MSI K7T266 Pro Raid setup as non raid

msterzer · December 4th, 2001, 11:58 PM

This MB has four IDE connectors. 1 and 2 are the normal IDE and 3 and 4 are the raid connectors. I want to use 3 and 4 for the HDDs in a non raid setup. Then use 1 and 2 for DVD and CD burner. All of them get to be their own master. No slaves. Has anybody done this? Can a clean install of Win 2K pro be done at either 3 or 4? I have set this up in a RAID 0. I don't like the long boot times and I haven't noticed any great performance. I think RAID 0 is a waste unless you maybe have a giant database to search. If this can't be done then I think I'll set it up in a RAID 1. There will probably still be long boot times but at least I'll have a good back up. Any thoughts?

Kuasimodem · December 5th, 2001, 03:51 PM

I just set up a system with a KG7-RAID motherboard the same way. It's using the RAID controller as a dual boot controller for Win98se & Linux Mandrake 8.1. The only problem I had was routing 4 IDE cables and a floppy cable so that they didn't impede the airflow inside the case. Origami can be fun and useful

PS - My KT7-RAID has been running set up this way (RAID0 at first, dual boot now) for about a year with no problems.

msterzer · December 5th, 2001, 07:29 PM

Kausimodem
Did you have to do anything for the BIOS to recognize the HDDs when they were attached to 3 or 4? Could you load your OS in one of those positions? Did you do one HDD at a time or was one automatically chosen as drive C? Can you be more specific as to how you did it? I don't want to change this until I have all my ducks in a row, If you know what I mean. Thanks for the help.

Ultima · December 5th, 2001, 07:49 PM

NO!!

As long as you don't set anything in the raid bios, it will detect the drives normally, and the mobo will use the raid ide ports as normal ata100 ports.

I also have a KT7-raid and a KG7-raid, kt7 has raid setup, the KG7 not yet.
Didn't have to do anything to make it recognize my hd's on the raid ports.

Ultima

SPEEDO · December 5th, 2001, 07:54 PM

Lets start with this question!
Are both of these drives ATA100?

SPEEDO

SPEEDO · December 5th, 2001, 07:58 PM

Ultima

Are you booting off of a drive on one of these raid ports?

SPEEDO

msterzer · December 5th, 2001, 09:09 PM

Speedo
Both drives are ATA 100
T-Bird 1.33
512 MB PC2100
TDK VeloCD Burner
Pioneer DVD 106S
Win 2K Pro
ATI 64MB DDR Vivo
Creative X-Gamer
LinkSys NIC

So I can just cable everything up and BIOS will recognize it?

SPEEDO · December 7th, 2001, 08:19 AM

I have downloaded the raid manual for your board!
I cannot find anything on there about using ide3 and ide4 without creating some sort of raid array whether it be striping or mirroring!
You could try what Ultima said and see if it works!
I would set up the mirroring option according to your manual!

SPEEDO

Kuasimodem · December 8th, 2001, 07:02 PM

The only thing I did when I first built this system and started it up in non-RAID configuration was go into the bios and set boot devices (choose ATA100 controller, not IDE0), and then go into the HPT370 bios (control-H) and set the boot drive. While you're in the controller bios, make sure that the controller is running both hard drives in DMA mode 5 (ATA100).

If you want to know how to set it up as Windows/Linux dual boot without messing with your Windows MBR, just send me a PM and I'll explain how I did it.

PS - I'm not sure if your Promise controller has these options, but if it does, you can use it as a boot controller.