Help setting up a RAID 0 system

[MagicMarker]

Greetings everyone,

As you can see this is my first post and I was hoping you guys can help me out. I also must apologize for the long post.

Currently I having some major problems with my system. I have a Soyo Sy-K7V Dragon Plus! mobo, with 4 40GB IBM HD's. The first 2 HD's are raid 1 right now. I am also running window XP professional. The problem is I can not do any type of software upgrade without the system crashing or not booting at all. I looked up the error message that I get on MS's website and it says that the system has detected a piece of hardware or software that is not compatiable with XP. So basically I can never download any new patches. The last straw was when I downloaded a new driver for my gainward GF4 4400ti video card last night. After rebooting none of my games would work. Even after I rolled back the drivers. :(

So what I am going to do is purchase 2 new HD's. Remove all unecessary hardware first from my system. Install a clean OS and run all the critical updates before adding any hardware or software.

Here is my question. What are the proper steps for this? I figure I need to remove the array I have now. Shut the system down and remove both harddrives. Using the search engine I found this:

The setup goes like this:

"- Download the latest Promise SATA RAID drivers from ASUS's website and put them on a floppy.

- Make sure the jumpers on each drive are set to Master; plug the drives into the two SATA connectors nearest the Promise onboard chip.

- Go into the BIOS and make sure the Promise SATA is enabled.

- Reboot and press the approrpriate keys when you see the Promise RAID BIOS message come on screen.

- Setup the RAID array as desired.

- Reboot and start Windows install.

- If using XP, hit F6 when you are prompted to by setup.

- When it comes to the screen that prompts you for the drivers, put in the floppy and hit the S key. Then choose the Promise 378 RAID driver and hit Enter. Hit Enter once more and Windows should start installing normally"

I figure the steps are very similar for my mobo. Questions is when I install XP will it ask me to format the two new harddrives?
If not when should I do it? I know I should remember how to do this since I built this machine but I just want to be sure. I am just frustrated. I don't know what other options I have.

Thank you!

[YARDofSTUF]

those steps are correct. are u sure its ur hard drives that arent compatable, it'd suck if it wasnt after u go and get new ones. also, avoid IBM, they've had problems since the gxp60s, their drives are not the quality they use to be.


And welcome to Speedguide :D

[MagicMarker]

Thank you YARDofSTUF,

I am not sure where the problem is coming from. A lot of the drivers I installed were not signed by microsoft, so maybe it was my fault. I hope this fixes the problem. I also don't normally install the games on the main drive. Usually it is on the spare drive so I don't know if by doing that, causes files to be written all over the place.

I heard about the IBM HD problems after I purchased and used them :( . So I am going to see if I can get the Western Digital 80GB HD's. :D

MM

[YARDofSTUF]

the above steps u have listed are for sata drives, are u looking for sata over ide, or is that jsut what u foundfor a guie, cuz if ur using ide drives u only want 1 master per cable. sata cables only connect to one drive so u need an sata cable for each, which is why the instructions say to set them all to masters.

[MagicMarker]

Oh no I am going to be using 2 Ultra ATA 100 IDE drives. I have to find the manual, but I believe I need to set both drives to master to set up RAID 0.

MM

[YARDofSTUF]

Originally posted by MagicMarker
Oh no I am going to be using 2 Ultra ATA 100 IDE drives. I have to find the manual, but I believe I need to set both drives to master to set up RAID 0.

MM


only 1 master per cable i ahve 2 WDs in raid0 ona promise tx2000 i have each set to master because there on their own cable. i like it better that way. speed is the same either way for me.