Can RAID array be bootable startup?

I have a striped RAID array that I have connected to my iMac by Firewire 800, an external USB drive using USB 2.0, and another external HD connected on Firewire 400. Using SuperDuper!, I've been trying without success to make bootable clones on these three HDs. Even though the cloning seems to go well, when I hold down the option key on startup, the drives don't show up. Are these configurations all capable of being bootable startups? Any suggestions on why they don't show up?

Hi William, Happy Holidays!
Supposedly they are, but I've never actually tried the FW/USB combo Raid, tried both seperately in RAID, Which, BTW, I would not recommend, the longest I've had a RAID go is 6 months before destructing themselves beyond recovery.
Also, I should point out that a single FW/800 Boot drive will be faster than a FW/800 USB combo Raid due to the slowness of USB2. I get around 69 MB/Sec with FW/800, and 29 MB/Sec with a 4 drive USB2 RAID, around 20NB with a 2 drive USB2 RAID!

Similar Messages

Can't create raid array in 10.4.6

I am trying to create a mirrored raid array with two Fantom USB 2 external harddrives using disk utility.
I am unable to drag the image of any hard drive into the right window and the create button is never activated.
I have restarted, verified the disks and so on. I hve tried to select a different external disk but that won't work either.
Any ideas what's up.

You can try updating the drivers from the makers site, but it could be that Apple won't allow USB drives to RAIDed.
Unless your recording ET or something where a hard drive failure could mean disaster, mirrors are not ideal form of backup.
Consider auto-cloning and auto-backup software like DeJaVu or Retrospect.
What this will do is give you the benefit of time, cloning will "clone" a whole boot drive and make it bootable in case you need it. (You can clone a whole non-boot drive as well.) Auto-backup will copy user type files and folders, but it's not designed to copy a OS from one drive to another.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/dejavu.html

HD drive can't be recognized as bootable startup disk

Hi
I am using a MacBook with snow leopard. The HD is almost full, so I install new bigger HD. I used disk utility to restore the new disk from the old disk.
But the mac can't recognize the new disk as bootable startup disk. I get nothing when try to set startup disk in "System Preferences". There is only "Network Startup" option is available.
Every time start, I need to press the "Option" when I turn it on, and select the disk manually.
What should I do? Is there a configuration file so I can set the disk to be the startup disk?

Nihao GuoGuo & welcome to discussions.
Your new HD needs to be set for 'GUID' before it can function as a boot drive on an Intel machine - this means for use with Snow Leopard, which requires an Intel processor, the disk must have a 'GUID primary partition map'.
You should use the version of Disk Utility that is supplied with SL (/Applications/Utilities folder) and reformat the drive if you want to use it with your current configuration. When reformatting, create at least one partition (primary) and enable the GUID option at that time.
Without this particular configuration, the drive will not be able to perform as a boot drive with an Intel based computer and OS X 10.6.x

RAID 5 not bootable

My Mac Pro running 5.8 with a card running RAID 5 had worked well for 2.5 years. Recently, it would attempt to boot and stall at the apple screen and shut down. I booted from CD, and RAID utility said that a rebuild was necessary. 4 drives in the bays. After rebuild, all green lights. The system will still not boot from the RAID drive. I booted in target disk mode and could see the RAID drive and obtain data from it. There was a warning that the drive was not reliable, or something of the sort. All data is intact and backed up, though not in time machine. How do I restore functionality to the RAID Array? Any tips to test the function of the raid card, or are green lights enough?

HFS has a little bit of trouble with its own integrity. For one, it doesn't pass along or record I/O errors well, that is one area that SoftRAID has but of course not an option.
SuperDuper is full volume mirror images; bootable backups. I even store a system image on sparse DMG I keep on an array that I can mount and restore, as well as boot volumes.
Disk Warrior is desgined like TechTool Pro 6 to be run ideally from a hard drive, one designated just for that type of use. A minimal but complete set of drivers and utilities running latest OS version.
The idea is if the system (and most errors are with system and not data) goes belly-up, you can just restore a good system image.
A separate OS partition - part of your RAID; another just for system maintenance.
I would never rely on TimeMachine, but at least you have multiple sets.
Redundancy in backup sets and methods.
Even if one backup goes the other is intact.
Always having one set off line at any given time.
If you have over 3TB of data, then you must have a large drive or even 2nd RAID0 to accomodate (TimeMachine likes to have capacity 3.5x the data).

