SATA Raid 1

[daviddeguzman]

Well, finally it's all up and running. I installed the Adaptec controller and it was pretty painless. After installing you insert the Drivers CD (it's bootable) and select create drivers disk. Then exit, reboot and enter the controller's BIOS. It's all menu driven. Select Raid 1 and build (make sure which connector you plug your HDD with the OS on it as it will ask which drive to build from). Once the build is finished (about an hour and a half) you will have to do a repair install of XP. You have to have your drivers floppy that you made and you'll need to press F6 and install the drivers when prompted. After that, you will need to visit Windows update and reinstall them. Once this is done, everything was still intact and as I left it. I did have to uninstall Norton System Works and reinstall it, but all my other software was working perfectly. All in all it took about 3 hours. The next day I installed the Adaptec Storage Manager Browser Addition. This will sync your Raid HDD's perfectly. Once this utility has run and synced the HDD's, the speed of the system returns to normal. It may be slightly slower prior to that.
Of course, you can do this with aclean install of XP instead, but then you have to reinstall all you Office products and downloads.
I did back up all my data to an externat HDD prior to attempting this. The directions warn you that you may need to do a complete reformat and reinstall if the data corrupts too badly to repair during the build.
I still have the Silicon Image controller that wouldn't enter the BIOS, more stuff for the junk closet. LOL.