Reinstall OS after upgrade to RAID?

[integramodder]

I have a 74GB Raptor and 4 new WD 500GB Drives.
I had the SATA set to IDE with only the Raptor and it ran my OS without problems.
I set the SATA to RAID (so that I can RAID5 the 4 WDs) and windows wont boot.


So the question is, is it just better to do a clean install on the Raptor in the "RAID" setting or is there a way to apply the Raid driver to an already installed version of windows?

 

[NewMaxx]

Am I correct in assuming you have 5 or more SATA ports, based on your setup? If so, you should be able to assign which ones are related to the RAID, and you'd leave the Raptor port out of it. The new RAID would be considered its own drive so of course boot order should still point to the Raptor. If you still have issues after that, it's probably because of the need for a regular SATA driver for the Raptor (since it was IDE mode before), which you may be able to install in Windows (pre-RAID-setting) before switching over as I described.

 

[integramodder]

Originally posted by: NewMaxx
Am I correct in assuming you have 5 or more SATA ports, based on your setup? If so, you should be able to assign which ones are related to the RAID, and you'd leave the Raptor port out of it. The new RAID would be considered its own drive so of course boot order should still point to the Raptor. If you still have issues after that, it's probably because of the need for a regular SATA driver for the Raptor (since it was IDE mode before), which you may be able to install in Windows (pre-RAID-setting) before switching over as I described.

Its an ASUS P5B Deluxe Motherboard. Its got 7 SATA ports and 1 eSATA.
Currently the Raptor is on SATA 1.
WD500s are on SATA 2, 3, 4, 5.
In order to enable the onboard raid software, you have to switch the SATA setting from IDE to SATA. Then, you go into the raid software and determine which hard drives are in what type of raid. After I did this, the system would attempt to boot from the raptor (recognizing it as a single drive and not part of the raid), but windows would not boot. I am assuming this is because the raid drivers are not installed for the boot process.

I have used the Asus CD that came with the motherboard and have installed all of the raid drivers that I can, just not sure if there is some other driver that needs to be loaded or if there is another process for doing this.

 

[NewMaxx]

Yes, you essentially do need the RAID drivers, as the Raptor is placed in SATA/AHCI mode (with SATA2 functionality) versus straight IDE mode; this is handled by the controller (and its driver). I have some experience with this as I had to deal with it a lot on the AsRock 939Dual (which had a separate SATA2 port from the SATA1 RAID) - in many cases it wasn't possible to switch the OS drive to SATA (but you could keep it IDE and use RAID at same time). However, as I stated above, in your case you'd need to boot into Windows (at IDE mode) and install the SATA driver, reboot, then reboot once more and set up the RAID w/SATA mode, should hopefully work.

*edit*
I did a little research on this board and I saw some posts indicating the use of the "red ports" (you might want to try the Intel RAID drivers) for booting a SATA drive as it can run SATA1/IDE mode even with a RAID (IDE Configuration?). If you can indeed run one port as IDE while still having a RAID, that would be the ideal solution. It's also likely your Raptor has jumpers to set it to SATA1 mode, which also might be a workaround.

However, in my experience (as mentioned above), formatting was sometimes inevitable, but be sure to have the driver on-hand for that install.

Drivers for your model appear to be available here:
http://support.asus.com/downlo...nguage=en-us&model=P5B

 

[integramodder]

I don't think there is a way to keep any single SATA port in any particular mode from the software/BIOS. When the BIOS is set to RAID, I can use raid functionality but it seems to kill the Raptor's ability to boot.

I just downloaded the JMicron JMB36X RAID Controller Driver V1.17.15.0 for Windows 2000 / XP driver from the site and installed. Will do a reboot and see what happens.
If that doesn't work I'll look into the jumper settings on the Raptor.

Thanks for your help. :thumbup:

 

[integramodder]

With the drivers upgraded, I just switched it into RAID mode. This means Raptor on SATA1 (and the CDRW drive that I forgot about on SATA6), the 4 WDs are disconnected. Windows still wont boot off of the Raptor.
This is what I've found for the Raptor Jumper settings: http://support.wdc.com/images/kb/sata.gif (FROM: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bi...&p_created=1071171477)

Now the problem comes down to the fact that I don't have a floppy drive to load the RAID driver on while installing a fresh copy of XP. Can a driver be loaded from a CD? Is there a way to integrate a driver onto the XP install disc, Corparate License of XP SP2?