Image Software on nVidia RAID arrays

Has anyone been able to get a disk imaging program to work with the nVidia RAID array? I have tried Acronis True Image, Norton Ghost 9.0 and the old Drive Image. I have been unable get the rescue/recovery disks to recognize the RAID Array. With Acronis, it appears that they don't have the Linux drivers for the RAID array. Ghost 9.0 is supposed to support RAID arrays, but when I try to load the drivers, I get a message that it can't find nvraid.sys, despite the fact that I supply that file on the floppy disk. I spent 1.5 hours on the phone with Symantec Technical Support and their only answer was that I would receive a phone call from a supervisor in 3 days.
I can get Norton Ghost to work from within windows, but in order to restore an image of my C: drive I need to gain access to the RAID array from the recovery disk.

I have sort of got it to work with ghost9 .
I have written a plug-in for nvraid/nvide for the bartWinPE cd made with PEBuilder 3032.
V2I Images can then be browsed with imagebrowser and files/catalogs be restored
to arrays partitions .
The thing that does not yet work properly is the V2I protector executable cause the bart plug-in for .Net gives problems .(not sorted out this yet)
The BartWinPE cd is also of course equipped with ghost9 plugin .
So basicly the PC is booted with bootable Windows PE cd (like the ghost9 CD) ,
windows runs from cd&ram . And all the nvraid arrays is visible .Restoration made
with V2I image browser .
The plug-in ( INF file ) :
Code: [Select]
; PE Builder v3 plug-in INF file
; NVIDIA RAID (Windows XP)
; Created by Syar2003
[Version]
Signature= "$Windows NT$"
[PEBuilder]
Name="DSK_NvRaid"
Enable=1
[SourceDisksFiles]
nvraid.sys=4,,1
nvatabus.sys=4,,1
[SetValue]
"txtsetup.sif","SourceDisksFiles","nvraid.sys", "1,,,,,,_x,4,1,0,0"
"txtsetup.sif","SourceDisksFiles","NvAtaBus.sys", "1,,,,,,_x,4,1,0,0"
"txtsetup.sif","SCSI.Load","nvatabus", "nvatabus.sys,4"
"txtsetup.sif","SCSI.Load","nvraid", "nvraid.sys,4"
"txtsetup.sif","SCSI","nvatabus", """NVIDIA NForce Storage Controller"""
"txtsetup.sif","SCSI","nvraid", """NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER"""
"txtsetup.sif","HardwareIdsDatabase","PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_008E", """nvatabus"""
"txtsetup.sif","HardwareIdsDatabase","PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0085", """nvatabus"""
"txtsetup.sif","HardwareIdsDatabase","PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D5", """nvatabus"""
"txtsetup.sif","HardwareIdsDatabase","PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00EE", """nvatabus"""
"txtsetup.sif","HardwareIdsDatabase","PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00E3", """nvatabus"""
"txtsetup.sif","HardwareIdsDatabase","PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00E5", """nvatabus"""
"txtsetup.sif","HardwareIdsDatabase","*_NVRAIDBUS", """nvraid"""
"txtsetup.sif","HardwareIdsDatabase","GenNvRaidDisk", """nvraid"""
If the BartWinPE cd is equipped with ghost8 you should be able to restore
full disks/partitions with the *.gho extension .
But then the images must be buildt with ghost8 (from the BartWinPE cd first).
Though i have not had the time to test that yet .
Links:
Plug-in repository
http://www.reatogo.de/BartPE/BartPE_plugins/repository.htm
PeBuilder
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

RAID array became drive F: instead of C:

Hm... when installing Win XP new on my new system, the RAID array (which is bootable and has the op.system) became drive F: and my ZIP drive is now drive C: 8o
It wouldn't bother me too much, but some software insists on being de-compressed to C: during installation - good thing that not one of my CD-ROMs became drive C: , lol
Any way to change the drive assignment so that the array would become C: ?
On my earlier K7T266Pro2-RU, I had no such phenomenon ?(

changing it is childs play, however you cant do it.
first ill tell you how, then ill tell you why you can't.
ok, goto control panel, then administrator options, then computer management, then select Disk Management
Down on the left hand side at the bottom you should see your disks and Cd drives etc with there current letters, right click and slect new letter, but you can use a letter already in use, so the one on C or D you want to use, change first to H or whatever, then change the one thats wrong to what it should be and then change back your drive to C or D or what you want it to be.
But, why can't you change it?
Because all the root paths for windows will be pointing to F:\ and if you change to C:\ you may well find gods unholy mess on boot up. Thats if it even boots up.
Way to do this is boot PC with only CD and hard disk on, when XP is all happy make sure letters are ok, and then start adding devices and changing letters.
When all service packs and updates installed and win XP totally happy, at that point i suggest doing the activation, not before, incase something goes wrong and you need to reinstall.
hope that helped..

