SATA Newbie

[polski]

I have 2 300GB Hard Dries and looking to install them in Raid. I will be doing a lot of gaming so I was wondering if anyone could tell me which SATA setup would be best. Also, I am having some trouble installing the RAID itself. Do I connect the sata cables to the onboard Raid constroller or to the primary and secondary sata ports. I tried first installing With both Hard Drives connected to the Raid controller and used FastTrack Utility to setup a performance Raid but couldn't install windows (no hard drive connected, i have and used the floppy with the raid drivers on it). Im just a little confused on how to physically install the hard drives? Kinda stuck any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[NoelS]

RAID0 is a bit faster but provides absolutely no safety net. If you lose either drive, you lose them both, with everything on them. RAID1 gives you mirroring and that's a safety net, but no speed advantage.

With 2 drives, I personally would use them as individual drives, one with the OS, games and programs (individual partitions) on it and the other for data and storage (and even backups of drive 1). I use a WD Raptor as my OS and game drive to get extra speed, then my other drives for programs and data, pictures and music...

As for the SATA connectors, they vary with motherboards. What does the mobo manual say about hooking up RAID? Should be easy and putting Windows on should also be easy. If it won't work as the manual says, call their tech support and find out what's going on - you may need to RMA a bad board.

Maybe your board requires you to install ICH7,8 or 9R drivers if it's an Intel board. If so, you have to select AHCI in the BIOS BEFORE you install Windows, then install the drivers immediately at the F6 prompt with a floppy or CD when Windows install begins. If you don't install these drivers, your SATA HDDs will run as IDE, not SATA.

Noel

 

[Billb2]

Knowing what operating system, Raid card (if any), motherboard, and what drives you have will make answering your question a lot easier to answer (i. e. without having to cover every installation scenario possible). And it will confuse you less.

If you're gamer, you likely want RAID0.

 

[polski]

I am trying to install WinXP with a Asus SK8V board with 2 Seagate hard drives

 

[Billb2]

Originally posted by: polski
I am trying to install WinXP with a Asus SK8V board with 2 Seagate hard drives

Would they be SATA I, SATA II, IDE..?
And what ports do you want to conncet them to?

Why don't you just post all your system specs in your signature?
Then we'll all always know what you have without having to ask ...again and again...

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: polski
I am trying to install WinXP with a Asus SK8V board with 2 Seagate hard drives

I think if your Win XP disc is pre service pack 2, you'll need a boot disk and sata and raid drivers handy. You could also slipstream everything onto one disc.

Why RAID? RAID 0 isn't worth it, and RAID 1 is really only if you need to be able to quickly get back going after a hard drive failure. It's still not a substitute for backing up important data.

It would probably be better if you put this into computer help, and not the motherboard section.