RAID arrays and Windows

Not sure where to post this one. You have been very helpful before so I’ll try again.
The machine is the Media Centre in my signature.
Installed two new Maxtor SATA drives, set up as RAID 0, clean install of XP MCE. Boots on the RAID array. Not a single problem. Installed MSI drivers, XFS video card drivers and KCorp PCI network adaptor for wireless link. Download and install all Windows updates. All OK.
On a later start up it spends long time trying to detect RAID array, then RAID error. Automatically reboots and detects a healthy raid array. Tries to open Windows but screen goes almost black but faint Windows loading page with the short activity bar showing no activity. If left it eventually springs to life. Tried starting in safe mode, no problem. Restore to an earlier restore point, no better.
The RAID problem is intermittent. The Windows problem looks as if it stalls for a variable length of time before it gets going.
Don’t know where to go next. Any suggestions?

fafner: I wanted a large disk to hold recorded TV progs, videos, CDs etc and 160GB is the max for this mainboard. I went for 2x160GB Maxtor drives. As I was using two drives I reasoned I might as well use RAID 0 to get a single volume and a faster machine. In particular I read somewhere that RAID 0 halved, or nearly so, the start up time. Who wants to wait a couple of minutes for the TV to fire up?
Fredrik: The XFX video card drivers are in fact nVidia drivers which are the latest.
Doctor Stu: I have subsequently installed XP on both drives individually. On one it worked well, on the other same old problem: either the drive not found in the BIOS after the heading ‘Detect IDE drives’ or the screen fades as Windows starts up. Checked both drives with Maxtor’s Powermax disk checking utility. Provided the drive was connected to the SATA1 socket and the other drive not connected both passed the Full Test. I could not get Powermax to recognise SATA2 even though both were detected correctly in the BIOS. My conclusion is that the problem was a dodgy connection which I hope has been rectified with all the swapping around.
Is there disk testing utility that puts the disc under load similar to Mem86 for memory?
Will I try RAID again? I doubt it even though it did start up in far less time.
My thanks to all.

Similar Messages

K8N DIAMOND: New Raid array and old HD... I'm going crazy!!! Please

Hi guys
First, sorry for my poor english...
My problem is:
I bought two Raptor 36 Gb for my new raid array.
I have my old HD Hitachi 250 Gb connected on sata 1.
I connected my two raptor, on sata 3 and 4, I enabled all sata port and raid config for ports 3 and 4.
I restart PC, typed F10 and set a stripe array with two raptor. All run ok...
Restarted and boot with my copy of WinXP with SP2 and NF4 raid drivers.
Installation found my array and my Hitachi;
Hitachi with 4 partitions; C (os), D (driver), E (films), F (music)
I create one partitions on my raid array, and it takes I: letter... So I formatted and start to copy os...
Errors occurs when, restarting pc and resetting the boot to Hard disk (the order of booting is 1 - nvidia array, 2 - hitachi 250 gb), just before loading installation, It shows a black screen with an error: "there is an error in your hard disk bla bla bla.. try to control your connection or connect to windows help....bla bla..."
The Raid array works properly, infact I try to disconnect my Hitachi from sata port 1 and all installation works (I'm writing from Win xp on the raid array).
I tried to connect the hitachi on port 1 of silicon image controller.... same error..!!
I'm desperate... I have all my life on my hitachi...
I think that there's a sort of conflict in drive letter assignement... I cant find a solution ..
PLEASE HELP ME!!!

Glad it worked, I had a feeling it would.
Quote
One question for you.. on G: partition, there's a directory called "Windows", do you suggest me to format this partition??
You can format it if you want to free up space, but unless you moved things around the My documents folder and everything in it is on that partition, along with anything you might of had on the old desktop during that Windows install. You might have something you want there, I usually leave mine for a few month, and figure out if I have everything I need.
Quote
What I have to do, if I need to reinstall WIn XP on first partition of raptor array??
Things should be fine now as Windows marked the Hitachi drive as G. You should be able to reinstall without issue. But if you have a lot of sensitive info on the Hitachi, I would always disconnect the Hitachi if doing a fresh install. Once windows is done installing, hook it back up. But next time you shouldn't have to reconfigure NVRAID after disconnecting and reconnecting.

Completely messed up Raid-Array and Partition! How to delete and create new Raid-Array?