Upgrading QT caused my RAID array to drop frames again!

FCP 5.1.4. Upgraded QT today as per software upgrade. Repaired DPs after. Just as last time, now my RAID array drops frames on PB. Last time, I thought it was a controller card problem, but a student said to just reinstall QT using steps from Michael Eilers' March 18, 2007 post. It worked. I can try this again, but my question is: Do I have to do this everytime I upgrade QT? Am I doing something wrong? This can't be the SOP for upgrading QT, can it? Maybe I should look at LaCie for updates to the RAID? Advise and help to answer this would be greatly appreciated.

REPEAT AFTER ME: WHEN YOU HAVE A STABLE OS AND APPLICATION COMBO, CLONE YOUR STARTUP DRIVE. This is the only way, I repeat, THE ONLY WAY to work if you depend on your system for your livelihood. I clone to a second internal drive and I can be back to work in a matter of minutes if things go south after an update or upgrade. There is no way that Apple can thoroughly test every possible hardware and software combination. And do not expect a third party supplier to have updates immediately ready.

WinXP-64 bit corrupts existing RAID array

I've got an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard running Win XP Pro SP2 on two 36 gig SATA Raptors. Everything was working fine, but I wanted to try the 64 bit version of XP. Grabbed an old 80 gig PATA drive and threw that in the case. Unplugged the SATA drives so as not to risk messing with the existing working OS. Installed the latest 1218 x64 beta and it worked well.
The problem was that when I shut down and reconnected my old RAID array, windows wouldn't boot from it. I lost everything and had to rebuild Windows from scratch. So now I know to never unplug the SATA drives
Rebuilt WinXP on the RAID array and then tried rebooting with the PATA drive with the 64 bit OS. Came up with the "drive needs checking" screen, and proceeds to "fix" the RAID array while ignoring my frantic pounding on the Logitech USB keyboard to stop. Rebooted and yes, the new install was nuked. Okay, since it's gone anyway, reboot to the 64 bit OS and make sure it's got the 64 bit RAID drivers installed.
Reinstall WinXP on the RAID array, reboot to the 64 bit OS on the other drive and the same old scandisk comes and nukes it AGAIN!
So now the PATA drive is sitting on the shelf again, unless someone here can suggest what is causing this problem.
System Specs
Athlon64 3500
gig of PQI 3200 at 2-2-2-5 2.6
2x36 gig Raptors on ports 3-4
Plextor PX-716a DVD+_RW
Visiontek X800 Pro.

The first time you re-installed Win 32 on the raid that was a bit drastic. A repair ought to have done the job.
The problem was probably that you disconnected the array but that's where the boot.ini was and that file needed to be modified to add the path to the Win64 install.
Since you took out the array the Win64 install created a new boot.ini on the PATA drive. Even when you tell BIOS to boot off the array, Windows has a bad habit of looking at the IDE channels & using the boot.ini if it finds one there - but the file it found didn't point to the array of course.
So basically if you already have Win32 on the array I would leave that array connected normally when installing Win64 on the PATA drive and all should be well.
I've installed Win64 on the same array as my Win32 install and they co-exist happily. I reckon that's the most efficient way to do it. The main thing is to make separate partitions for Win32, Win64 and data files when you install Win32 in the first place. The two OSs can share the same data files, incuding stuff like email.

Can I store multiple bootable images in the same partition?

Can I store multiple bootable images in the same partition or do they each need their own partition? I am going to use disk utility to create a copy of my current OSX 10.5 system on a new external drive before upgrading to Snow Leopard. Then I want to create a bootable copy of Snow Leopard. Can I create one partion large enoough to hold both images or will I need to create a separate partition for each. I have done booting off of an external hard drive and it works well. I do not know how the system sees this and thus if I store both images on the same partition, will it give me both as a boot option at startup or will it see only one?

They will need separate partitions to be bootable

Is It Possible to Clone RAID Array in a Safe and Easy Way?

Why do computer users need to clone RAID array, especially Windows Server users need to do RAID cloning? Generally speaking, they need to clone RAID array regularly in order to upgrade disk or migrate data from small disk to a larger one. A typical
example is that when the partitions on the hardware RAID runs out of space, you may prefer to rebuild the hardware RAID with larger hard disks. Then, you need to backup the data to another place, rebuild the hardware RAID and restore data again.
What a time-consuming task!
Is it possible to clone RAID array in a safe and easy way? The answer is yes and this article will introduce a RAID cloning software.

