WD360 Raptor Raid 0 problems..

[Foe_Hammer]

Okay so I've put together a new computer and all the hardware is working correctly and heres the specs:

2.4ghz p4
2 gigs of Corsair XMS Twinx1024x3200LL(matched Pair)DDR400
Asus P4C800D (i875 Canterwood)
2 WD360 Raptors SATA
Geforce 4 TI 4600 (albatron medusa w/thermaltake fan and tin coated copper ram sinks)
420w Thermaltake Silent Pure Power w/ PFC
Zalman CNPS-7000 w/ fanmate controller
Audigy 2
Plextor 504A DVD/CD burner
Xaser III v2000a Thermaltake Aluminium Case
Logitech MX 500 Optical Mouse

Okay so I set up or tried to set it up as RAID 0, I set up the array rebooted, and made sure to set up the Bios correctly. Everything fine a this point. I copy my Promise 'RAID' 378 drivers from my support cd to a floppy. as well as make a floppy disk with the FDISK utility. here where i think I messed things up I ran FDISK, did some kind of partition thing I think...I jus followed the likely choices. Now i reboot and set up windows XP from CD, press f6 to install 3rd party drivers and such then I choose the XP drivers. I start installing windows and it partitions 2 drives one was 68 gigs one was 2 gigs? I'm not sure why it did this? Could it be the fdisk utility? I made the the drives as NTFS. Okay and heres another thing when I look at the drive properties of both they say something like promise RAID0 SCSI drives, shouldn't it say SATA drives or is windows getting confused and thinking they are SCSI drives? any help would be great.

Edit: Now looking at the support cd there are drivers for sata and raid, now I know I'm raiding both drives but i'm wondering if I should be using the Promise SATA controllers? hmm. It told me to use the RAID drivers when I install Windows XP. Also do I really need to even use fdisk after I create the raid array with the fastbuild program?

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Foe_Hammer on 04/26/03 11:21 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[LumberJack]

I am looking into this for you but I just wanted to let you know that your setup is sweet I hope you got a nice graphics card to go with that...




To err is human... to really screw things up you need a computer!

 

[Foe_Hammer]

Thx, I update ther other parts..so far...

 

[Nk2k]

WOW!

you got pretty much what I want to get with slight differences here and there...

My CPU is planned to be the P4 2.6C most likely unless I wait and wait and wait ... in that case instead of upgrading by a Ghz I'll just double my current speed and jump at 3.2Ghz

I was considering the exact same kind of mem...

The mobo is where I feel Asus has sorta let me down, and I say that while I still love my P4T-E ... but I don't get why they refused to use Intel's Raid solution or their Gigabit network for that matter ... if it weren't for these two things I would most likely be rushing to get the new mobo by now...

I would have had the 2 Raptors on the 15th of March if MarkOne computers would've had them as they stated ... heh wow, it's been much over a month since then.

about the rest, cool stuff, I totaly wanna grab the Zalman 7000 and I got Augidy 2 Platinum already

Now on to your problem...it really bothers me how you speak of fdisk and the "some kind of partition thing". Have you used that before? if not, then why did you suddenly have the urge to use it?

I'll be honest, I've never had even semi-hardware raid setup going but I know that you don't use Fdisk to get one going (unless you're doing something advanced that you'd have to explain here).

Now you should've been worried when you saw more than a single partition ... RAID 0 just merges the 2 drives to make them appear as one faster bigger harddrive to the OS ... sooo obviously something's not right.

From all I've read so far RAID setups are recognized as SCSI drives by Windows.

about the edit...no you should not have to touch fdisk at all, I'm honestly wondering what you want to do with that. Also, I'm wondering why you went with DDR400 when your CPU's not running at 200Mhz FSB...do you OC a lot?

Alrighty, I hope I didn't sound too harsh or anything like that, just trying to help out ... it's just that the way you address some of the things makes it seem as if you have not read a whole lot on them, and that's why you came here asking for help...I'd be glad to help you more but I'd also suggest you read up on the RAID guides and general harddrive filesystems that you have as options ... there are articles here, as well as in many other places.

Good Luck! Feel free to ask more questions, just be sure to also look around online, not just expect a few people on here to "save you" but be sure there'd always be someone willing to try and help out .

Awaiting updates on the situation...

 

[Fallen]

Lets see...
Regardless of the hard drives installed, Windows will see them as SCSI if they are on any kind of seperate controller (like the SATA RAID controller that you are using). Don't worry too much about what windows is telling you. I've never used that particular setup, but I imagine that when you boot, it loads the Promise Raid BIOS to control the Raid array. Enter the Promise setup program and create a new array (RAID 0, striping) with both drives. The default block size will probably be sufficient. Also, make sure that you set the array to be bootable (there should be an option somewhere in there). After that, it should make you reboot. As you boot into the Windows setup program, press F6 to install the Raid driver (the SATA driver should be built into the Raid driver). Use the Setup disc's format utliliy to remove all partitions. Then create a new partition using any filesystem that you like (NTFS is fine). There should be a little remaining space (certainly not 2 Gb), but it is negligable. After that, format into the filesystem and continue to install. It *should* work fine. I am not 100% sure if this process will work because I have never used your specific setup, and I gave up on Promise Raid a long time ago. I am currently using Highpoint, and have never had a problem with it. I hope that you know your computer will be a beast when you get it up and running (however a bit noisy). Good luck!