Hello,
I am using Ideapad U310 and tried to clean install Windows 8 and use my SSD as CACHE and Hibernate-Partition.
So, I was able to get to the Intel CTRL+I-RAID Config Menu and there I was able to create and delete my RAIDS.
Unfortunately I did not setup the Partition Size correctly, thus I only have a 50 GB Partition combined with my SSD and my HDD. This is what it looks like in the Intel Storage Manager:
As you can see both, my SSD and HDD appears, but only have small partitions on the right. And Windows 8 only recognizes this small partitions, as you can see here:
And now I am NOT able to get to the Intel RAID CTRL+I-menu before Windows starts, where I could delete this array.
My Partitions are "empty", so I dont care if anything is delete. I just want to use raid with FULL CAPACITY of my harddrives. But how can I delete the RAID Arrays and reconfigure them correctly?
When I change in the BIOS from RAID to AHCI I am able to install Windows 8 again with the whol CAPACITY of my SSD and HDD. But then I will not be able to use the RAID via Intel Storage Manager...
Hopefully someone could help me.
Thank you in advance.

Hi
Please see this thread
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-Y-U-V-Z-and-P-series/The-Guide-on-How-To-Reformat-Repartition-AN...
Hope this helps
Ishaan Ideapad Y560(i3 330m), Hp Elitebook 8460p!(i5-2520M) Hp Pavilion n208tx(i5-4200u)
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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 ?

RAID Arrays and WinXP Home

OK... I tried upgrading to Win XP 64-bit, but found there were games and applications that were screwy there and some items without 64-bit drivers, etc. So, I rolled back to a clean install of XP Home (32-bit).
After much effort, I was told today at a local techie-store that XP Home "doesn't allow for RAID arrays."
True?
I have 2 Hitachi 160GB drives I got last week at the afore-mentioned store for $112 US total! So, I am trying to make it all work, but am having no luck.
Any thoughts?
Scott in Los Angeles

There is a way to make some versions of windows do a software RAID, but the MSI board has a VIA and a Promise hardware array. Don't worry about what the 'techie' said.
Enable Promise controller in BIOS and set it for RAID.
Press Ctrl & F when prompted to set up your RAID array.
Boot to Windows CD
Press F6 when prompted and insert your Promise RAID disk.
Enjoy!

Raid Striped And Windows Xp Pro

I have set up a RIAD striped configuration on my K8T Neo with 2 SATA Hard drives (see full specs below)
Does anyone know why if I boot to Windows XP CD to do anything ie format other drives, recovery console ect.
The only drives I see are all the other drives EXCEPT my RAID drives !.
It's the same when entering the recovery console...the RAID drives ane not there !
How is one supposed to repair the windows setup or anything if the drives set up as RAID are not available ! and why is this .
Pete
Windows XP Pro (with all updates)
MSI K8T Neo Motherboard (MS6702 (v1)
ON BOARD AC-97 Realtek SOUND
MOTHERBOARD BIOS VERSION AWARD AWD 1.2
AMD XP 64 BIT 3200 PROCESSOR
ADAPTEC 2940U2W SCSI CONTROLLER CARD
BIOS VERSION ADAPTEC 2.57.2
WESTERN DIGITAL WD1000JB 7200rpm ATA133 100GB HARD DRIVE
RAID SETUP: 0 STRIPPING (for Performance)
WESTERN DIGITAL WD12000 7200rpm SERIAL ATA 120GB HARD DRIVE
WESTERN DIGITAL WD12000 7200rpm SERIAL ATA 120GB HARD DRIVE
1G (2x 512 MB) PC3200 DDR CORSAIR MEMORY
ASUS V8170 NVIDIA G-FORCE 4 64MB GRAPHICS CARD
LG 4040B DVD WRITER DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW DVD-RAM
LITON XJ-HD 116S 48Wx24xRW48R CD WRITER-SMART BURN/SMART X
LITEON 48246S DVD ROM
STANDARD 1.4MB FLOPPY DRIVE
MITSUBISHI DIAMOND VIEW DV-172 17 INCH LCD FLAT SCREEN MONITOR
EPSON PERFECTION 1200 SCSI SCANNER
CANON S820 COLOUR PRINTER
CANON S520 COLOUR PRINTER
AOPEN HX-08 FULL TOWER CASE
DYNALINK V1456VQE-R1 EXTERNAL MODEM
ASPI LAYER 4.17.2

