Creating a raid 5 for storage only no operating system

Irish Mick

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Aug 25, 2011
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Hi Guys!

Question about adding a RAID 5 storage array independently of the single drive which contains the OS.

Can I create the RAID 5 array and have the single drive (which contains the WIN7 64bit OS and the GeoVision surveillance software) send the video surveillance recordings to it?

The motherboard supports ICH10R but I didn't install the RAID drivers or Intel Matrix Storage Manager before installing the OS because originally I only needed 1 HD for my 4 IP camera needs.

I want to add 4 more camera's which are high resolution IP camera's and I'm going to need some massive storage!

Do I have to start from square 1?

MB: GA-EX58-UD5
PROC: i7 920
PRESENT HD: Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB
ADDING: 3 more Barracuda's at 3TB a piece in RAID 5 hopefully! :)

I can point the Geovision software to send video to any recording device.

Thanks!


 

Madlogger

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Hi,

Just add the new HD,s and set the BIOS to RAID, mount then using intel matrix with RAID 5 and reboot, the OS will be loaded normally, in case it doesn't just go to the matrix and set the stand alone HD as your boot unit.

Just remember that you can't create a partition bigger than 2Tb using MBR to solve that you will need to create a partition converting it to GPT and them point the geovision managing program to use the array.

Alex



 

Irish Mick

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Uh OH!
It appears that I have to install "Intel Matrix Storage Manager 10.6.0" in order to support 3TB hard drives on the x58 chipset in RAID!
Just a little more info for anyone running by this string.
10.5.0 is for 3TB hard drives as well but, 10.6.0 is written to include the x58 chipset
 

Madlogger

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Just download the last BIOS upgrade from the board manufacturer and upgrade it, not a hard thing to do.
 

Irish Mick

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Well,,,,, I got a little problem. :sarcastic: It seems it's not as simple as you think. When I place this Gigabyte GA-EX58 in RAID mode, it won't allow me to enter the RAID configuration utility for some reason. I hit "ctrl-I" when prompted but, it just goes to the next screen and lists the old 2TB drive with the OS on it and the 3 new 3TB drives as Non-Raid disks and tries to boot Windows 7 then reboots.

If I put it back in "IDE" mode everything is fine and it boots off of the original barracuda with the OS on it.

I initialized the 3 drives in windows 7 computer management tools as GPT not MBR, but to no avail!

Any input would be greatly appreciated at this point. :hello:

Mick
 

Madlogger

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Mick, try this, go to the BIOS and disable silent boot is it is enable, then try again hitting ctrl+i, until you manage to configure all drives into the raid config the system won't boot and will keep resetting, do not forget to set the boot drive to be your old system drive.
 

tomatthe

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I've had issues with machines not letting me into raid bios, and swapping keyboards to diff ports or trying a ps/2 one if you've got that option generally fixed the issue. If you see the prompt to hit Ctrl-I and pressing that doesn't get you into the raid bios then I would say almost certainly the machine just isn't recognizing the keyboard at that point.

Sometimes I've had better luck trying to access it from the machine being in a fully Off state vs a rebooting machine as well.
 

Irish Mick

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Right On Guys! I'm heading over to the system right now. I'll try the suggestions and let you know the outcome. Disabling The silent boot mode is a new one to me. The PS/2 KB is a great idea seeing that I'm using a USB board but, it seems to work in Bios but, what you are saying makes sense.
 

Irish Mick

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Oh! BTW! I have tried removing the original HD with the OS on it which I want to use to control this new RAID 5 storage array.

I then set the Bios from IDE to RAID to try to create the array using ONLY the 3 new HD's and still couldn't enter the "ctrl-i" utility when prompted.

Still haven't tired the PS/2 KB suggestion yet. Will do shortly.
 

Irish Mick

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OK!,,,,,,, TomatThe you were right! THe PS/2 KB allowed the ctrl-i key combination to get me into the RAID setup utility!

I owe you a beer!

But! Yes! BUT!!! "The saga of what was supposed to be simple, isn't at all simple" continues,,,,,,,,,,,,,

When I enter the RAID config utility, it lists the new 3TB HD's as 764.5GB hard drives. :-/

In other words the motherboards' ICH10R RAID chip/processor has a 2.2TB limit under the version 8.0.0.xxxx. The 764.5GB that it sees, is some kind of mirror image of the bytes over the limit of 2.2TB limit or, 800GB's that is left over from the 3TB size of the HD.

