Spinners Basic Guide To Setting Up Raid 0 Under Windows Xp
INTRO
RAID, which stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is in the simplest of terms, a poor mans SCSI, SCSI being currently the fastest proven form of a consumer hard disk drive. So why isn’t everyone using SCSI you ask, well it’s very expensive and doesn’t really support the capacities to warrant the extra spending. So what does that leave the average Joe with, basic, simple, bog standard IDE drives, which run through what’s called an PATA controller on a PC’s motherboard. These drives are cheap and have much larger capacities as standard, at least when compared to SCSI drives.
Now very recently a new generation of hard disk drives, which make use of a new faster type of hard disk controller known as SATA, are starting to hit the market place. At the moment the majority of these SATA drives are not much faster than their PATA standard counterparts, except the new standard carries the advantage of having a lot of room to grow. However, currently basic PATA IDE drives still offer the best value for money. So how can you get better performance out of these drives? RAID of course. RAID is a system of allowing individual hard disks to work together in a multitude of different ways and it’s worth pointing out that RAID is by no means limited to standard PATA based IDE drives, but for the purpose of this guide I will be focusing just on them.
RAID comes in many different shapes and sizes but the most popular of RAID configurations is what’s called RAID 0 (striping). Basically this allows two or more (more depending on how many channels your RAID controller has) disks to work together to create what is perceived by Windows as one disk. This newly created virtual disk which is made up of two or more drives, benefits from the combined power and speed of multiple disks working together. So essentially RAID 0 is solely for increasing the disk access performance of your system, and nothing much else.
WHAT YOU NEED
Obviously a RAID 0 array doesn’t appear out of thin air, you need the necessary components. So for practicalities sake let’s work with the assumption that you just need to set up a basic 2 disk RAID 0 array. You will need to get yourself 2 hard disks, ideally they should be the same make and model and for all intents and purposes the hard drives should both be of equal capacity. If they are not, the created array will only be the size of twice the capacity of the smallest drive. Therefore you would be wasting the added space the larger drive contains. So keep the words ‘exactly the same’ in mind when choosing drives for your RAID array.
So you’ve got yourself a pair of hard drives, what else do you need? Firstly you need a RAID controller, ideally you would want to have a motherboard with the appropriate controller onboard, but if you already have a motherboard and upgrading it really isn’t an option, the only other alternative is to buy a PCI RAID controller card. These cards simply just slot into a PCI slot (as the name suggests) and as a result adds the same functionality as an onboard controller would.
So once you’ve got all the necessary components, not to mention two high quality 80pin IDE cables (standard hard drive cables) you’re ready to start setting up the array itself.
HOW TO SET IT UP
PART I : CREATING THE ARRAY
Again, working with the assumption that you are trying to set up a two disk array, you simply need to plug each hard drive individually into each of the RAID controllers IDE sockets. In most onboard cases that would be IDE 3 and 4, and more often than not these sockets will be coloured differently to the standard IDE controllers input sockets (IDE 1 & 2). In the instance of using a PCI card controller there isn’t much to choose from. Any of the IDE sockets will do fine, and unless the number of hard disks out numbers the amount of available IDE sockets on the RAID controller, all hard disks should be on their own channel (and set to cable select). Obviously though if you are faced with a situation where you have more disks than IDE sockets, you simply slave them up to each other just like you would when using a normal IDE controller (e.g two drives on each channel, one set to master the other set to slave ; that though really depends on the controller, as in some instances having two drives both set to cable select on the same controller channel will work just fine).
Once you have the disks plugged in and powered up you are ready to start setting up the array. In the case of using an onboard controller, you need to make sure than it is enabled in the main system BIOS (you enter that in most cases by pressing delete or ESC upon system POST).
Once you have confirmed the RAID controller is enabled
(figure 1, 2) you will see upon initial boot up an extra BIOS menu which should be quite obviously labelled as the RAID controller (usually specifying the controllers make and model e.g. ‘Highpoint Technologies, Inc. HPT370/372 BIOS Setting Utility v x.xx’). It should probably indicate how to enter its configuration menu, in the case of Highpoint RAID controllers CTRL-H is the key command.