Hi jiangchunli,
Were you looking to post this question in some other forum? This looks like related to RAID and Disk upgrades.
This forum is meant for
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/recovery-manager/
Please let us know if this is indeed Hyper-V Recovery Manager related so we can help better.
Thanks
Praveen
Praveen/ www.PraveenKumar.in

Raid array being seen as 2 individual drives

Hi. Here is the issue as posted in other places. Still searching for the answer to this one.
Specs:
K7n2 delta2 platinum with b50 bios
2x1gb crucial pc3200 2.5cas ram
AMD Barton 2500
2 x 160gb 7200rpm 8mb cache SATA Samsung Hdd's
Thermaltake 430w psu
Gainward fx5700 ultra graphics
OS's: original xp corp, slipstreamed xp corp sp2
raid drivers: nvraid.sys v4.27, 5.10, 5.11 (also the needed nvatabus.sys with those)
I am NOT overclocked.
fsb 166
1:1 ram/cpu
no spread spectrum or other garbage
ddr400 patch disabled
PSU gives presumably stable reading (according to what I see), with amperage ratings above the required.
checked and rechecked cables for bad ones
ran mulitple scans on drives, all come up drives OK
I HAVE installed into Raid 0 already, this is not an issue of hardware failure as far as I am concerned.
So here is the scenario
I have properly set up the array, using correct bios settings and the raid setup utility, for a raid 0 array of those 2 hdd's listed. When booting into xp, either version, I have used all 3 of the driver sets listed. I have been reinstalling to do some performance tests on different configurations.
Anyway, for the last few nights I have been trying to get the windows setup to see the raid 0 array as one 300gb drive. It does not, no matter what I try. It sees them as 2 drives, each being 160gb (or thereabouts). These drives are matched, same firmware, same lot, so that should not be an issue.
I have used numberous tools to delete the mbr on the drives, both in an array and as single drives. I have done the same as well as tried an install and formatted each drive individually, still the same effect when the raid array is recreated.
Basically, I can find no good reason why the array is seen as individuals and not as an array. It is interesting to note, that even though xp setup sees the the array as 2 drives, I can complete the text based portion of setup. However, rebooting to start the GUI portion of setup, it will not boot. Obviously becuase the bios has the controller as the nvraid controller and it is supposed to be a raid 0 array, so I expected that.
Short of rewriting the mbr, either by deleting it or by changing each drive by formatting/partitioning/installing an OS on them, I cannot think of how to fix this. I know the drives and xp cd's work because I have already installed with them.
I understand what to do in the bios portion, and in the raid setup utility portion. I know that I can boot into windows as a single drive and use the nvraid tool to set it up, but that is not the way it should be, and that is not the way I am going to learn WHY this is happening.
Roger that. First set in bios enable raid (in this bios I have to enable IDE array, then choose which controller to actually enable raid on, which happens to have been SATA 1 & 2).
Second, upon reboot, I use the F10 key to enter raid utility. Then, set to striping, set stripe size (which was one of the things I am testing), and add the drives to the array. Next step is to create it. It asks to clear disc data, and it is done.
Have deleted that array as well as just cleared it. Have deleted it and reboot and rebuild it. Have deleted it, reboot, change bios back to non-raid, reboot. Reboot. Change bios back to raid enabled. Reboot. Rebuild array in raid utility, reboot. Run setup, only see 2 hdd's, not one array.
Umm, yep, that is about it.
More to the story now.
From some other posts I tried this.
1. destroy array. reboot. disable raid in bios. reboot. verify sata's visible as singles in bios.
2. power down. pull plugs on sata's. reboot. no drives visible.
3. pull power. jumper clear cmos. wait 60 seconds. re-pin jumper. power up.
4. verify no drives. verify default bios settings. all is good
5. plug drives in. reboot. seen as singles. erase mbr on both drives. reboot
6. enable raid in bios, and choose sata 1 & 2 as "enabled". reboot.
7. use F10 key to setup raid. Here is the interesting part. Even though I deleted the array prior to all of this, and removed the drives to force an ESCD update, and cleard the cmos with the board jumper, and then before raid was enabled, cleared the mbr on the drives, when I started the raid utility, the array was already set up. That is the problem, whatever that is. I have read snippets where it is claimed that this chip or bios or whatever stores some kind of a table on this stuff, but this is a bit out of hand.
That combination, IMO, should have cleared anything out. But, the saga continues.
Thanks for you help BWM
[Edit] BTW, I have finally found a utility that will see a raid array and allow me to clear the arrays mbr. It is called SuperFdisk and is at ptdd.com. So far the only one that see's the 2 drives as 1.
Yeppers.
Started with v5.10 which came on a floppy with the mobo. Told setup to use both, nvatabus.sys and nvraid.sys. Even switched which one of the 2 I picked first, just to see.
Same thing with v4.27 and v5.11. Also tried it with just the nvraid.sys and just the nvatabus.sys (which obviously does squat for raid, lol)
Trying some new things now. Post in a little bit.
I am officially at 'Wit's End'.
Here is what I have tried now.
1.pull drive cables. pull power. jumper clear cmos. wait. power up. no drives
2.plug sata 1 in. boot. drive detected.
3.boot to command.com, run MHDD, which is a nice russian utility similar to Spinrite. Used this to clear the mbr at hardware level, and do a complete erase.
4. reboot to command.com. run superfdisk. erase mbr.
5. pull plug on sata 1, and plug in sata 2 with sata 1 cable. repeat the erasure steps listed above.
6. pull plug on sata 2, no sata plugged in. reboot
7. change bios to raid enable on sata 1 & 2. power down
8. plug in sata 1 & 2. power up.
9. inspect raid utility. no listing of any arrays. reboot
10. in raid utility, build array. did NOT clear discs. reboot
11. attempt install. single drives found again (used both drivers).reboot
12. in raid utility, optioned to CLEAR discs (funny, rebuild option is never valid).reboot
13. attempt install, both drivers, still seen as 2 individuals.
Things to note. When creating an array when presumably there are none, it assigns the raid array an ID of 2. Upon reboot, the ID is now 1. Don't know what difference that makes.
Also, tried the install listed above with APIC functionality both off and on. Also, when on, set MPS to both 1.1 and 1.4. In addition to this, each variant I tried manual HAL layers of, in this order, ACPI (the one that actually spells ACPI out), ACPI Uniprocessor, MPS Uniprocessor, and let it choose it for me.
So, here I sit in a barca-lounger at 'Wit's End', with a warm cup of java and a dinner mint.

