Quick RAID array setup question

I had to upgrade one of the RAID arrays of one of my clients the other day. I had not setup the RIAD previously, but when I looked at how it was setup before it had 6 disc's in the array and one not part of the array.
Now I assume who ever set it up before assumed that the 7th disc would be the redundant disc. After looking at the way it worked and doing some calculations from what info RAID admin provided me with I came to the conclusion that the way it was set up would be 6 disc's used as the array with one being a parity drive so if a drive failed that one would take over. On top of that they had another disc that was basically useless as it was not incorporated into the raid at all.
The way I have set it up is that all 7 discs are part of the array so they have 6 disc's working with one fail over that would be the 7th meaning no disc's are wasted.
Which way is correct is my question.

I assume your predesessor left one disk as a hot spare.
Whenever a disk from a raid set fails, the raid set will be rebuild with the hot spare disk. The bad disk can be swapped and will be the hot spare from then.
Configuarions like this will give you the highest availability, but will cost you the most. Netto you will have the amount of 5 out of 7 disks. (1 for parity and 1 for hot spare).
Note that in a raid5 set the parity is spread over all raid disks. There is not such a thing as a 'paritydisk'. The term paritydisk is hust for mathmatics purposes.
Regards
Donald

Similar Messages

What Is the Best Raid Array Setup for Photoshop?

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Which Raid Array setups should I use for each?

Something to consider:
An advantage of RAID 0 is that you get all the space of both drives, while multiplying the throughput.
While RAID 0 also multiplies the possibility of failure, you can offset that by buying high-MTBF enterprise class drives. The Western Digital RE4 is an example (and is the model I use in my RAID). Such drives are not really that much more expensive than their consumer-grade counterparts, and the difference is well worth it, IMO.
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Z97 MPOWER MAX AC RAID Setup Question

Apologies if this is in the wrong place; I wasn't sure if I should stick this here or in the Windows x86/x64 board.
Essentially, what I would like to do is this:
Set up a RAID 1 (disk mirroring) array using the integrated Intel raid controller on my Z97 MPOWER MAX AC motherboard using two 1TB WD Blue drives. After setting up the array in BIOS, I'm wanting to do a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate (OEM).
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isn't that you will still need the bios to be modified first so it will point to your OS recovery?

Home Office Server setup question: re RAID or not on Mac Mini Server

I recently purchased a Mac Mini with OS X Server (10.6) for my home office. I also have an AEB.
Is there any point in configuring the 2 500G disks as a RAID 1 setup? Given Time Machine backup and an inability to easily open it up and replace in case of a single drive failure, I don't see the point. But maybe I'm missing something.
Rather, I think the best setup is to use the main drive for the OS and services data, and drive 2 for user home directories.
Anyone have a recommendation for using the 2 drives?

for the two mini servers i've configured so far for clients, the internal drives are used just as a raid1 boot volume with data and backups stored on different external drives.
i chose to mirror the drives to add some redundancy. realistically, i'm not onsite with these clients all the time, and i'd prefer they can continue operating if one drive fails. replacing an internal drive isn't as easy as on other models, but it's a manageable process.

Z87-GD65 Raid setup question

I have a Z87-GD65. I have a Samsung 250GB SSD as my main C: drive. I also have 2 1TB WD hard drives that I like to put into a Raid1 config. Can I just create the raid array with the 2 WD drives and leave the OS drive alone? In the BIOS, should I be setting the SATA mode to Raid? Will that mess with the Windows install on the SSD since it was AHCI? I'm a little confused here on how to proceed.

Ok, I got it working per your instructions. Thanks for the info. Under the iaStorA and iaStorAV section in the registry, there is a sub-section under each called "Startup Parameters" and had a key of "zero" with a setting of "3". I changed those to "0" and rebooted, went into the BIOS, changed to Raid from ACHI, and I was able to Boot the OS on the SSD without problems. I rebooted again, went into the Raid BIOS, created the Raid 1 with the 2 drives and got into Windows. Went into the Intel Storage manager, initialized the Raid volume which took about 3 hours.
Thanks for the info. Everything worked great.

