RAID N00b needs help!

wellmoon

Hi all,

I have no experience with RAIDs at all, but I bought a couple of Raptor X drives and I want to make a RAID0 and install Vista 64 bit on them...

I have an ASUS P5K deluxe WiFi AP mobo and a Q6600 CPU

I installed the drives and set the RAID options in the BIOS according to the manual, I was able to enter the RAID setup (ICH9R controller) and create the RAID and both disks showed as members and the RAID was the correct size.

I went through the Vista setup and everything went fine until it got to stage 2, the actual installation. This screen says 'Copying Files' at the top, but the percentage figure next to it just stays at 0% permanetly and the DVD drive stops reading. The install doesn;t crash because the dots next to the percentage sign keep appearing, but nothing happens.

Vista has a built in ICH9R driver, but I did try the latest driver from the ASUS site anyways and it said an updated driver was neded (I think because the driver meant for XP rather than because I actually need a newer driver)

Does this sound like a problem with the drivers as in actual hardware failure, or does this sound like more of a config issue?

Any help would be massively appreciated.

kryyst

My only help for you, and I'm not trying to be a smart ass, is this - "Don't run Raid 0" - "Don't bother with Raid at all" and lastly "Never run raid off a built in Raid Controller"

You are really only asking for future problems.

wellmoon

kryyst wrote:

My only help for you, and I'm not trying to be a smart ass, is this - "Don't run Raid 0" - "Don't bother with Raid at all" and lastly "Never run raid off a built in Raid Controller"

You are really only asking for future problems.

lol, well thanks for the tips but...

I'm not too worried about the lack of stability for RAID0. I have network storage so RAID1 would be a waste of time and my data is well backed up. I'm not saying I'll keep RAID0 for ever, this is my first attempt and I can't even do RAID0, I don't want to add more drives to the equation =)

The mobo is a pretty good one and what is the point in including an onboard RAID controller if you can't use it? I'm sure a dedicated RAID card would perform better, but I've just sepnt the best part of £300 on hard drives, so I want to avoid any additonal costs if I can at the moment, again, once I'm happy with setting up RAIDs I might upgrade to a better controller in the future...

I'd like to work with what I've got for now so if anyone can advise it would be a help

Qeldroma

I would like to add "Don't install Vista" to the list, but....

I don't think it's your issue.

What SATA ports are your drives installed on? Check. Also, (more out of curiosity) what version of Vista are you using?

I also think you should go to the ASUS site directly and download the specific drivers ... I guess I'm not sure why you have confusion here.

FYI- that will probably be a loud pair of disks.

kryyst

So the issue with onboard controllers is that they work. The problem is that if they fail, you can't replace the controller without replacing the entire motherboard and if you loose your raid controller generally the only way you can get things back is by putting back in the same raid controller that it was first built on. Now if it's a raid card, not such a big deal. If it's onboard though you have to replace the whole board.

Secondly you aren't going to see a significant speed increase in going raid 0 all your doing is turning 2 drives into one drive and if either drive fails you loose everything.

Now as for your specific problem. I assume you created the raid first with the raid controller. Then you put in the windows drive. Did it recognize the disks and allow you to format them?

mas0n

wellmoon wrote:

This screen says 'Copying Files' at the top, but the percentage figure next to it just stays at 0% permanetly and the DVD drive stops reading.

How long are you giving it? I have had several Vista installs hang at that exact point for literally 45 minutes before the install continued. All of those PCs work great to this day and have had no trouble since.

wellmoon

Thanks guys, I think I found the problem, I unraided the drives and did test installs on them both seperately. One of the drives successfully installed home premium 64 bit, and one of them would not even appear in the 'select drive to install on' screen during setup.

So it seems that the problem is a drive fault...

Qeldroma

Thanks for giving us that info, wellmoon- it really helps us with later troublshooting. You'd be surprised at how many times we don't hear back.

BTW- A belated welcome to Icrontic!

wellmoon

no worries, I always leave the solution if I can...

I'l llet you know how the RAIDing goes when I get a replacement drive

wellmoon

* update *

Well, I got my replacement raptor today for the faulty one, I set everything up as I did before, created the new RAID set, and installed vista x64 no probs =)

System seems to be running pretty well so far, seems pretty quick and has a user exprience rating of 5.6

Qeldroma

Well, sounds like you're off then . It is very unusual to hear of a WD Raptor failing. I have a couple (one a 150) and they both look like they're golden for the the 5-year warranty they carry.

My only drive-related complaint about them is that they are noisy critters- a pair RAIDed must make quite a chatter.

Have fun!

wellmoon

My only drive-related complaint about them is that they are noisy critters- a pair RAIDed must make quite a chatter.
[/quote]

It's not too bad, they're the new raptor x's

Louder than a single 7200 naturally, I've done a lot of installing today and I've heard them a couple of times but general use is not noticable at all, and I have a really quiet machine (yate loons through and through =) )