Here is the final product on the floppy disk that I used to successfully install a stable raid 0 on the MSI K7N2 Delta 2 Ultra 400 Platinum ms-6570e motherboard.
On root of floppy, from driverset 6.70. (after much testing, I used driver pack 5.10 for my nic and smbus. I used the realtek sound drivers off the cd for audio. I have used every driver pack I could find, and while some did offer better I/O or read/write latency, this set in general provided the most stable environment. The only drivers I used were these floppy drivers for SATA, the nic and smbus just mentioned, the sound just mentioned, and updating the nvide drivers to mside drivers)
<from sataraid directory>
disk1
idecoi.dll
nvatabus.sys
nvraid.cat
nvraid.inf
nvraid.sys
nvraidco.dll
<from legacy directory>
nvata.cat
nvatabus.inf
I used the txtsetup.oem from the sataraid directory, but edited this:
[Files.scsi.RAIDCLASS]
driver = d1,nvraid.sys,RAIDCLASS
inf = d1,nvraid.inf
dll = d1,nvraidco.dll
catalog = d1,nvraid.cat
[Files.scsi.BUSDRV]
driver = d1,nvatabus.sys,BUSDRV
inf = d1, nvraid.inf
dll = d1,idecoi.dll
catalog = d1, nvraid.cat
To this:
[Files.scsi.RAIDCLASS]
driver = d1,nvraid.sys,RAIDCLASS
inf = d1,nvraid.inf
dll = d1,nvraidco.dll
catalog = d1,nvata.cat
[Files.scsi.BUSDRV]
driver = d1,nvatabus.sys,BUSDRV
inf = d1, nvatabus.inf
dll = d1,idecoi.dll
catalog = d1, nvata.cat
Now, it is important to note that I installed or attempted to install at least 50 times. Bare minimum. I noticed when I use this custom driver disc that in the GUI portion of setup, XP asks me for files from the disc. I tried lot's of different things to alleviate this, and denied some of them.
One thing that really bugged me was that the bios would see my #2 optical, slave on secondary IDE channel. A dvd/rw drive. And I could even start the setup from it. But, once I got about 3/4 through copy file stage on text setup portion, I would hang. Becuase the drive was no longer accessible. Booting from the master would get me to the desktop, but the slave optical was nowhere to be found. Updating the ATA/IDE controller to the ms ide drivers would get it visible, but I kept having issues with stability after I did that.
The most stable method I found was to use my above listing of driver files for the floppy, and when in GUI mode setup asks about NVCOI.DLL, I skipped it, ignored it, and did not let setup install it. That actually got me to the desktop, with access to the slave optical as a "removable drive". It even knew what the hardware was. It just could not access it. On a reboot however, back to not seeing it. This method however did allow me to update the nvide driver with the mside driver with no stability issues. So, for me it was a raving success.
Here are some links regarding the SATA RAID driver workaround:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:jHbX5bNfGx4J:www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t51140.html+nforce2+nvraid.sys+ms+ide&hl=en&client=opera
http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=292&Itemid
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:J9UhG2Kd8W4J:www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php%3Ft%3D32751+xp+2+sata+raid+0+seen+as+individual&hl=en&client=opera
Early on one problem I noticed was that in text setup mode of xp installation, there were long pauses that I have never seen before. I noticed that with both ide and sata installs. Also I noticed that when booting there was a really long pause when the xp logo is first seen in a sort of dim state till when it became bright and vivid.
Come to find out that this is a more or less typical scenario. Most instances that I read about were all pointing to the nvide driver. So, I found if I just updated the PATA controller to the standard ms ide driver, that went away and the whole system ran better.
It took awhile to figure out that if you install a driver with the nForce2 chip, you had to uninstall it or you will have issues. Herein was the main problem I encountered with the SATA RAID installs. The nvatabus.sys driver was required for an SATA RAID install. Omitting the ata driver was impossible. And for awhile I had no success updating the ms ide driver once I was to the desktop without major instability. Here are some links regarding the drivers for this chipset:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/latest-drivers-for-nforce-3-vt60240.html
In my browsing I came across some pretty interesting articles regarding ACPI. One thing I started playing with was the different HAL layers that xp installs on it's own, vs. me picking one manually (F5 key). I must have started the setup at least 50 times to figure out this: that this particular board does not give me the bios settings to install xp with anything but the ACPI Uniprocessor Hal. For instance, the MPS Uniprocessor HAL is much more responsive, but it lacks the IRQ's needed for setup to see the raid array. I booted to each one, some locking the system up, some booting OK. The one I found the best performance with early on was the one that spells out ACPI, not just initialized. (sorry, I don't want to look it up).
