out of the question, but I need to figure out what's going on with this system without messing it up.
Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Is it possible to incorporate a RAID 1 array into an existing OS install with no data corruption? Also, should I be able to see the second backup hard drive in My Computer, with access to it's contents, or is it considered a hidden, virtual drive? Thanks guys.
I chose a Biostar K8NHA Grand from Newegg, and a couple of Maxtor 160GB SATA hard drives for the RAID. Upon installing WindowsXP Pro, I copied the SATA/RAID drivers to a floppy, and installed them during the install process. After getting into Windows, I just kind of assumed it should work automatically, but low and behold, there were my 2 drives just sitting there, with nothing on the second. So I went into the BIOS, looked around, and found that I didn't even have the RAID enabled. So I enabled it, and was able to press F10 during bootup to enter a RAID setup menu. I choose the two hard drives to use a RAID 1 array. It was a pretty simple screen, there's no way I could've set something wrong. I then proceeded to reinstall Windows, and I figured again that I have it right this time. Wrong, still same thing, with no automatic writing to both drives.
My question is this, what did I do wrong? Should it just automatically work? During bootup, it shows me having a healthy array (on the screen where I can press F10). I searched through the mobo driver cd, and found a RAID folder with what seems to be some kind of setup file, but it gives me some weird message about stopping something before I can run it. Also, if I go back into the F10 screen during bootup, I have an option to rebuild. However, I'm too scared to mess up any data on the computer, as it's basically the server that holds all of our important data. If that data goes bye-bye, I might as well walk on out the door. I know I can simply back it up, but that will mean some downtime for our CSR's. This isn't entirely out of the question, but I need to figure out what's going on with this system without messing it up.
Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Is it possible to incorporate a RAID 1 array into an existing OS install with no data corruption? Also, should I be able to see the second backup hard drive in My Computer, with access to it's contents, or is it considered a hidden, virtual drive? Thanks guys.
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