Problem Installing 817 on Windows 2000 with RAID Array

I am having a problem installing Oracle under windows 2000 which has 2 x 60 GB discs configured in RAID array. When I run the setup program the cursor goes busy for about 10 seconds and returns back to normal and nothing happens !. No errors nothing.
However when I run the Object Manager in the ods_preinstall directory it starts but in the log file I get the following error message:-
02/14/02 09:46:18 : (892) : Error in IO Control call for disk PhysicalDrive0 (Error 21)
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : The count = 28
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : The signature is 0x443aa035
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : Error: First Partition of the disk must be an extended disk
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : Found the partition: 7
Any idea whats happening....? Has anyone seen this before. Do I need to do something special in teh RAID..?
TIA
Martin

Here are some possible solutions:
1. The installation notes state that you must be logged on as Administrator to be able to install 9i. Are you logged on as the Administrator? Being logged on as user01 with Administrator priviledges isn't the same as Administrator.
2. Is the disk full? If I remember my installation correctly, I needed 3 times the size of the files. The documentation will tell you how much space you need.
Hope these two questions help
Regards,
Michael

915P-Combo drive setup question

Great forum – I’m glad that I found it (just wish I found it before putting my system together). I just constructed my first pc based on a 915P-Combo motherboard and everything has gone well. I only made one mistake – I ordered two SATA 160G drives thinking I could do a SATA RAID 0. Oops...
There are two reasons why I thought that I could – one is on the motherboard box it says “SATA and IDE RAID compatible”. Ok, that can be read two ways – I know. Well, then I actually downloaded the user manual and it describes how to set up a SATA RAID array (in Chapter 5). So I was a little surprised that it can’t do SATA RAID. So now I’ve got my two SATA drives set as two separate drives. No big deal, and for the price the motherboard is a great value anyway.
So my question is that I need to build a second machine that will basically be a clone of the first and I wanted opinions about the hard drive options. Since I will be playing games and doing some home theatre stuff (watching and recording movies) I would like at least 300G with good read/write specs. I also want the simplicity of a single drive so it looks like my options are:
1) A single large SATA drive (300G or so)
2) Two IDE (150G or so) drives in a RAID 0 array
And I just wanted to know what the opinions of the forum are. Will the performance of the IDE RAID 0 be that much better than the 150Mbps (that I understand SATA can do) to justify it?
Also to do the IDE RAID 0 my understanding is that I would hook one drive to IDE2 and one to IDE3 (with them both set to master) – is that correct? I would have my DVD-R/W on IDE1 as it is now.
I appreciate any opinions you have on this. Thanks for your help.

I recommend 2 x 160GB IDE HDDs, RAID 0 + 1 x 250GB/300GB SATA HDD + Dual Channel 512MB DDR 533MHz RAMs + Enermax 475watts / Antec 480watts PSU + P540 - 3.4GHz CPU.
The 150MBps on SATA is just the theory only, the actual transfer rates is still dependent on the system overall performance so don't rely on it too much as you'll never get to even hit 100MBps on any system in the real world enviroment. This applies to IDE as well.
IDE Setup Guide

Time Machine Server - external firewire 800 RAID array incompatible??