I seemed to be getting closer, but I could not find the needed bios settings to properly manage my ACPI, and since I was trying for RAID, I could not use the one that did work. Here is a link for that kind of stuff.
http://www.fceduc.umu.se/~jesruv98/info/acpi/acpi.html
Another thing that I did not like was being forced to use the dynamic overclocking feature of this board. I have a 333mhz barton core, and I have ddr400 ram. In optimized (fool proof) mode in bios, I was running asynchronous. I did not want that. So I set it down to run at 166mhz, with very slow and conservative settings on everything. Unfortunately, if I did this "manual" method, I was forced to use the dynamic overclocking. I thought I had that figured out. So I set everything to "optimized". But, as it turns out, the system had terrible stability without the dynamic overclocking set to at least Private. What this meant is that I could not rule out that my stability issues (corruptions and hangs and bsod) were from being overclocked even a tiny bit or not. And as if that were not enough, this bios has a special set of settings you must unlock to see. And one of those is paramount in achieving a stable system. It is called the DDR400 patch, and it is enabled by default. So, by pressing SHIFT+f2 AND CTRL+F3, these settings are now available. Like I said, I had to disable that DDR400 patch setting.
I also found out from the first day that my board shipped with the latest bios. I flashed the 2 prior versions with no success in more stability. After about 6 weeks of getting whipped on by this board, I found mention of some modded bios's for this board. I have used modded bios's in the past, some worked wonders, others required some serious effort to recover from. What I found out about this board is that there are 2 players who make the modded bios's. Here is the first index I found from a german website. This one actually is for the older B4 version only for the Platinum.
http://storage-raid-forum.de/viewtopic.php?t=2824
And here is an english forum for pretty much the same thing
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/bios-mods-for-k7n-and-k8-boards-vt55014.html
These links have a bit more information, and I decided to go with these. I tried versions b61,b62 and b71. I found b71 to work the best for me. Mind you I am not into overclocking or what-have-you. Just a rig that performs as well as it was advertised to do. Try these out for the bios information:
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=385480
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=84715.0B62
Here is a page that had a bunch of misc stuff I found interesting:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:QkvLeKcbwjQJ:www.amdzone.com/modules.php%3Fop%3Dmodload%26name%3DPNphpBB2%26file%3Dviewtopic%26p%3D75383+nforce2+ultra+nvraid+driver+freeze&hl=en&client=opera
In the end, I have, I think, conquered this board. My findings can be summed up as follows, all in my opion only I guess.
1. There are some ACPI/APIC issues with this board or this chipset. I believe it also included drivers and some can be attributed to XP.
2. There are some major bios issues with this board.
3. There are some major driver issues concerning SATA/RAID. I am not sure who get's the boob prize, nVidia or MSI.
The only way I have found to get RAID 0 installed and stable is to modify my bios (which is a modded beta version), modify my driver disk for SATA/RAID, modify my install sequence for those drivers, modify my drivers within windows after setup, use different drivers from different driver packs for different pieces of hardware, and modify my HAL layer after everything else is done, to achieve peak performance.
If I had not spent soooo much time trying to get a stable install, I would have built up an Unattended CD, which has some possibilities for forcing non WHQL drivers. But, hey man, I am totally burn out on this board. And all it was for is a spare LAN box for when I go to a lanparty. Sheesh. Murphy's law.
Oh, and I also found out, with my own eyes, that the Soyo KT600 Dragon+ that I dumped for this wonderful board, is way faster. Faster read/writes, faster throughput on the nic, faster booting, much faster installs of xp. As a matter of fact, I could get my KT600 to get a consistent thruput on the network to my older KT266a board at 99%. That is pretty fast. 2 of these Platinum boards, on a sweet switch that is tweaked, will only go up to 91%, no matter how much I tweak them. The gigabit connects via a crossover cable at about 38% of full bore. This is tweaked stuff, but still. I listened to the hype. Dual channel memory, giglan, etc etc.
I hope this may help anyone else out there who is still fighting with these issues.
Out.
sul

