Win2k Raid 0 Setup and Install

robbiet04robbiet04
edited March 2006 in Hardware
Hi Everyone,
I've read your forums for a little while now and thought I'd hit you with a question since I seem to be stuck in a little bit of a technical problem. Here goes..
I am trying to install 4 WD hd's in a raid 0 setup off of a silicon image pci controller card. All goes well in getting into the raid bios and setting all 4 hd's up into a raid 0 set. (4 physical drives, 300 GB each into a logical 1.2TB raid 0 array) Now, when I pop in my win2k install disk, I load the appropriate drivers that came with it and progress proceeds (without the drivers I get no disks detected). But, when I get to the selection screen to where the OS needs to install to I see 4 different unpartitioned drives. I am under the impression that I should be seeing one large logical partition. Is this impression wrong or am I missing a step in the procedure?
Thanks in advance for any help that you may have :) I know this is for emergency's only but this is a bit time crit. for me

Comments

  • robbiet04robbiet04
    edited March 2006
    Just thought I'd add in (just remembered) that I recall seeing an hardware error report message, error 00000101, which didn't seem to have any effect on the progress of installing Win2k.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited March 2006
    okay, i'm going to say this one time:

    This is an awful, terrible, horrible idea. A perfect recipe for disaster.

    First: RAID 0 with 4 drives = 4 X more likelihood of losing all of your data.

    Second: You are trying to do a raid 0 off of a cheap, unreliable on-board integrated controller. add a .5x multiplier for failure

    Third: You WILL LOSE EVERYTHING, sooner than you would like.

    I've been putting together fileservers for years and I am not lying when I say that I've experienced about a 90% rate of total data loss for RAID 0. RAID 0 means just that : Zero redundancy.

    What exactly are you trying to accomplish? A single 1.2tb drive? Performance? There are better ways. I cannot stress enough that you should prevent future heartache, tears, and anger and DO NOT USE RAID 0.

    Your problem is most likely a wrong driver. There are usually two seperate drivers for these cheap controllers - a non-raid and a raid driver.

    If you absolutely insist on doing this maniacal thing, at LEAST use a real controller. 3Ware, Adaptec, or something :(
  • robbiet04robbiet04
    edited March 2006
    Well thanks for the response prime. I'd love to be able to utilize more of your advice but, in this instance, I don't think it will be possible. Maybe I should have explained the background to this case a little better. I was simply asked by a department within my college to assemble this given hardware, into a raid setup that would be fairly quick. I had forewarned them that it would not be redundant and the data would therefore be volatile. Apparently this was not an issue for them and as it stands they would still like the server ready soon.

    Now as far as I know I have the correct driver, but I will go back and double check them.

    Would a possible way to go about this just be to ignore the idea of installing a raid 0 and just use the controller card to give the pc connections to 4 sata drives? Then just let windows control and manage the 4 individual hard drives, ignoring the idea of trying to use raid for greater speed? As far as I know I can setup the server in this manner without much trouble.

    Once again, thanks for the input prime.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited March 2006
    YES - if you can avoid raid 0 - avoid it at all costs.

    You can take one of the drives and install the OS on it and then if you really want raid 0, you can stripe the other three using software raid from within disk management. If the client demanded a raid-0 space, I would do it that way.
  • robbiet04robbiet04
    edited March 2006
    Ok, thanks for the advice again prime. I will advice the department I am working for to take this route and see what they think (they should go for it). I appreciate the help too as this is my first hack at a raid setup and I'm just trying to get an understanding of the basics.

    Hopefully I'll be on some more in the future to help out with some other topics. Likely you'll find me in the new "convergence" forums as networking and such tends to be a little more in my field of expertise :)
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited March 2006
    Welcome to short-media :)
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited March 2006
    Hopefully I'll be on some more in the future to help out with some other topics. Likely you'll find me in the new "convergence" forums as networking and such tends to be a little more in my field of expertise
    You are welcome here. And any assistance you'd like to provide in any of the forums would be welcomed.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited March 2006
    Not to mention with 4 drives you will hit the maximum bandwidth of that PCI slot. Much of the I/O will be sufficated by the PCI slot.
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited March 2006
    Your best setup with 4 drives would be a raid 5. better performance and some fault tolerance. Raid 5 will give you around 900gig usable.

    If you are seeing 4 drives then you did not set the raid up properly. What SiL controller are you using?
  • robbiet04robbiet04
    edited March 2006
    Hey guys, thanks for the great welcome :)

    Gobbles, I'm using a SiL-3114 controller card.

    Also, out of plain curiousity, what is the maximum bandwidth to a pci slot?
    -I don't think this system will be used heavily enough to max the pci slot, was just wondering.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2006
    1.06GB/s
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