cadams wrote:Apoptosis - Thank you for the tutorial, I have just built a new system with the Intel d975xbx2 and vista ultra oem. I cannot get past the last screen that your tutorial shows.
I have loaded the latest matrix storage as you have shown - the vista still does not recognize my hard drives to load windows.
I have a WD Raptor 150gb and 2 WD caviar 500gb and a plextor sata dvd on my 4 black sata ports. I have them set as non-raid as I am not ready to go Raid yet. Sooo I have a new system and cannot load vista.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks
Cadams,
Are you running quad-core by chance? Also if you are not running raid then you don't need to install the RAID driver as you'll have to format and start over when you are ready to run a RAID Array.
I have core2 6600
I went with the raid drivers because vista would not allow loading onto my drive when I had it in IDE mode in the bios. I could not find any other drivers for the 975xbx sata controller. Vista asks for me to be sure the hard drive controller is activated in Bios but there is no place in the bios to do this- at least not that I can find. thanks for the reply.
I am just installing Vista Ultimate OEM version on an existing Raid 1 system that was set up with Windows XP. When the Vista setup reached the screen to show available drives there were no drives. I inserted the floppy with the Promise drivers for the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe board and the used the browser to locate the A drive. Vista scanned the A drive and did not find any drivers for the ASUS board. In order to load the drivers it was necessary to expand the A drive to show all the drivers available and manually select the WinXP drivers from the available drivers. Once this was done the installation continued without a hitch. I am assuming Vista is looking for a Vista driver and not the WinXP driver, as Windows XP just scans the A drive after you press F6 when adding the drivers on a Windows XP installation.
Snorth54 wrote:I am just installing Vista Ultimate OEM version on an existing Raid 1 system that was set up with Windows XP. When the Vista setup reached the screen to show available drives there were no drives. I inserted the floppy with the Promise drivers for the ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe board and the used the browser to locate the A drive. Vista scanned the A drive and did not find any drivers for the ASUS board. In order to load the drivers it was necessary to expand the A drive to show all the drivers available and manually select the WinXP drivers from the available drivers. Once this was done the installation continued without a hitch. I am assuming Vista is looking for a Vista driver and not the WinXP driver, as Windows XP just scans the A drive after you press F6 when adding the drivers on a Windows XP installation.
My system is up and running! I thought that I would pass along this pearl. I could not install vista until I unplugged all of my hard drives except the boot drive (Raptor 150GB). When this was the only drive on the sata intel matrix (black) plugs along with my plextor sata dvd- then the vista identified the hard drive and controller and loaded without a glitch. Then from vista I added the 2 additional WD 500GB drives and all is right with the world. I also found that it is very important to load the latest drivers available for each bit of hardware. This also applies to the software as well. I Needed vista capable Kaspersky, Spy Sweeper etc. Thanks for your help. This is a great forum!
I have a very similar setup - Bad Axe 2, two 150GB Raptors in RAID 0 (Intel Matrix RAID Controller Channels 0 and 1) array and two non-RAID 500GB Caviars (Intel Matrix RAID Controller Channels 2 and 3).
The problem is that when I select to install Windows on C:\ (the RAID 0) volume, Windows insist to install some installation files to D:\ (the non-RAID Caviar on Channel 2). I tried to partition the RAID 0 volume into C:\ and D:\ but then Windows insisted to install installation files to E:\ (again the non-RAID Caviar on Channel 2). It was clear that Windows wanted to copy installation to the first non-RAID drive available.
The issue is that once Windows has installed C:\ is labeled 'Boot' drive and the first non-RAID drive as 'System'.
What did I do wrong? How can I overcome this problem?
DMB2000uk wrote:Has RAID got to the point where backup (if the RAID breaks) isn't really needed, or do you still keep all your important stuff on separate non RAIDed drives?
Dan
Well you should still have backups on optical media, tape media, or offline disks... In case you get hit by a virus or an intrusion. At home, it might not be that much of a deal, but at work, you should take care of your data. Even if you network has strict backup policies, your job's most important data should be your responsibility. Learn to backup your things on encrypted DVDs and talk to your security manager to know if they offer triple-redundant data. (First redundancy : RAID, second redundancy : realtime disk-based backup, third redundancy : offsite data storage (tape / optical / whatever).
I have a very similar setup - Bad Axe 2, two 150GB Raptors in RAID 0 (Intel Matrix RAID Controller Channels 0 and 1) array and two non-RAID 500GB Caviars (Intel Matrix RAID Controller Channels 2 and 3).
The problem is that when I select to install Windows on C:\ (the RAID 0) volume, Windows insist to install some installation files to D:\ (the non-RAID Caviar on Channel 2). I tried to partition the RAID 0 volume into C:\ and D:\ but then Windows insisted to install installation files to E:\ (again the non-RAID Caviar on Channel 2). It was clear that Windows wanted to copy installation to the first non-RAID drive available.
The issue is that once Windows has installed C:\ is labeled 'Boot' drive and the first non-RAID drive as 'System'.