I initialized them in windows 7 management console as GPT and windows recognizes them as 3TB but the motherboard doesn't.

I downloaded and ran Seagate's "DiskWizard" and once again, everything's happy in the WIN7 operating environment but not on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-ud5 mobo. >8-/

When I try to upgrade the ISR (Intel Rapid Storage) drivers from 8.0 to 10.6 I get this "The minimum requirements on this system are not sufficient for this software to install" or something very similar to that.

The reason this happens is because I don't have the RAID enabled yet or the ICH10R chip turned on yet.

So! When I enable RAID or turn the chip on, I cannot boot to windows to install the ISR v.10.6 chipset drivers. Windows begins to start, then I get a 10 millisecond flash of a BSOD with some writing on it, and then the system begins to fully reboot resulting in a loop which eventually ends up in that WIN7 repair boot sector screen. Thank God!!! It doesn't do anything to the boot sector! It just says "windows can't find a solution" as usual.

I then return the bios back to IDE from RAID and the system boots up normally. But, without it in RAID, I cannot install the Intel Rapid Storage drivers 10.6.x.1007 to allow the bios to see the full 3TB of each new hard drive!

Catch 22!!!!!!

I think I'm going to change my handle to "Charlie Brown"!!!!

It's Labor Day weekend here in the states and I got beers to drink and women to cavort with but I'm not going camping until this is resolved!!!!

I truly thank you guys for the input you have already provided! But I need a little more help?!?

Back to Asus for me! It's worth the money!!!! Trust me! You will pay for it in your time! Even Gigabytes high end MB's are quirky as hell! Initially it wouldn't recognize the memory and I had to manually input the memory timings! And Now This!!

Thanks Guys! :)

Mick

Once
 

Irish Mick

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ThankYou very much Ghislan!

Editing the registry correctly did unlock Win7 to be put in RAID.

But now I can't get this X58 chipset to recognize the 3TB Seagate XT ST33000651AS HD's as 3TB's. It will only recognize 746.5GB.

I Flashed the board with the latest (all the way up to the latest beta. F13u for this particular motherboard. GigaByte GA-EX58-ud5, a VERY nice board!)

But, I get nothing more than 746.5GB recognized by the bios.

NOW GET THIS! Win7 DOES SEE almost 3TB!!!!

I'm confused! :/ I can't set up a software RAID 5 because for some darn MS reason Win7 don't support it. Although the choice for RAID 5 does show up in Disk Management, it's just grayed out and inactive. :/
 

Irish Mick

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Ghislan! ThankYou AGAIN!!!

Where did you find that! LOL!

I looked all over their website for something like that.

I downloaded all the recent chipset drivers (ISR/Matrix,BIOS) but I never ran across one called "3TB+ unlock"!!!!

You Indians Friggin ROCK! the computer and math industries!!!!!

Thanks a second time! I know a file named "3TB+ unlock" has got to work!

Thanks again Ghislan! =8-D
 

Irish Mick

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Guess what Ghislan?

The 3TB+ software from Gigabyte only supports drives formatted in MBR not GPT. :mad:

It says it partitions the 3TB hard drives formatted in MBR to "emulate" 3TB.

This sounds like RAID 5 problems to me! I just want the drives to be recognized as big fat 3TB drives with a single partition on each so I can RAID 5 them for constant and redundant video storage! :/

If you have the time, could you tell me what you think of this 3TB+ unlock software? Do you think it will cause performance problems in a RAID5 configuration?

Thanks in advance! :)

And I think I am going to change my name from Irish Mick to Charlie Brown! I swear!!! :(

 
To be honest I haven't tried that software because I don't need that much storage and I sure won't test it on my Gigabyte system that runs Windows Server 2008 and several VMs. To be honest I don't know if it's compatible with RAID 5, but Gigabyte should be able to answer that question. If it isn't compatible, you could use four 2 TB drives instead of three 3 TB drives to get 6 TB of storage space and better performance.

You lose nothing trying the software. I presume that you'll create a software RAID and not use Intel Matrix Storage?