Thanks for the replies guys.
Do I understand you correctly when you say i have to load the RAid drivers when booting from the CD just as though I was installing Windows?
I thought that as I already had the RAid set up and running Ok and indeed showing the Array when booting I would have thought the drivers were already there ?
Perhaps I'm wrong am I?
I need to re load the Raid drivers (F6) on booting to allow the recovery console to "See" the Raid setup do I?
Thanks

RAID drivers and Windows 7

Hi
I have the Toshiba Qosmio G30 on trying to update to Windows 7. I get a message telling me it cannot find the RAID drivers. Ive updated from the Toshiba site still no luck.
Has any one got an idea how to sort this problem?

Is this relevant ? ( [http://aps2.toshiba-tro.de/kb0/TSB9A02PE0000R01.htm] )
TOSHIBA RAID Utilty
[Target model] Qosmio G30/F30
TOSHIBA RAID Driver will be hard-blocked by Windows7.
You have to update TOSHIBA RAID Driver to Version 1.10.0016 or later before upgrading to Windows7 on Qosmio G30 or Qosmio F30.
TOSHIBA HDD Protection
[Target version] Lower than v2.0.2.9(32bit) / v2.1.2.9(64bit)
"TOSHIBA HDD Protection will be hard-blocked by Windows7.
If the ealier version of TOSHIBA HDD Protection than v2.0.2.9(for 32bit) or v2.1.2.9(for 64bit) is installed on your system, you can not upgrade to Windows 7.
Before upgrading to Windows 7, please uninstall TOSHIBA HDD Protection from "Uninstall a program" on the Control Panel.
After upgrading to Windows 7, please install TOSHIBA HDD Protection v2.2.0.0 or later.
You can check the version number of TOSHIBA HDD Protection as follows:
Open the Control Panel.
Click "Uninstall a program".
Click [Organize] and select "Layout".
Confirm if "Detailed pane" is selected.
Click "TOSHIBA HDD Protection".
Check the "Product version" at the bottom of this dialog.

MOVED: K9VGM-V (RAID Controller) and Windows Vista Upgrade

This topic has been moved to Vista problems.
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=108307.0

I'm having the same problem but I can't switch my drives. I have my 2 200 gig maxtors full of data that i can't let go of. I've installed a new silicon images pci card with 2 sata channels. if i hook up the drives both bios recognize the drives correctly but it tell me invalid system disk. pretty sure that it's reading the pci card, not seeing a os installed and not even looking at my onboard controller. I was told that i can change irq priority, but i can't get it right or it doesn't work. I can install os on pci card but would really rather not. I'm very happy with the setup i have for once.
msi k7n2 delta promise 376 onboard controller

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

Reinstall Windows on raid array

Hello all,
I have 2 arrays running a 0+1 which windows in installed on and a raid 1 which my games are installed on.
I originally built the array after windows was installed so I didnt have this issue....
I want to reinstall windows on the same array and to do so would be boot from the cd like normal and F6 and install the raid drivers and windows should then see the arrays. Pick my array to install to and away I go...
Second question I assume running my games/programs from a 0+1 array would work better than the raid 1?
Tell me if I'm missing something. TIA
K9N platinum sli

Tiresmoke, I think you missed the part where he said RAID0_1 and RAID1. He has two arrays, the first is RAID0_1 which mirrors stripe sets (see here: http://www.acnc.com/04_01_0_1.html), and the other is RAID1 which is simply a mirror.
That being said, I'm about to try the same thing. I just bought 3 additional WD Raptor 74GB 10K SATA drives and am doing some basic IOMeter performance testing now before creating a 0+1 set. Wanted to quantify the performance gain, I'll post it in a new thread when I'm done.
As for your first question, yes, you'd want the latest nVidia RAID drivers on floppy to inject into the install with the F6 key.
For the second question, the performance of a stripe set is superior to that of a mirror set, and a mirrored stripe set beats them both.
Let me explain:
Normal access (non-RAID) would write to one disk. When reading, it would read from one disk.
On a stripe set (RAID0), you write to multiple disks (doubling, tripling or quadrupling your write performance depending on how many disks 2, 3, or 4), and the same with reads. But you gain performance, but no redundancy, and in fact increase your risk of failure (any drive dies and you effectively lose all of them).
On a mirror set (RAID1), you write to two disks simultaneously (no performance gain, but failure protection), but you can read from both disks simutaneously thereby doubling your read performance!
On mirrored stripe sets (RAID0_1) you gain the performance gain of the stripe, with the added redundancy of the mirror. You get 2-factor read performance improvement along with redundancy. If it were possible to add more disks to it, you could realize even better read performance, but alas you can't use the two Silicon ports in the nVidia RAID set.
That make sense?