Raid array removed, hard drives now wont work?? help

Hi all,
I had a KT266 pro2RU motherobard with 2 ibm 40gig hard drives that were in raid mode 0,
I took the 2 drives out of the computer and wanted to use one of them in another computer on a standard drive controller (single drive not raid) and i cant seem to access the disk to format it or install windows xp on it?, it keeps saying write access denied?,
I am thinking that i should have unmounted? the raid array before taking the drives out to put them back to normal but dont have the raid system any more, is there any way i can make these 2 40 gig drives work now?, or has it overwritten the HD bios or something?
If anyone can help i'd appreciate it
Cheers

i would try fdisk on it or partition magic if you have that
http://www.bootdisk.com will get you an me boot disk has f disk

[VIA] K7T266 PRO- RU motherboard: Windows XP on a RAID ARRAY (fasttrak100 LITE)

Hi All!
I have a
MSI K7T266 PRO- RU motherboard, BIOS is the latest, official from MSI website,
Problem short description: Windows XP (sp1 or sp2 english, I tried both)
will not install when I set 2 x 40 Gig = ~80 Gig Stripe Array.
detailed description:
motherboard K7T266 PRO- RU BIOS 1.9 AMI BIOS.
AMD ATHLON XP 1700 + "Palomino" microprocessor, at default speeds.
one piece of 512 PC 3200 RAM, can tell details later.
Power supply: 400 W CODEGEN model : 300X.
HDD-s : one IBM deskstar, fully functional, and a SEAGATE barracuda. seagate SEATOOLS, IBM DFT 32 no errors both.
I set in the FASTTRAK 100 LITE "PDC20276R" (written on the chip) bios a STRIPE array. Powerquest drive magic , or the Windows XP CD handles it fine , as a 80 gig disk.
I downloaded ALL available versions of the FASTTAK 100 LITE driver from the MSI website.
(only tried: MSI driver FASTTRAK 100 lite, the only available driver on the MSI website, and various drivers from www.promise.com) ( http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=15&category=driver&os=0&go=GO ) (but I guess they WONT support my raid controller on the motherboard)
Windows XP CD , booting, Press F6 for additional RAID /SCSI drivers, I put in the floppy, choose WinXP fasttrak lite driver, windows continues, even formatting the 80 GIG disk, copy files- access the FASTTRAK.SYS driver, EITHER it says: no fixed disk present, press F3 to exit windows setup, or windows setup continues, copies files, reboots, and then STOP ERROR
http://www.martin555.dyndns.org/stop.jpg
please, help me with the following:
how to install XP on a raid array.
is it worth, will it be little bit faster disk load times etc?
is it secure if I trust the HDD-s?
any clue, how to overclock the AMD 1700+ athlon XP palomino to its maximum, but still stability?
AND : I read a lot about some MOD-ded BIOS called " KUNIBERT" , which makes the LITE raid to a FULL RAID and some other extras? where to get it and what to do?
email me if you can martin5 "at" freemail.hu
THANKS !