(Figure 3)
FIGURE 1
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 3
Once you have gained access to the RAID controllers configuration menu you should see the hard disks which you have attached to the controller
(Figure 4,5 ; the layout of the RAID BIOS depends on the make of the controller). If you don’t then it’s possible you haven’t attached the hard drives up properly to the RAID controller. Presuming you have and you can see them, then follow the instructions to create an array. You will need to select the drives you want to use in the array and then select the type of array you wish to create, in this case a RAID 0 (Striping) array. You may also have the option of configuring the stripe size for the array. If you are not sure of what stripe size to use I recommend using 16K. So you’ve created a RAID 0 array, what next?
FIGURE 4 (inside the Highpoint controller BIOS)
FIGURE 5 (inside the Promise controller BIOS)
PART II : SETTING UP THE DISK AND WINDOWS SETUP
As far as Windows XP is concerned, it’s relatively easy from here on in. If you are setting up an array to compliment an existing installation of Windows, then when you boot Windows for the first time after creating the array then the OS should simply detect the RAID controller and prompt you (if at all) for the necessary drivers, simple as that. You will only then have to create a partition/s and format it/them using disk manager (right click My Computer – Manage – Disk Management). If though you want to install Windows onto the array itself there are a few things to do.
Firstly, you will probably need to edit the boot order (in the main system BIOS) of devices for everything to work. If your newly created RAID array is managed by an onboard controller then it will be labelled as either ‘ATA100RAID’ or ‘ATA133RAID’ or something to that effect. Which ever label it carries though it will essentially need to be set as either the first or second boot device, depending on whether or not you are initiating your XP setup from the CD drive or not. Presuming you are, then ‘CDROM’ essentially will need to be first boot and the RAID controller (‘ATA100/133RAID’) will need to be the second. Once the installation of the OS is complete you can then move the RAID controller up to first boot device as the ‘CDROM’ should no longer be needed in that role. If you are using an external controller like a RAID PCI controller card then there will be an option probably just below the boot order settings (in the main system BIOS still) labelled as ‘Boot other device’ (or something to that effect), you need to enable that option for it to look to boot from the external controller
(Figure 6).
FIGURE 6
Once all that is configured, the only thing you need to check now is that you have a driver disk for the RAID controller. One should have been provided by the RAID controllers’ manufacturer. Once you have that at the ready, you can now initiate the Windows XP setup program.
Almost immediately you must press F6 (when prompted) so as to instruct the setup program that you are using a third party controller
(Figure 7). In this case that is the RAID controller. Later on in the installation you will be asked to provide a driver for the third party controller
(Figure 8) when prompted simply insert the RAID controller driver disk that we spoke of earlier
(Figure 9). If you are asked whether or not you wish to use a driver provided by Microsoft or the one on the disk you provided, I recommend you use the one provided by the manufacture, as it will more than likely be much newer than the one bundled with XP and also will be probably much better suited to your specific device.
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 8
FIGURE 9
All that is left to do now is create a partition (or as many partitions as you like) on the RAID array and then format it. This is pretty self explanatory during the Windows XP setup, so just follow the instructions given. When prompted though whether or not you want to quick format the partition/s, I recommend you format using the proper full format method, especially if the disks you are using are brand new.
PART III : THE FINISHING TOUCHES ; RECOMMENDATIONS
I designed this guide to be as basic as possible, so I purposefully haven’t gone into any of the advanced methods of setting up a RAID 0 array, e.g. setting up an optimal partition cluster size or anything like that. However I can offer you a few basic tips to keep your array running nicely.
RAID 0 arrays get fragmented much more easily than independent hard disk partitions, so regular de-fragmentation is necessary to maintain optimum performance. Also, after the initial installation of the OS, installing a latency patch of some sort such as the ‘VIA performance raid patch’ can greatly increase the controllers performance, though this is ultimately dependant on what RAID controller and motherboard chipset you are using.
RAID 0 is a great way of increasing the overall desktop performance of your PC. Think about that before you next upgrade your system. I hope this guide proves to be helpful.
Written by Jon Scott (SPINNER)