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.

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

Moving RAID Array from old to new workstation

I've completed building a new rig. Win10 is working. I have a RAID 0 array of 2-750GB drives in the old rig. I've installed 2-1TB drives in the new rig. Drive manager shows both old and new HD's but not as a single RAID array (RAID-OLD,
and RAID-NEW, as I have named them during the BiOS RAID naming. Could I have some guidance about this? I also have the contents backed up on a USB-3 external drive, but would like to continue with both of the RAID arrays and not go through transferring
data via USB.

Hi CWO4 Mann
For hardware, we need the driver to drive it works in Windows system. When you move your RAID to new system, ensure you have installed appropriate driver.
I suggest you download the driver in Windows 10 Technical Preview, install it in Windows 8 compatibility mode to check if it works well.
Alex Zhao
TechNet Community Support

NAS Raid Array

I have a NAS Raid Array and when I try to set up time machine, it does not come up in the options list for storage devices. Where is it?
Thanks,
Scott

A disk image is treated by the OS as a local file. So look into how to create a growable sparse image (specify a size of 1 TB or something and if it's a sparse image the initial size will be small). This trick also works for Aperture Vaults. The caveat being that the file will be opaque to any non-Apple clients... on the NAS it will just look like a huge "block" called <name>.sparseimage. Fire up Disk Utility and search the help on creating images, or go to Apple's Knowledge Base:
http://search.info.apple.com/
And search for sparse image.
One example is here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/10.5/en/duh1527.html
Note you don't have to use encryption on the image... and it's faster if you don't.
One of the main issues in using a NAS is the file system of the NAS. HFS+ supports all manner of characters in the file name. You can have spaces, and many characters which are "illegal" on Windows (NTSF || FAT32) or Linux/UNIX (UFS, EXT2, EXT3, ReiserFS) file systems. So if you try and run Time Machine over an SFP or AFP backup to a NAS that uses some other file system, you've got issues. Hence the reason not to support any NAS other than OS X Server (which is obviously running OS X and thus has HFS+).

Why is my new 10TB Mirrored RAID array only showing 1.8TB total space?

I have 5ea. 2TB Western Digital hard drives in a FirmTek 5PM enclosure connected via eSATA to my Mac Pro (April 2007 model). Running Leopard 10.5.8.
I used Apple Disk Utility to set up a Mirrored Raid using MacOS Extended (Journaled) and have a check mark by "Automatically Rebuild Raid Mirror Sets." My Raid Block size is 128K.
So, by all accounts I should have more than the 1.8TB showing as available space on this array.
Here is how it looks in my Disk Utillity app (link to smug pic of Disk Uility window): http://richardbrackin.smugmug.com/Other/blogpics/RAID/754262625_iffPY-S.jpg
I found a site here: http://blog.scottmroberts.com/archives/15 that discusses removing a GPT header but that doesn't sound like a good idea.
How do I get more capacity? I have clearly done something wrong.

Oh, you have mirrored one drive with 4 others creating a single 2 TB array consisting of one main member and four mirrors. I doubt this is your intended result. If you want a 10 TB RAID, then you want a "striped" not a "mirrored" RAID.
Now, you can make a striped RAID of one pair of drives, another striped RAID with another pair, then create a mirrored RAID of the two RAIDs. This would give you a 4 TB mirrored array. But the only way to use all five drives in a single array is a 5 drive striped RAID. To learn more about RAIDs see:
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server: Hardware and Service Comparison>.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons
Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?
Actually as I squinted at your tiny image I'm sure you never actually created a RAID. You have one 2 TB drives that are not properly arrayed with any of the other four drives.
Message was edited by: Kappy

RAID arrays and Windows

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