What did I do wrong? How can I overcome this problem?
Thanks
I had a very similar issue myself. Is your motherboard NF680 based?
The problem didn't seem to be as bad in vista, but XP is a complete nightmare.
Do this: Boot using a DOS floppy / CD, and run FDISK. What does it list your RAID array as? Drive 0 or Drive 1? I have my mobo all set up so that RAID (SATA ports 1+2) should be drive 0 and the single data drive (SATA port 3) should be drive 1 but no matter what I do, the RAID array is ALWAYS the last drive. If I put in an IDE drive for example, the whole system will fail to boot until I repair the system using the OS repair function on the CD.
Regarding the article in general:
I would say that it is not a wise idea to do a vanilla install using RAID 0.
What is a much better idea is to use two RAID0 drives for OS / swap and a second, single drive (or some drives in RAID 1 or 5) for your data.
Use an Autounattend.xml file with your install to tell vista to put the Users directory on the D: drive. That way, nothing valuable is stored on the RAID 0 partition - use GHOST or similar to dump an image of C: to D: and / or a DVD.
I have two 500gb SATA II hard drives 7,200rpms. Windows XP will not recognize 1 terabyte of hard drive space. Will Windows Vista? Which version of Vista?
Have the following:
ASUS M2R32-MVP motherboard
1 AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Windsor 2.8GHz Socket AM2 Processor
2 Maxtor 500 GB Hard Drive SATA/300 16MB 7200 RPM
1 ATI RADEON X1900 Crossfire Edition 512MB PCI-E (Master Card)
1 ATI RADEON X1900XT 512MB PCI-E GRAPHICS CARD (Slave Card)
2GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400PRO DDR2 PC-6400
1GB Corsair (2 X 512MB) DDR2-800 PC2-6400 System Memory
1 SeaSonic S12-600 600W Power Supply
1 Card Reader/Writer 52-in-1 3.5" Internal 3-Color Panel
1 DVD RW 8.5 8.5GB BURNER Latest Model- GSA-H4
1 SONY 16x Internal DVD-ROM SATA Drive
SONY 1.44mb Floppy 3.5" Internal Black Disk Drive
Logitech 967692 Cordless Comfort Laser Desktop Combo
I need to know, if I purchase Windows Vista will I be able to set up the hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration? Windows XP Pro does not, according to Microsoft technical support.
dj-dusty wrote:I have two 500gb SATA II hard drives 7,200rpms. Windows XP will not recognize 1 terabyte of hard drive space. Will Windows Vista? Which version of Vista?
Have the following:
ASUS M2R32-MVP motherboard
1 AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Windsor 2.8GHz Socket AM2 Processor
2 Maxtor 500 GB Hard Drive SATA/300 16MB 7200 RPM
1 ATI RADEON X1900 Crossfire Edition 512MB PCI-E (Master Card)
1 ATI RADEON X1900XT 512MB PCI-E GRAPHICS CARD (Slave Card)
2GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400PRO DDR2 PC-6400
1GB Corsair (2 X 512MB) DDR2-800 PC2-6400 System Memory
1 SeaSonic S12-600 600W Power Supply
1 Card Reader/Writer 52-in-1 3.5" Internal 3-Color Panel
1 DVD RW 8.5 8.5GB BURNER Latest Model- GSA-H4
1 SONY 16x Internal DVD-ROM SATA Drive
SONY 1.44mb Floppy 3.5" Internal Black Disk Drive
Logitech 967692 Cordless Comfort Laser Desktop Combo
I need to know, if I purchase Windows Vista will I be able to set up the hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration? Windows XP Pro does not, according to Microsoft technical support.
Any help would be appreciated.
Scott
There was no need to make your font size that big!
If you are meaning that the formatted capacity of the drives do not equal 1TB (but somewhere around 980GB) then you will have the same problem with Vista.
This is due to the difference in how hard drive manufacturers and software calculates the capacity of things. Hard drive makers use 1000 bytes in a kilobyte (and so on) but software uses 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, so there is a difference in what the drives are claimed to be and what they end up being after formatted.
If you don't mean that, then I don't know what you are on about.
Dan,
Sorry about the font size, I didn't realize I had done that.
When I installed Windows XP Pro on this machine, I followed the prompts and loaded the Raid drivers from the motherboard. Up to this point, the configuration shows the terrabyte. When I continued with the install, the OS wouldn't continue and told me there wasn't a partirion that it could install on. After talking to Microsoft, they explained that the OS couldn't see the drive due to the size? What I'm asking is this, Will Windows Vista see the Raid 0 terrabyte and install? My experience with builds is just above novice. I've built seven computers, but nothing this involved. I'm just trying to maximize this computer's performance.
If you need more info, just ask; I'll do my best to answer.
Great article, wish it came out sooner, just built another system (folding now) and loaded Vista Ultimate on it also. I thought about doing a raid system but figured it would be a bit of a pain, since i dont install floppy drives in my systems anymore.
