Faulty RAID card, or faulty user?

[CaptainNemo]

I recently bought an Adaptec 1210SA RAID (2 SATA ports) card and 2x80GB SATA drives (WD800JD) to use as a RAID 1 backup for all of my critical stuff (mostly photos etc.), but I can get only win2k to see one of the drives/ports.

A motherboard from my other computer has an onboard RAID controller (VIA KT600 with VT8327 southbridge or something) which works; both drives and SATA ports show up, and both drives can be installed and partitioned using the signature thingy in administrative tools>storage>etc.

The adaptec card has an onboard BIOS which sees both ports and drives, so I suspect there is a fault in the part of the card between the BIOS and/or controller and the PCI connectors. However, I have to be sure before I send it back (they'll charge me for the testing if it checks out OK).

I'm kinda stuck because (given the general crappiness of the drivers etc.) this could easily be a software fault, but I've tried everything...

Any suggestions?

Axis of Stupid = coop, Kanavit, FUGGER, SoDNighthawk, and ninkey.

 

[RichPLS]

Adaptec drivers are among the best. If card is seeing drives, and OS is not, probally just not formatted.

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So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[jim552]

I think you are just getting a little confused.

There are "some" motherboard RAID controllers that will allow Windows to see both drives as physical entities.

In all RAID cards, that I have seen, this is not true.

The RAID card will see both drives individually but Windows will ONLY see the "logical drive(s)" that have been created and are managed by the RAID card.

Basically, attach the drives to your RAID card. If you are using these drives are boot drives, then use the RAID card BIOS to configure them, if you are using the drives as additional drives you should be able to use the Windows software that came with the card to configure your RAID. (I haven't specifically used Adaptec RAID cards in several years, but Windows configuration of RAID is supported by most cards now so I am just assuming Adaptec supports that as well.)

Both drives should be visible in the Adaptec configuration software, whether you use the cards BIOS or the Windows software.

Tell the software to create an Array, assign the drives, and make it a mirrored array. Viola!

One logical drive will show up in Windows! Only one drive shows up under windows because it is the "array" that is presented to Windows through the Adaptec card and not the "physical drives" themselves.

(I generally, reboot after creating the logical drive, but it's not really necessary anymore. At least in most cases.)

Under the Windows software you should be able to look at the physical drives and determine if they are running, if the array is still mirrored or in a degraded shape, etc.

One thing I do, often, is shut down most non-essential programs, and then go into the RAID software and fail a drive.

That way I can remove the drive for backup purposes. I then install an alternate drive and rebuild the array.

I hope that helps.

 

[Crashman]

When you create a RAID1 array in CARD BIOS, you end up having only 1 drive that Windows can see. That "one drive" is actually 2 identicle drives that are mirrored. Windows doesn't actually see the drives, it sees the drive info presented by the card for the single array.

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[CaptainNemo]

Yes, but for some reason Adaptec's storage manager thing could only see one of the drives in the array (two drives - one logical device etc.)

It's sorted now - I tried to install everything (cards + drives) at once, but it worked when I installed the card and drivers first, and then plugged in the drives are a reboot.

Axis of Stupid = coop, Kanavit, FUGGER, SoDNighthawk, and ninkey.