 

[NewMaxx]

The jumper settings picture looks right, the bottom-most setting is the one I was talking about. Was worth a shot. I've been down this road so I know your situation...

You can get drivers off a CD (or even another HDD) with Vista, but with XP I believe you are limited to floppy or slipstreaming the CD in most cases. You can find guides for this, but here's one as an example:

http://www.maximumpc.com/artic...m-your-XP-installation

You could also use a program like nLite.

 

[integramodder]

So I spent the better half of a couple hours and used nLite to create a disc with all the security updates rolled into it. Hopefully this will go through pain free...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Get a USB floppy drive to install the drivers with.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: integramodder

Originally posted by: NewMaxx
Am I correct in assuming you have 5 or more SATA ports, based on your setup? If so, you should be able to assign which ones are related to the RAID, and you'd leave the Raptor port out of it. The new RAID would be considered its own drive so of course boot order should still point to the Raptor. If you still have issues after that, it's probably because of the need for a regular SATA driver for the Raptor (since it was IDE mode before), which you may be able to install in Windows (pre-RAID-setting) before switching over as I described.

Its an ASUS P5B Deluxe Motherboard. Its got 7 SATA ports and 1 eSATA.
Currently the Raptor is on SATA 1.
WD500s are on SATA 2, 3, 4, 5.
In order to enable the onboard raid software, you have to switch the SATA setting from IDE to SATA. Then, you go into the raid software and determine which hard drives are in what type of raid. After I did this, the system would attempt to boot from the raptor (recognizing it as a single drive and not part of the raid), but windows would not boot. I am assuming this is because the raid drivers are not installed for the boot process.

I have used the Asus CD that came with the motherboard and have installed all of the raid drivers that I can, just not sure if there is some other driver that needs to be loaded or if there is another process for doing this.

Sorry if it is too late, but there's trick how to do it.

Move boot drive (Raptor) to JMicron (assuming it has been isntalled) ..it will boot because drivers are already there.

if it isn't, disable RAID, install, drivers for JMicron, then move drive to it.

 

[integramodder]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: integramodder

Originally posted by: NewMaxx
Am I correct in assuming you have 5 or more SATA ports, based on your setup? If so, you should be able to assign which ones are related to the RAID, and you'd leave the Raptor port out of it. The new RAID would be considered its own drive so of course boot order should still point to the Raptor. If you still have issues after that, it's probably because of the need for a regular SATA driver for the Raptor (since it was IDE mode before), which you may be able to install in Windows (pre-RAID-setting) before switching over as I described.

Its an ASUS P5B Deluxe Motherboard. Its got 7 SATA ports and 1 eSATA.
Currently the Raptor is on SATA 1.
WD500s are on SATA 2, 3, 4, 5.
In order to enable the onboard raid software, you have to switch the SATA setting from IDE to SATA. Then, you go into the raid software and determine which hard drives are in what type of raid. After I did this, the system would attempt to boot from the raptor (recognizing it as a single drive and not part of the raid), but windows would not boot. I am assuming this is because the raid drivers are not installed for the boot process.

I have used the Asus CD that came with the motherboard and have installed all of the raid drivers that I can, just not sure if there is some other driver that needs to be loaded or if there is another process for doing this.

Sorry if it is too late, but there's trick how to do it.

Move boot drive (Raptor) to JMicron (assuming it has been isntalled) ..it will boot because drivers are already there.

if it isn't, disable RAID, install, drivers for JMicron, then move drive to it.

Thats what i ended up doing and it worked. Thanks...

Currently problem is after copying all the data over to the raid, there is a problem with it reading from the drive. Every 10 to 30 seconds, it seems to read from the drive while playing an MP3 and "stutters" the song for a split second. I have reformatted the drive and its clean.

What can this be caused by?