RAID controllers and DOS

[Sukhoi]

I'm considering getting an MSI 845 Ultra-ARU which has an onboard Promise RAID controller. I would use this controller as just another ATA133 controller with a HDD on each channel. How would I go about access these drives in DOS? I assume I'd need to get some kind of DOS RAID driver for the boot floppy? Is this even possible?

 

[kursplat]

wouldn't the raid bios allow you to access the drives ? if you were doing a new install of win98 you would have to format the drives in dos anyway.
or is the tree i'm not seeing right in front of me so big it's going to kill me ?
good luck

 

[Sukhoi]

I didn't know if the RAID BIOS would allow native access from DOS, so that's why I'm asking.

 

[cleverhandle]

I'm with Chuck.

 

[Bglad]

I have the Asus board with the Promis controller on board. It lets you access drives in dos normally. I would assume the MSI works the same way. Its all done by the bios automatically without any drivers.

 

[CTho9305]

I dont think so... I know on some abit raid board, one of my friends had to put in a floppy that had a driver on it when he was installing 2k or xp. I imagine the same is true for DOS.

edit: or not.. i gues i'm wrong!

 

[dunkster]

I have Abit KR7A/RAID, with boot HD on IDE3 under RAID controller. No problems running DOS or DOS-based apps under RAID controller - but that's using a Highpoint controller - not Promise.

Hope this helps!

 

[Bglad]

You would need drivers if you were using an add on card. For on-board, the hardware will take care of it in dos.

Yes, you still have to give it a floppy for drivers when installing 2K/XP, but that does not affect it working in dos. If you don't, Windows will start to install then tell you it can't find the drive. Honestly, I don't understand why dos can access the drive but Windows has to have drivers, but this is what happens.

 

[pm]

I have that same board (Ultra-ARU) but have not used the RAID functionality of it. I like the board quite a bit. Very pleased. It's a bit pricey, but for features/price, it's pretty good compared to others. I've never had any problems with it and I pound on it pretty hard sometimes in Linux and with games.

As far as RAID, I haven't used it, but it appears that it will boot to DOS. I agree with the others. After the initial BIOS splash screen, there's a brief screen where it mentions something about loading the RAID BIOS and there's a point where you can jump in to the RAID controller BIOS. It looks like it would detect drives at that point.

 

[Sukhoi]

Thanks for the updates, looks like it should work fine.