New RAID 0 & OS Instal

Riptide

Hi there... I just ordered a brand new system, part by part. I've reloaded systems, and installed everything except a MB before. So this is my first complete install. installing the MB to the case was easy enough, and everything else just pluged into it's own slot... until it came time to setup RAID 0. I kinda guessed (couldn't see any really detailed instructions step 1, step 2, etc, in the MB's manual) about the SATA & RAID settings. However it looked pretty straight forward. The final momment arrived. I hit the power button, and everything turned on. I setup the RAID (or thought I did), and proceeded. Right about now I was starting to feel really good about myself. Until I couldn't complete the windows installation.

I've read some of the above posts about doing a fresh install (Win XP Pro) using RAID 0. I don't want to try installing using only 1 drive, then setting up the RAID, as this should work with 2 HD's, and I want to learn this way for install's in the future (although I might look at that if I spend any more time - spent 5 hrs so far). I've read the manual that comes with the MB (both the physical one and the pdf on the CD), and a couple of things online. However most of the stuff I see talks about setting it up after the OS has been installed.

After I install the RAID drivers (F6 during windows install), I get a blue screen of death. I've tried everything I can think of, and after telling Windows to install these drivers (or if I don't install these drivers), I get this blue screen saying my system is shutting down to prevent damage.


Here is my system:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600 2.4 GHz
2x 7900 GT's
2x 10k 36GB Raptors
Asus A8N SLI Premium
2 Gig's RAM (4x512MB)
1 250 GB Maxtor (storage - not currently pluged in)
Phoenix AwardBIOS (don't know if this is important)

The MB has 8 SATA slots for HD's. 4 red ones labled SATA_RAID 1 to 4, and 4 black ones labled SATA 1 to 4. I have the two Raptors pluged into the SATA_RAID 1 & 2 - the red ones (however I've tried both - SATA_RAID 1 & 2, or SATA 1 & 2), the 250 GB Maxtor isn't pluged in. Using the RAID config utility (F4 at startup) I've created a 68 GB sil Raid0 set. Going into the BIOS, I've enabled RAID, with the 1st & 2nd SATA Master enabled or disabled (Advanced/Onboard Device Config/NVRAID config).

When I reboot the system, the black screen that flash's on will show my 2 HD's, and indicates that they're configured to RAID 0. However I can't find anything in my BIOS (other than what I've mentioned above) that the HD's are there, or that the BIOS can see them.

These are the two files on my RAID disk that my manual says to install:

NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER (required)
NVIDIA nForce Storage Controller (required)

I start the windows install, hitting F6 to install the above files for RAID, then I get... Setup is starting windows... then the blue screen of death.

bla bla bla...
Technical info:
*** Stop: 0x0000007B (0xf78d2524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

So yeah... if anyone can offer some susgestions on how to correct this that would be great. Meanwhile I'm gonna try doing the install on 1 HD. I don't have anything better to do, and am tired of looking at this very expensive system that currently doesn't work...

EDIT:

Ok, so I unplugged one of the Raptor HD's, and moved the SATA plug from the RAID_SATA to the SATA 1 slot on the MB. I removed the RAID array, and disabled RAID in the BIOS. BIOS does see the WD 36GB HD. But when I start the Windows install (just doing a normal install)... I'm still getting the BSOD. With the same error that I was getting before in the same spot. Now I'm really lost. Everything is brandnew except the RAM - aprox 18 mths old. I have 1 gig of new RAM (2x512) that I'm going to try, however the old RAM came out of my old system, which worked fine earlier today (before I stole the RAM & CPU). I somehow think that I'm going to have to get someone to end up doing this for me...

GRRR very frustrated. :banghead:

Riptide

Ok, I've pluged the 2 Raptor HD's into the black regular SATA slots. I've enabled NVRAID in BIOS, and enabled 1st & 2nd SATA Master. I've setup the HD's in a striped RAID (0) array - pressing F10. I've also set this to be bootable. Now when I look in the BIOS (nvRAID IDE ROM BIOS 4.84), under boot & Hard Disk Drives I actually see the RAID array listed (under hard disk drives). Currently I have the boot process set to boot from the CD Rom, then the HDD. Everything looks good. However after I install the RAID drivers (F6 during windows install), it's still giving me the BSOD (same spot as before).