Hi all
I originally posted in the wrong forum... so here I go again...
I have an XServe G5 connected to an 8TB RAID array via firewire 800 (running latest version of leopard server) purchased solely to act as a time machine server for a whole bunch of machines. A lot of money and resources went toward this as this is a vital part of our office. One of the machines is a completely decked out Mac Pro with 4x500GB Hard Drives striped for multimedia processing. (Thats why I need a HUGE backup partition on Time Machine)
Now, this was working for about 4 months. Some computers still see the backup array as a destination, but can't write to it, (just sit there for ever "preparing backup") and one machine successfully is still backing up to it.
But for the majority of the machines, when I try to set the Xserve external raid array as a Time Machine destination for the network, it comes up with a yellow "!" sign and "This disk drive may not support Time Machine over the network. Get more information about compatible drives" with a link that points here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306332
As you can see, that was completely not helpful, and now i'm wondering if I'll still have a job after the boss finds out I've just wasted his several thousands of dollars...
When selecting a backup destination for time machine backups, the array appears, but it always says "Failed" with an "i" next to Latest Backup in the system preferences, with the message "Backup volume cannot be found". Thats not true because i've so much as gone to the effort of actually mounting the dang drive in the finder... so its just not looking hard enough!
Here is some info about the external device:
It looks like a PC tower thing, with 8 firewire 800 ports on the back and 8 internal SATA slots. I purchased 8x1TB drives and inserted them in, and software partitioned them to create a giant striped drive (I understand that this might be a little unstable but its just a backup drive).
I daisy chained the firewire 800 ports on the back to output 2 cables, both going in the back of the xserve. Formatted fine, and works a treat. Except for the silly time machine thing....
I think what I am going to do is completely and utterly start again... go nuts one weekend and erase everything, every computer, every wireless router, everything, and start fresh. Since there have been so many little glitches here and there I just want them dead.
Well, if anyone has a quick fix, i'd appreciated it before the weekend

Hi everyone, Just thought I would give you all an update on how things went.
Lets just say that I got everything working fine... this is what I did.
1. I went through, completely un-raided and formatted the external 8 Bay firewire 800 drive
2. Completely reformatted XServe and reinstalled fresh (Probably not an option for a few, but I had a spare weekend)
3. Completely reformatted all client computers and reset all client accounts (Once again, probably not an option for most)
Essentially, I was starting out with a completely virgin setup and setting up for the first time. I installed the firewire 800 drives, and made them into a RAID again. Then installed Leopard server. Brought all the backed up files across, and when I plugged in the drive in Finder, it asked "Do you want to use this as a time machine backup" to which I said "Yes". It proceeded to create a backup.
When that finished, I went into server preferences, and selected the external as a time machine backup for the network. It worked...
I then went about everything like business as usual, and everything worked great. Still going... for now.
So thanks for all that helped, maybe try completely reinstalling everything and it may work.

Ide3 Raid Array

to setup a raid array on ide3 do i connect the 2 drivers on the same cable.
do the drivers need to be set both as master or mast/slave
Please advise
Regards
Enzo

Thanks for the quick response, though it's not satisfactory for me (of course).
Actually before installing the new KT4 Ultra I owed the KT266 Pro RAID motherboard. It's true this board has two controllers for the RAID option. Nevertheless because after reading the manual of this new board I was convinced I could connect two hard drives on the IDE3-channel. This is the reason I decided to go ahead and to upgrade to this new mainboard.
I guess I have to go back to my employer and fall back again to my KT266 (MS6380).

Does the NF980-G65 support RAID arrays over 2TB?

Looking to build a new machine fro Windows 7 (and switch to 64bit at the same time), and the NF980-G65 seems to be the closest board to my needs, just a quick question, does the onboard raid controller support raid arrays over 2TB in size? I had a look at the manual and it has a section on migrating an array to a size over 2TB which would suggest it does, but I would like some confirmation as to whether it does or not.

I've run into this problem with some raid cards when building servers for work, as they were unable to address raid arrays over 2TB and would not allow the creation of the array, I am wondering if the raid controller has the right level of LBA to create a 2TB+ array. I am aware of the need to use a GPT partition to have a partition of over 2TB.

Booting from external SATA firewire800 hardware RAID array

Just a quick post to update on a new toy and how it's being used.
Recently obtained a hardware RAID array which contains 5 drives at 250 GB each. Currenly setup as RAID 5, providing 1TB of storage.
After formating via DISk image I did a drive restore from my normal boot disk to the new array.
I changed the startup options to boot from the array.
So basically I am running my system from this new device.....I may later reconfig the array to 0+1 with a floating spare.
Cost of the box was 500. New and unused off ebay.

..

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

Is it possible to create a Windows 7 Partition via Bootcamp while having an internal RAID 0 Setup ?

Is it possible to create a Windows 7 Partition via Bootcamp while having an internal RAID 0 Setup ?

Yes, just not on the RAID. Boot Camp Assistant will only partition a single drive containing OS X. You cannot partition a RAID array.

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

[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.

Quick RAID array setup question

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