Another RAID 5 question

[stretch0069]

I want to have an 80GB drive that I will use for WinXP and whatever little things I decide to put on it. Then I want my big RAID5 array to store all my movies.

Went into BIOS and enable SATA RAID. Installed the Intel RAID driver. Under DEVICES, it shows two hard drives.....my boot HD and the array (in this case the name 'movies').

However, thats as far as I get. I did a google search and came up with nothing useful since I don't want to boot from the RAID. Did run across something on the M$ site that said you can't set up RAID on an XP machine (or any non-server version of any winblows). wtf is that all about???????

anyway....if anyone has had the same problem....i'd appreciate a bit of help.

[stretch0069]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

there must be something seriously wrong......24 hours to initialize the array!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

i've deleted the array. screw it. i'll research some more when i'm in the mood.................

[shadow]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

What RAID controller are you using? Many of the cheaper stuff that tends to be built-in onto motherboards don't support raid 5. Only RAID 0 or RAID 1.

[stretch0069]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

Its a built in function of the Abit QuadGT MB that has an Intel ICH9R chipset.

I enable RAID for SATA in BIOS and then I get the function to do CTRL-I to create or delete a volume.

The MB supports RAID5.

[kikkoman]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

i don't quite get your HW config and at which point you're stuck.
is that 80gig drive connected to the same controller?
is win xp already installed?

[willawake]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

mikey please buy a proper raid card not that onboard shit

[stretch0069]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

The thing is....mikee doesn't need a proper RAID card. I just need a basic RAID5 setup. If this MB cannot do RAID5, like the manuf says it can, then its going back for a cheaper board and then I'll get a RAID card.

I am stuck at the point where I create the array using all 6 drives. The BIOS config tool shows I have the volume 'movies'. I run the Intel RAID tool and it also shows my volume 'movies'. If I look at my devices, I see two entries under Disk Drives: 'movies' and then my 80GB IDE drive.

The 80GB drive is master IDE and hold my OS and various misc stuff.

I had only the 80GB IDE hooked up when I installed XP Pro.

When I deleted the array the first time, the 6 SATA drives instantly were individually available in the drive management portion of Computer Management in the Control Panel. At that point, I could select one of the SATA drives and create a volume that spans disks. I select the other 5 and voila.....one big honkin' drive. But thats not RAID5.



Have I successfully driven everyone nuts yet????? Don't worry....in three hours I'll be sippin' 7n7 and watching another great episode of SG-1.

[kikkoman]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

try the Intel matrix raid utility (windows application) instead.
+ i've read that early BIOS versions tend to fuck up the RAID when the JMicron controller is in use (it's most probably providing your PATA channel).

IDE is dying faster than i would've expected. they're giving it its death blow by providing only these sucky JMicron things.

[stretch0069]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

i'm using the Intel one.

i found some info on the Intel site. i'll try it out when initialization is done.....

its been 17 hours and initialization is up to 78%. i did find out it takes a while to initialize with larger drives, so i guess thats normal.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

I've found out that Windows XP 32bit does not support disks/arrays larger than 2TB

XP x64 and all Vista versions should handle it tho, more info here;

http://forums.storagereview.net/inde...howtopic=26619

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device...e/LUN_SP1.mspx

[shadow]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

I've found out that Windows XP 32bit does not support disks/arrays larger than 2TB

So that was the problem!!

I think its time to move onto the 64bit version of Windows or to start partitioning.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

So that was the problem!!

I think its time to move onto the 64bit version of Windows or to start partitioning.

Yea, sure seems so, because Mikey said that his partition was 2.4TB... "i'm actually in the process of initializing a 2.4TB RAID5 that goes across 6 drives."

I've been using the trial version of XP x64 for ca 3 months now, I'm really liking it
Actually, as I'm typing this I'm also ordering a valid license for it, now that must be a first for me

The Windows Server 2003 SP1 x64 codebase sure seems to make Windows XP x64 very stable and fast IMO

[willawake]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

wow ur gonna buy it, must be good!

i think i will use it on my next build cos i would like 4gb ram.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

wow ur gonna buy it, must be good!

i think i will use it on my next build cos i would like 4gb ram.

