RAID the Refridgerator

[Apotherix]

I've got this kick trash but worthless computer on my hands because of RAID. I hear its a beast once you get it started, but the RAID as it stands right now is holding everything up.

Here are the specs of the system:

Asus K8V Motherboard
Athlon 64 3000+
512 DDR 400
Two 40 GB RAID Drives
Etc, etc.

For starters- I'm totally new at RAID or Serial ATA, so I haven't got much of a clue. The Motherboard has Promise drivers that I have been trying to use, and I finally got everything hooked up right (I thought) and installed Windows, but as soon as windows installed and rebooted, I get the "NTDLR missing" message or the "error booting operating system" message. What am I doing wrong? I've installed the RAID drivers during the Windows installation and everything - I can't figure out what's up.

Another thing - do I need the 4 pin power connectors plugged in if I have the SATA power cables plugged in too?

Any help would be great - thanks in advance

 

[KillaKilla]

Originally posted by: Apotherix

Another thing - do I need the 4 pin power connectors plugged in if I have the SATA power cables plugged in too?

Try having the molex power on it w/o the SATA.

Also, i've heard that RAID isn't really worth it- not enough perforance increase.

 

[Apotherix]

And what's this about plugging in an IDE cable to the drives? As far as I can see, there isn't any IDE cable slots on the Hard Drives. Is that why the stupid Windows isn't recognizing the hard drives?

 

[Budman]

When you install XP you need to press F6 to load your promise drivers on you'll end up with

"NTDLR missing"

.

If you dont have them on floppy go to the asus site & download the drivers & put them on a floppy.

 

[Budman]

Direct link to drivers.

maybe these ones will work better???

 

[mechBgon]

Two more tips:

1) use the VIA RAID ports instead of the Promise RAID ports, and your RAID will be out on the 533MB/sec V-Link instead of the 133MB/sec PCI bus, for best burst throughput potential. These ports are the upper pair marked SATA1 and SATA2.

2) Asus gives a complete instruction on setting up the RAID in the manual, starting on page 5-19 for the VIA SATA. I think the step you're missing is that with a RAID controller, you must go into the controller's BIOS and define an array on the disks that are hooked up.

Good luck

 

[MichaelD]

I think the step you're missing is that with a RAID controller, you must go into the controller's BIOS and define an array on the disks that are hooked up.

Bah, you beat me to it.

 

[InlineFive]

1. Set up a RAID array in the BIOS. Either 0 or 1 although on the basis that you are looking to build a powerful fast system I would do a Raid-0 array.
2. Install Windows while in setup loading the appropriate SATA drivers with "F6".
3. If that doesn't fix it try running MemTest on your RAM.

-Por