On my MB CD, comes with 4 options that I can see to get the correct drivers to install RAID. I can either use the 'MakeDisk' option (either sataraid or pataraid), however both of these are giving me the same BSOD that I was getting before. Or I can go into: Force4_Serise/Drivers/Chipset/WINXP/IDE/WINXP/

In this folder there are 4 folders. pataraid, sataraid, raidtool, sata_ide. I've tried copying the files from both the sataraid & pataraid folders, and using these to make a driver disk. The sataraid files gives me a BSOD, and the pataraid files gives me the following error: File nvraid.sys caused an unexpected error (4096) at line 2113 in d:\xpsprtm\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c. Neither of the other two folders contain a txtsetup.oem.

I think I read somewhere that if I were to update my BIOS, I may have more luck. I read a couple of FAQ's on how to do this, and haven't found something that makes it look as easy as it should be. Or maybe I just need some more sleep, so that I might be able to understand what the heck I'm reading...

Here's some more info I've found that is probably needed:

A8N-SLI Premium Revision 1.02
nvRAID IDE ROM BIOS 4.84

If somebody has any ideas on what I could try, or has a link to some easy to follow instructions on how to update my BIOS. I would be eternaly grateful.

Meanwhile... :banghead: :bawling:

Pterocarpous

Hello Riptide. Welcome to Short Media!
RAID is not my strength. There will be others here who can help you with that. It's a bit early in the day here (4:15a.m. west coast USA) so it may be a little while before an expert in RAID can get back to you.

For now, though, I can make referrals to info. for you. To that end, there is a recent thread in this forum where many issues and much information was discussed re: RAID. You might find it helpful.
http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53219

Other links on the web:
http://www.raidweb.com/whatis.html
http://www.acnc.com/raid.html
http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-08-1999/swol-08-raid3.html
http://www.acsdata.com/raid-basics.htm

Kyle

I would recommend downloading the latest BIOS and RAID drivers from the internet (Asus's website).

Riptide

From my understanding I need an OS installed on an asus MB board before I can use the asus utilities (tried on my work desktop - & wouldn't work). I also don't see any simple instructions on how to do this. If somebody could recomend something that would get great.

Mt_Goat

I had a similar problem and needed to change the memory timings and voltage. This does not sound like a controller issue. In all reality you would be much better off putting your OS on one drive and your apps on the second drive by themselves. I have run more RAID arrays w/ up to six drives with some wild benches off them. But in real life a RAID-0 array does nothing for real world OS performance since it affects large files much more than the teenie tiny ones constantly used in OS operation along with increased access times and latency. The last two kill OS performance. Tht is more or less how I am currently set up and it is much better for real world performance than any RAID-0 array.

Riptide

That's one of the issues. I did infact try to do a simple install, using only 1 of the Raptors. Although I can't remember if I deleted the RAID array before trying this - would that matter? Infact there might have been a bunch of RAID settings in the BIOS that I never changed... I ended up getting the same BSOD in the same spot where I was with the RAID. After it's all said and done I might not even use the RAID. But it would be nice to be able to set it up, just to know how to do it down the road. I'm heading over to a buddy's place that has this same MB and has RAID, and he's going to give me a hand getting this sorted out. I'll post an update tomorrow or the next day on how it went.

But thanks for the posts.

Riptide

I don't know why I didn't read http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32751 sooner. Or rather actually try this - maybe come 2am I just wasn't taking in what I was reading. Anyway I followed these directions (but had to remove all the executables (sp - .exe files) from the two folders to make it small enough to fit on a floppy disk. But after I did that, I change none of my settings and this disk worked like a charm. My buddy who I went to see b/c of this issue just laughed. We got it all setup and working. Some initial benchmarking with the RAID looks very promissing.

I just wanted to thank everyone for their help.