Yea, the 8GB of RAM in my system is another reason as to why I use XP x64

[stretch0069]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

Well Per....are you still liking XP64????

I just pulled one of the drives out of my array and reinitialized it. Now its 1.8TB. WinXP sees it just fine.

Damn.......I wish there was a patch for the regular version of XP.

Oh well......an excuse to build another machine and get rid of my last single core box.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

Hehe, yea, I still like it, having some odd issues with it tho, but nvm, that's just Windows I guess

My RAID5 array is another matter, bought me 3x WD Caviar GP RE-2 1TB drives
Set the array up with my mainboards built in controller (ICH9R on Asus Maximus Formula)

Installed Vista Ultmate x64 SP1 on the new 1.8TB array (XP is on a separate 150GB Raptor)
It was running quite nicely, then it was time for bed and I decided to turn the computer off, next morning it took an awfully long time for the computer to go through POST, after a while it decided to tell me that one of the harddrive members of the array had failed, but that the same drive could be used for rebuilding, I said yes and it said just fire up Windows and it'll rebuild in the background

So I did so, 66 hours later! The rebuild was complete.
Now I did some check, soft restarts, hard restarts (reset) and complete power off including PSU and then on a minute later, it all worked perfectly...

Just because I have some issues with Vista I fired up XP and started copying about 500GB data from an old HDD to my new array, about 200GB into the data I got a BSOD, a very interesting one too.
0x00008086

If you are used to Windows BSOD's (who isn't?) you will notice something is wrong here, Microsofts BSOD's are always below 1000 in number, so wtf is this?
WinBbg told me it was the mother fucking Intel Matrix driver that caused the BSOD (IaStor.sys)
Searching google brings up about 2000 forum posts on this with no real solution

Anyway, reset I pressed, when I came into Windows the Intel Matrix thing said that the drives needed a checkup, this only took 6 hours, yipee! (Atleast the BIOS didn't complain this time)

Then I shut down the computer again, and here I am today, with exactly the same thing happening as after the last long poweroff, degraded RAID array, do you want to rebuild? Well yes of course!
This time I booted XP, seems it will only take about 50 hours to rebuild the array now, guess since the OS isn't running from the array it's a bit quicker...

So Mikey, have you broken down yet and bought a "real" RAID controller?
I'm pretty fucking close atleast

[willawake]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

both of you are nuts

[Per Hansson]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

Tell us something we don't already know?

[stretch0069]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

both of you are nuts

yeah...well smartass....you're in the group too.





Damn Per......interesting. I don't plan on anything other than one OS. It will also stay on 24/7. It'll be interesting if is shits the bed on a reboot. If I do have problems....I'll just have two media servers each with 1.8TB arrays.

[zandrax]

Re: Another RAID 5 question

[...] after a while it decided to tell me that one of the harddrive members of the array had failed, but that the same drive could be used for rebuilding, I said yes and it said just fire up Windows and it'll rebuild in the background

So I did so, 66 hours later! The rebuild was complete.
Now I did some check, soft restarts, hard restarts (reset) and complete power off including PSU and then on a minute later, it all worked perfectly...

[...]

Anyway, reset I pressed, when I came into Windows the Intel Matrix thing said that the drives needed a checkup, this only took 6 hours, yipee! (Atleast the BIOS didn't complain this time)

[...]

This time I booted XP, seems it will only take about 50 hours to rebuild the array now, guess since the OS isn't running from the array it's a bit quicker...

Three raid rebuild in 4 boots? That's a new record.
Since you're a bit pissed off by that Intel crappy emulation [only the name, Matrix driver, gives me enough thought about robot conspiracy, a guy named Neo whose face I'd slapped twice and a strange buccaneer named Morpheus ... ], so what about using native XP Raid 5?
What are you saying? XP has no native Raid support!
Well, you can hack Dinamyc Volume Management dlls in order to enable Raid 5: see THG guide. It's a software raid solution as the Intel one so you won't notice any big slowdown and it may be even more robust than chipset enabled fake raid.
Notice: do not restore your system with the XP console because it will replace all hacked dlls with the original ones. Nobody exactly knows what will happen if you do so, but I think it's something unpleasant ...

Zandrax