RAID 0 Setup Help needed - Long detailed post

[hoorah]

Hey all,

I have been having some serious issues with my RAID setup I just installed. I am pretty experienced at PC troubleshooting, but this one has driven me up the wall and made me put the white flag up.

I won't go into all the testing I've done, but I'll give some cliff notes that should cover everything. At this point, the only thing I'm hoping for is someone to say that they've either had this problem before and I need to do "X" to make it work or the RAID controller is busted.

I got 2 brand new Maxtor 200GB PATA 8MB cache hard drives (staples $20 BF drives). I also have a 160GB Western Digital PATA 8MB hard drive. (I have a 250 GB maxtor also but that has important data on it so I'm not using it to test.

Ok, here's my testing cliffs:

Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLI - NForce 4 with onboard RAID/ Athlon 64 3200+ Venice
1 GB DDR 400
Maxtor 200 GB PATA set to cable select on IDE channel 1 - master cable
Maxtor 200 GB PATA/ Western Digital 160GB PATA (tried both) set to cable select on IDE channel 1 - slave

Created 400 GB RAID0 striped array of new drives with onboard RAID controller setup program
Used Acronis trueimage to restore a drive image. It sees the 400 GB drive and restores to it.
System starts to boot. Loads probably a few dozen files and crashes. Blue screen flashes for a second (too fast to read) and it reboots. Does this constantly.
Tried to install a new copy of Windows MCE. Windows setup on its own sees the two drives (master/slave), even though they belong to the raid array (I thought that without the drivers, windows shouldn't see ANY drives if theyre on the RAID controller?)
When I load the SATA/RAID drivers (latest from gigabyte website), it sees the 400GB drive.
Windows MCE installs - setup program formats the drive, copies all files, then reboots and goes through the normal windows setup. Sucessfully completes. When it reboots, it does the EXACT same thing that the acronis image does.
Tried the same as above with windows 2000 pro. Does exactly the same thing except that I can read the Blue screen and the error is "Inaccessible boot device" - since they all do the same thing, my testing from here on out is with just my acronis image since it restores fast.

Deleted the RAID0 array - installed to each of the 3 drives (2 maxtor, 1 WD). Acronis image restores just fine to each of the drives individually.
Created new RAID1 array of 2 maxtor drives. Acronis image restores perfectly.
Deleted RAID1 Array and created RAID0 of 1 maxtor and 1 western digital drive - doesn't work.
Swapped IDE channels, same thing.
Updated to latest BIOS, same thing.
Tried Windows Vista RC1. Even with the XP64 driver for the NVRAID controller, it still only sees each of the drives individually.

When I create the RAID0 array and use the Maxtor MaxBlast utility, it sees 3 drives - each of the individual drives and the RAID0 array on "unknown controller". When you look for info on the individual drive, it shows a 400 GB partition on ONE of the maxtor drives, but not the other - not sure if this is supposed to be like that or not.

I'm just at a loss. Normally I would just say that the RAID controller is bad since I can't see how I'm doing anything wrong, but why does the RAID1 function correctly? My only thought is that the RAID controller is somehow ignoring the second drive when windows tries to read from it (thats why a few files load and then it crashes), but at this point, I'm grasping at straws. I've emailed gigabyte tech support already, they haven't replied.

Ok, sorry for the long post. Any ideas?

 

[boomerang]

You are going to want each of the RAID drives as a single drive on it's own channel. And seeing as how you have two identical drives, use those. (I understand you've been swapping around drives trying to get it to work)

IDE 1 w/drive as Master

IDE 2 w/drive as Master

If you have additional IDE devices, I would suggest getting a PCI card for that.

What version of Acronis are you using? When you boot off the CD you created, are you given an F6 prompt for RAID drivers?

I haven't read your whole post in enough detail to totally comprehend it. I'm telling you that up-front.

 

[boomerang]

The reason it won't boot from your restored Image is that there are no RAID drivers in that Image.

Is any of this helping?

Edit: Follow the link in the second post as this is nearly the same situation you are in.

 

[hoorah]

Boomerang,

Thanks for your help. Yes, the part about not having the RAID drivers makes sense, but only because I figured out why this is happening.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=14623 - apparently MS doesn't like the NVATA RAID and SATA RAID drivers that I put on the floppy disk from Nvidia's site because its not WHQL certified. So instead it installs the standard MS IDE controller driver OVER the Nvidia driver I installed with the F6 method - hence the "working on the first boot but not after windows installs". Nice part about it is that like a selfish girlfriend it never called to tell me it was switching to the MS IDE driver.

For far the only workaround I've seen is to slipstream the NV drivers into the XP installation CD. Why this works instead of using F6 I haven't figured out yet. I didn't really like the idea at first of having to go through all the trouble of creating a slipstream CD just for 1 driver, but I suppose I could take the opportunity to install all of my other drivers and make a real nice installation CD.

On the other hand, I just installed Vista RC1 on the system (since I'm only running an OS temporarily I might as well give it a try) and am hoping that as the Vista to home users launch is approaching Nvidia will work out a new driver solution that should work with both and I'll just use that.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I'll post again if I ever get it to work, I've never slipstreamed a CD before, so all that adds complexity.

To end on a positive note, it feels real good to have an additional 400GB of storage for $40 even without the RAID.

 

[boomerang]

Yeah, great price on the drives.

I've slipstreamed Service Packs and they are quite easy to do. Never have slipstreamed drivers though. Sounds like you've got a good handle on everything. Good Luck!

 

[hoorah]

I found a simple way of fixing this problem without having to create a slipstreamed CD that was pretty quick as well.

I installed Windows XP on a single drive with the RAID controller turned on in the BIOS but without creating the RAID array. After I installed windows, I installed the nvidia Nforce drivers and forced the installation of the non-WHQL drivers for the ATA controller and the RAID controller.

Then I installed all of my programs (office, Nero, video card drivers, etc) and made a new acronis image.

Created the RAID0 array and restored the acronis image to the array and it booted right up. I think its better than a slipstreamed XP cd because I now have all of my programs installed as well.

Anyway, thats my solution, hope this helps someone in the future.