SATA/RAID0 Question

[FiletMP]

Guys.

Finally got my new Neo2 based box built and running xp. However, I had some issues during the install, and continue to have some now.

1.) During the install, my RAID would show up as 2 seperate drives in the partition dialog - one that's about 70GB, and one that's 139GB. The RAID0 is made up of 2 74GB 10k Raptors on SATA 3/4. Now when I try to access C: in drive manager, it says its corrupted. The system has labeled the 70BG partition as c: and the 139GB as E:.

2.) Warm reboots as well as some cold reboots are rewarded with the Detecting Raid Array message for a very long time. I can reboot a few times and eventually get by this.

I did the usual F6 to add RAID drivers and everything seemed to work ok.

As an aside, can anyone make some basic performance tweaking suggestions for the mobo with OCZ3200 Plat2 Dual Channel? I can't figure out the whole timing thing, and am pretty freaked about baking this new box.

I'm a total newb to building machines, I usually just program. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Cheetah8799]

If you have the RAID 0 array setup, it should only show up as 1 drive when installing Windows XP.

Sounds like you may not have the array created properly or something, or created at all. Make sure you follow the manual's instructions if you haven't already. Shouldn't be too hard to do unless you have maybe a bad hard drive that is causing your corruption problems.

As for ram timing, just start by letting the mobo auto-detect everything. You should be able to get it to work fine. If you are freaked about it, then if you do it all manually make sure you set it to the values specified by the mfgr. Don't just pic random stuff. Also, test your ram with memtest.

 

[FiletMP]

Cheetah,

Thanks - I went through the manual as it directed as well as working off a few guide threads on the MSI forums.

However, I think this is a noob RAID problem, not a problem specific to this configuration.

The Windows XP installer showed 2 partitions as well, but I didnt know it was a problem. The BIOS and RAID utility from NVIDIA show one stripe at 138GB and healthy.


Any help is really appreciated.

 

[boomerang]

There are 4 SATA connectors that are layed out on the board in pairs of two. All I can think of, is that if you had each drive connected to a single connector but in different pairs, that the RAID BIOS would be happy, but for whatever reason, Windows would see the drives differently.

I'd say this is a longshot as all 4 ports are controlled by the same chip.

I hope I am describing this so it can be understood. When I reread it, I barely understand. Maybe this diagram will make it clear. X represents where the drives would be connected in the scenario I describe.


X
----------
----------
| |
| | X
| |
| |

Edit: Well, it previews one way and displays another. I hope you get the picture.

 

[WebDude]

Usually these sata controllers can be used either as raid controllers or single drive controllers. I'm not familiar with your mb, but in the past I've worked with mb's where you had to specify in the bios whether the controller was going to work in 'raid' mode or 'single drive' mode. And there are usually different windows drivers for the controller in each mode. If the drives showed up as 2 single ones during the install, that would make me suspect the settings in the bios were not correct, or else you supplied windows with the 'single drive mode' drivers. Something to check anyway.