SATA RAID setup assistance (new computer issues) - F-Body Road Racing and Autocross Forums

I know we have a few computer guys here and it seems that someone here always knows something about anything that comes up.

Anyway, I'm finally getting a new main desktop computer together at home. I've been using my laptop and now my new laptop as my main computer for a while now and using my Linux machine to cruise the internet since my last drive failure in May. I just built my wife a new machine (new to her) and it's running well, moved the guts of my old machne to my Linux box, gave my brother in law the guts of the linux box and dad got the board, processor, etc out of my wifes old machine...all of those run great (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/huh.gif) ). I've built about 30+ computers in the last 5 or 6 years (I'm not new to this, but this time I'm having issues), but this is my first Socket AM2/XP64 processor and the first time I've used SATA drives and my second shot at a RAID setup.

The machine is an Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe board with an AMD 3800+ X64 (single core) processor, 2 x 1gig Corsair XMS memory (2 1 gig sticks, one in the primary channel of each bank of memory on the board), Asus GeForce 6300 video card (128 meg, non SLI), TDK 48x cd burner, a dual layer DVD burner, and 2 Seagate 320 gig SATA hard drives (and a floppy drive). It's powered by a 550 watt Asus power supply (overkill is my middle name).

When loading XP, I hit F6 to load a SCSI/RAID driver. I made the RAID driver disk using the Asus cd that came with the board (on my wifes computer, good thing I have more than one). During the install, Windows asks for the drivers disk, I insert it, select both drivers that need loaded. It loads them (or seems to) and does the format of the drives, then it asks for the driver disk again. This time it will tell me that the disk is corrupt?(I did try making a new one and it didn't like it either, so it's not truly corrupt, or it shouldn't be) I can't get it to load the RAID drivers the second time it asks for the disk (I've made disks for both the 32 and 64 bit drivers, it will never load the 64 bit, and it only loads the 32 bit at the beginning).

For now, I've seperated the RAID array and it shows two 320 gig drives (I want to mirror them for redundancy, I'm sick of crashing drives every 8 months like I've been dealing with lately). I was going to try to setup the RAID in Windows (it seems to indicate that the utility will do that), but I can't seem to find the utility on the disk that they sent with the board (or, maybe I'm just stupid after staring at this thing for too long).

Has anyone here set one of these up before, or, can anyone see anything glaringly wrong with my approach?

trackbird View Member Profile	Sep 8 2006, 02:59 PM Post #1
FRRAX Owner/Admin Group: Admin Posts: 15,432 Joined: 13-February 04 From: Ohio Member No.: 196	I know we have a few computer guys here and it seems that someone here always knows something about anything that comes up. Anyway, I'm finally getting a new main desktop computer together at home. I've been using my laptop and now my new laptop as my main computer for a while now and using my Linux machine to cruise the internet since my last drive failure in May. I just built my wife a new machine (new to her) and it's running well, moved the guts of my old machne to my Linux box, gave my brother in law the guts of the linux box and dad got the board, processor, etc out of my wifes old machine...all of those run great (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/huh.gif) ). I've built about 30+ computers in the last 5 or 6 years (I'm not new to this, but this time I'm having issues), but this is my first Socket AM2/XP64 processor and the first time I've used SATA drives and my second shot at a RAID setup. The machine is an Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe board with an AMD 3800+ X64 (single core) processor, 2 x 1gig Corsair XMS memory (2 1 gig sticks, one in the primary channel of each bank of memory on the board), Asus GeForce 6300 video card (128 meg, non SLI), TDK 48x cd burner, a dual layer DVD burner, and 2 Seagate 320 gig SATA hard drives (and a floppy drive). It's powered by a 550 watt Asus power supply (overkill is my middle name). When loading XP, I hit F6 to load a SCSI/RAID driver. I made the RAID driver disk using the Asus cd that came with the board (on my wifes computer, good thing I have more than one). During the install, Windows asks for the drivers disk, I insert it, select both drivers that need loaded. It loads them (or seems to) and does the format of the drives, then it asks for the driver disk again. This time it will tell me that the disk is corrupt?(I did try making a new one and it didn't like it either, so it's not truly corrupt, or it shouldn't be) I can't get it to load the RAID drivers the second time it asks for the disk (I've made disks for both the 32 and 64 bit drivers, it will never load the 64 bit, and it only loads the 32 bit at the beginning). For now, I've seperated the RAID array and it shows two 320 gig drives (I want to mirror them for redundancy, I'm sick of crashing drives every 8 months like I've been dealing with lately). I was going to try to setup the RAID in Windows (it seems to indicate that the utility will do that), but I can't seem to find the utility on the disk that they sent with the board (or, maybe I'm just stupid after staring at this thing for too long). Has anyone here set one of these up before, or, can anyone see anything glaringly wrong with my approach?

trackbird View Member Profile	Sep 12 2006, 02:36 AM Post #2
FRRAX Owner/Admin Group: Admin Posts: 15,432 Joined: 13-February 04 From: Ohio Member No.: 196	Well, I got it up and running in the proper RAID format (as I intended). Of all things I was "owned" by two bad floppies. I made a disk, windows seemed to have loaded it, then it asked for it again (and said it was corrupt). I made a second one with the same results. So, I stuck one of them in the other machine to look at the file structure on it and there was none. So, even though it acted like it was writing them, it wasn't. I made a third disk and it loaded and came right up. I just couldn't imagine that I got two bad ones in a row, but it appears that I did. Just figured I better share that one with you guys....oops.