HDD setup question

Well, I dont quite understand all your drives. I assume you have a two channel RAID controller, and a two channel IDE controller. As far as I understand you have 2 pcs. 80GB in a JBOD on RAID channel 0. One as master and the other as slave. Further you have a 120G drive on the ordinary IDE channel 0 as master and a 100G drive on the same channel as slave. When you add the 100/120G drives your system does not boot. If thats correct, I suspect your problem is that the system attempts to boot on the 120G drive instead of your JBOD. You should check the boot sequence in the BIOS.

Anyway here are some free tips: Why do you use JBOD with 2 pcs. 80GB disc. Do you just want one large partition, or do you you split your JBOD up afterwards? In that case you could just as well have them as two separate disc which would give you much better data security (if one drive in a JBOD fails you may have a problem accessing the rest!). Since you have a RAID controller I suggest RAID0. And put each HD on a each channel as master (not master/slave config as you have now). The two other drives (if thats what you've got) should go as master on your normal IDE channel 0 and 1. CD drives etc. can be put as slave on the normal IDE controller.

If I completely misunderstood your problem, post some more info

You described the problem exactly. One of my cables died so i will just order some more and hook the 120 up to a raid channel. That should fix it right?

FYI: its jboded because that was the first thing i could get to work. I had to have it up so i could typoe a paper for tomarrow. Some day i will fix it and stipe them again. One other thing: I heard that western digitals run best if you use 32k clusters with a 16 k stirpe, is this correct, assuming am playing games, typing up papers and doing some 3ds max/inventor/photoshop?

Thanks again

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Eh. You have a RAID controller and an IDE controller, right? Then why hook the 120G drive to the RAID. If your want some recommendation on the connections, post your controllers and all your drives.

For normal office work, occational gaming, large files etc. I recommend NTFS clustersize 16k and stripe size of 16k. Thats what I use with my highpoint controller. But if you ever is going to make a RAID0, I suggest you temporarily install the OS on a non-RAIDed disc. Boot on this disc, so you can test/benchmark your RAID-array with different setups. When you get it right, partition and format it, and then install the OS on it.

good idea, should put the os on another drive and benchmark it. The way things are working with win2k on a jbod, i think i should try to get a back up OS of win xp on my new 120GB, so i have something to restore my system with if something fails.
Ok, so here are my channels:
IDE Primary: Master:WD1200JB
Slave:WD1000BB
IDE Secondary: Master VD-Rom
Slave:CD-RW
(Highpoint hpt 372 v2.31)
RAID Primary: Master:WD800JB (jbod)
Slave:WD800JB
RAID Secondary: Master:
Slave:
Now, this may sound crazy, but is it possible that one of my raid controller IDE connections is faulty? It seems like i could only get a stripe running on the primary raid channel. Is that possible? Also, what is the best HDD benchmarking program? I used sisoft sandra before, is there something better? Once again, thanks for all the help.

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For the real deal on sustained read transfer rate, I'd take <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/vgrinenko/DiskSpeed32/" target="_new">DiskSpeed32</A> over HD Tach any day. Takes a looong time to run the test, though. It actually seems to read sequentially through the whole disk, not just sampling here and there. Don't know what Sandra does.


<font color=green>I haven't lost my mind. I know exactly where I left it.</font color=green>

I would suggest:
IDE Primary: Master:WD1200JB
Slave: DVD-Rom
IDE Secondary: Master:WD1000BB
Slave: CD-RW
RAID Primary: Master:WD800JB (RAID0)
Slave:
RAID Secondary: Master: WD800JB (RAID0)
Slave:

With the CD drives on separate channels you should get fewer problems with CDR on the fly copy. But if your drives are sufficiently fast that doesnt really matter that much nowadays. Either has advantages and disadvantages. I do, however, suggest you to change your JBOD to RAID0, and put each drive as master on its own channel. Im not 100% sure about the data security on a JBOD, but im pretty sure that if the first drive fails you will not be able to access the second. The question is what happens if the second drive fails. Can you then access the first? Have you ever tried disconnecting first or second drive to simulate a drive failure? IMO the data security of RAID0 is not much worse than JBOD, and I dont think you gain anything at all with a JBOD when you have two very large drives. So why not go for RAID0 and get the extra performance?

You should be able to run the WD800JB as master on separate channels (I do it). If you cant you may have a hardware problem. Double check the jumpers on the WD drives. As far as I remember they have separate settings for master(single) and master(with slave)

Also (just a thought), dont think about making an image of your OS from the WD1200 drive and restore on your RAID0, since and image also restores the cluster size of the source drive.

I just got win xp installed on the 120 gig, so no I can start testing cluster size on a stipe. two things:

1: are you saying i should put my HDD's and cdroms on the same channel? SHouldnt the HDD's be on their own channel, same with the cd-roms? Also I have every drive hooked up right now, while i am running winxp (and typing this message). It only sees my 100gig, not my jbod, but that is probably normal sinse i havent installed any raid drives, infact, i just looked at the hardware manager, and it sees the raid, it just doesnt have any drivers installed so that is fine right?

So, yes, when i get my new rounded IDE cables, i will run each 80 gig on its own channel in raid 0 and benchmark the cluster/stripe size to determine best perfromance and then do a clean instal of win xp in it. Sound like a plan?

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Its a matter of taste. If you rarely do CD-to-CD copy you can just as well put both CDs on the same channel. Then you have an optimum setup regardless of which HD you burn data from. Take a pick at either setup. If it causes problems you can always change it later. Another thing it may be difficult due to cable lengths to have a CD and a HD at the same cable. So thinking about it you should probably go for the setup with HDs on channel 0 and CDs on channel 1.


Hm. Not quite sure. WXP has default drivers for the HPT372, so I think you should be seing your JBOD.


Sounds fine to me. Just remember, dont let WXP format the drive during install. It will probably change the clustersize to 4k.

gotcha, I just installed the hpt drivers and now i can see al my disk and everything work pretty much perfectly. I know it is disgusting, but now I have about 200 gigabytes of storage, (after having a backup). FYI i am using it a a file server in my living center, so peepz can get mives and game from me. Thanks for all the help. I will begin testing my array as soon as i figure out how to modify cluster size and that stuff in windows xp. Once that is done i will post some benchmarks. Do you know how to do that in winxp?

Thanks once again

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Do what? Post benchmark or change clustersize :smile: . To change cluster size, use format from within disk management. That allows you to set allocation unit (=clustersize) from 512B to 64kB. But you dont need to do any benchmarks below 8k since this is most certainly not a good choice.

I am sorry, can you walk me through to how i get to disk management? Do I just right click on the hardrive under my computer? I have xp pro, if that makes a difference.

Thanks

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Right click on 'my computer'. Choose 'manage'. In the leftside menu find 'disk management'. You can also open a command prompt and use the command line version of format. It has a switch for setting the clustersize.

Cool, everything is setup. I will start testing my stipe this weekend and install winxp, win2k and linux mandrake 8.2 on the array and use my 100gig and 120gig for back up.

Thanks for all you help

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