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Installing RAID 1 on ASUS P5Q Deluxe

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cjconrad   08-12-2008 at 06:09:26 PM

This is my first post, and I appreciate the existence of this community!

My question is a mix of System Board and RAID ...

I have a P5Q Deluxe with four Seagate 1TB SATA drives (SATA1-4) plus a SATA DVD Writer (SATA6). In the BIOS, the SATA is set to "IDE" (I had problems installing the OS using the AHCI setting). I now have installed Windows Server 2003, and want to setup RAID 1 (mirror) on SATA drives 1 & 2. SATA1 is my current boot, and SATA2 is the same drive model, empty (new drive, just formatted).

I am on BIOS 605, which came with the board. When I encountered problems installing W2K3, I tried to upgrade the BIOS, but my problems persisted and I would end up with the BIOS back to 605 (I didn't overtly reinstall or revert 605, but somehow it was back). In retrospect, I believe that the only real problem I had with the install was the SATA setting, as I had been trying to use AHCI.

In any case, I want to get the RAID working, but I am a bit scared for a few reasons:
(1) I don't want to lose my current drive content (so I want to be sure that I can control which drive is the "master copy" ); As the P5Q manual does not give a walk-thru of setting up the RAID 1, I want to ensure that I will be able to specify just the two drives involved (and which already has data) without putting anything else at risk.
(2) Given the problems with my AHCI attempts, I am not confident that the SATA support is mature (and hence, the RAID support)
(3) As the BIOS mysteriously reverted itself to earlier version at least twice, I am concerned that anything requiring a BIOS upgrade might not be reliable.

Opinions and/or advise?

Thanks to all in advance ... Craig

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cjconrad   09-07-2008 at 05:42:30 AM
- 0 +

OK, I have made some progress. I was able to move the boot drive to the other SATA ports (SIL5723 set of two), and it booted, as it already had these drivers. Then I set the BIOS to "RAID" for the original set of 6 SATA ports, and rebooted, which brought up the "Found New Hardware" wizard, allowing me to install the RAID drivers onto my boot drive. Then I moved the drive back to its original port (which is now in RAID mode, instead of IDE mode), and it booted fine.

So, I am half-way there. I now have my drives on SATA ports set to RAID in the BIOS. However, I need to establish the RAID-1 set. I just want to have my boot drive (on port 0) mirrored to an identical drive on port 1.

How do I establish the RAID set with an existing drive? In other words, I do not want to lose the data on the existing functional drive -- I just want to begin mirroring it to a new drive.

Thanks, Craig

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DV8_MKD   06-17-2009 at 09:56:47 PM
- 0 +

I don't think that you can do raid on your bootable drives after you've installed your OS on them. You have to do it BEFORE you install it.

Reply to DV8_MKD
cjconrad   06-17-2009 at 10:05:39 PM
- 0 +

I was able to add RAID after installing the OS. My steps were:

After installing Windows 2003 with the SATA controller BIOS
set to "IDE" instead of "RAID", I wanted to add a RAID 1 set. However,
when I changed BIOS to "RAID" and tried to boot the drive, Windows would
blue screen and re-boot. I had to find a way to get the RAID drivers installed
on Windows (a chicken & egg problem):
1. Moved the boot drive to the other SATA controller (the built system
already had the drivers for this, as this controller had already
been recognized. For safety, I disconnected all other drives. I
booted it just to ensure that it worked.
2. Set BIOS to "RAID" on the original controller ports & rebooted (the
boot drive still in the alternative port). Windows came up with the
"Found New Hardware" wizard, and I let it find the drivers on the
diskette (I had built this earlier). Powered down.
3. Moved the boot drive back to the original ports (which were now "RAID"
ports) and re-booted to ensure that all was well (also had to change
the DVD drive to "R" again). Powered-down. System is now "RAID Ready".
4. Booted and installed latest "Intel Matrix Storage Manager" (v8.0) from
"i:\..\install\asussetup.exe" and re-booted.
5. Power-down, connect the mirror drive, re-boot.
6. Either via BIOS (press Ctrl-I) or via the IMSM software above,
established the RAID 1 array.
7. After the mirror has been created, do an orderly power-down and
re-boot to ensure that it comes up correctly.
8. Re-connected (one at a time) the non-RAID drives.

Working well for the past 10 months or so

Reply to cjconrad
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