pardon me, dump? my english is not very perfect.. you mean to trow away, replace to something better, more stable power supply, more powerful?
you must see... first I would like to resolve the "installing XP on a raid array" problem,( how is it possible, is it worth, will it speed up hard disk access and load times... etc... ) and after that maybe I will OC the machine...
it is now , with a 8 cm ventillator and a large aluminium cooler 39 Celsius IDLE and goes to 45 Celsius during EVEREST benchmarking test. (temperatures on 1700+ default setting and OC-'d to 1900+. just experiencing with it. ) (I saw the toms hardware guide movie , smoking processors..)
cheers, Marton.

Unable to add partition on raid array, device or resource busy.

Greetings,
I want to be able to create a disk image of a software raid of one of my arch box.
I'm able to create my image with G4U successfully. I'm also able to restore my image without error on my new box.
When my system boot up, I make sure that my raid array are up by doing cat /proc/mdstat.
I can see that md1 and md2 are 2 of 2 and active raid 1. But, when I look at md0 this is what I got:
md0 : active raid1 sdb3[1]
6289344 blocks [2/1] [_/U]
I try to add the partition sda3 to md0 array with this command:
mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --add /dev/sda3
The output of this command give me this :
mdadm: Cannot open /dev/sda3: Device or resource busy.
It seems that this error only occurs on /dev/md0 (/) array. I'm 100% sure that both, my image and my drive (vmware hdd) are good.
This is my partition table:
/dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 = /boot (md1) 100MB
/dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 = swap (md2) 2048MB
/dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3 = / (md0) 8GB
I have also tried the image creation with Acronis... same error.

I solved my issue.
My menu.lst was wrong..
kernel /kernel26 root=/dev/md0 ro
I should add this to my menu.lst:
kernel /kernel26 root=/dev/md0 ro md=0,/dev/sda3,/dev/sdb3
Now it work.
I followed the archlinux raid guide who's telling this:
Nowadays (2009.02), with the mdadm hook in the initrd it it no longer necessary to add kernel parameters concerning the RAID array(s).
Which is wrong because my distro is 2009.02, if someone can add a note to the wiki it can be usefull.
Thanks for your support

I would like to migrate from Aperture. What happens to my Masters which are on a RAID array and then what do I do with my Vault which is on a separate Drive please ?

I am sorry, but I do noisy understand what happens to my RAW original Master files, which I keep offline on a RAID array and then what I do with my Vault which as all my edited photos ? Sorry for such a simple question, but would someone please help my lift the fog ?
Thanks,
Rob

Dear John ,
Apologies, as I am attempting to get to the bottom of this migration for my wife ( who is away on assignment ) and I am not 100% certain on the technical aspects of Aperture, so excuse my ignorance.
She has about 6TB worth of RAW Master images ( several 100 thousand ) which, as explained, are on an external RAID drive. She uses a separate Drive as a Vault . Can I assume that this Vault contains all of her edits, file structures , Metadata, etc ?
So, step by step........She can Import into Lightroom her Referenced Masters from her RAID and still keep them there ? Is that correct ?
The Managed Files that are backed up by her Vault , are in the pictures folder of her MacPro, but not in a structure that looks like her Aperture library ? This means Lightroom will just organize all the Managed files, simply by the date in the Metadata ? Am I correct ( Sorry for being so tech illiterate ).
How do I ensure she imports into Lighgtroom in exactly the same format as she runs her workflow in Aperture ? ( Projects, that are organized by year and shoot location and Albums within those projects with sub-locations, or species , etc ). What exactly do I need to do in Aperture please to organize Managed Files to create a mirror structure of Aperture on my internal Hard Drive ?
There are a couple of points I am unsure about in regard to Lightroom. Does it work in the same way as Aperture ? Meaning, can she still keep Master Files on an external RAID and Lightroom will reference them ? If the answer is yes, how do you back up your Managed ( edited ) work in Lightroom ? ( Can you still use an external Drive as a Vault ? ) . Will the vault she uses now be able to continue to back up Managed Files post migration ?

Can RAID array be bootable startup?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for