New machine RAID set up

Thumper12 · November 20th, 2002, 05:20 PM

Hello,

I have the following set up:

Epox 8K5A2+ motherboard with Highpoint HPT372 RAID chipset.
2x Maxtor 60Gb hard drives (identical spec)
CD-R drive
Windows XP

The computer was bought new (a few days ago) and runs fine, but I am having no joy with the RAID initiation (I want to use RAID 1).

I have loaded the correct drivers for the HPT372, and in Windows XP device mamager it shows the RAID chipset as working.

However when I open either the HPT BIOS or the "RAID Administrator" software, neither shows any active drives.

Its probably my lack of experience with RAID setups, but if anybody can suggest what I need to do to get the RAID chipset to see my hard drives I would be most grateful

Regards

sechs · November 21st, 2002, 01:16 AM

Do you have harddisks attached to IDE3 or IDE4? Is the RAID BIOS identifying anything at startup?

Thumper12 · November 21st, 2002, 02:58 PM

I have not yet taken the case apart to see the connections (I literally have had the Pc only days) but Windows XP lists the C:\ drive as 1 (1) and the D:\ drive as 0 (0) if thats any help.

The raid BIOS is not identifying anthing.

Is there any other way of identifying which IDE the hard drives are attached to without taking the case apart?

thanks

sechs · November 21st, 2002, 03:38 PM

Yes, and you've done it. Nothing is attached to the RAID IDE controllers. You can confirm this by going into the device manager and see what disk drives you have attached; those on the RAID would be listed as being "XXX SCSI Disk Device," where "XXX" is some description of the disk model.

I'd suggest that you crack the case and open up your manual. To run the drives on the onboard RAID controller, you'll neeed to move them to IDE 3 and IDE 4 and probably need another ATA cable.

Thumper12 · November 21st, 2002, 04:55 PM

Thankyou for your advice, I shall be opening the case tommorrow night.

One last question? if I move the drives to IDE3 and 4, will I need to reformat them and reinstall Windows ect? or will I be able to move the connections and finally configure the RAID setup?

herura · November 21st, 2002, 05:05 PM

As long as the raid controller is bootable in the mobo BIOS you should not have to reformat the drive. Just be sure that the drive that contans the os is the primary and the empty drive is the mirror and not the reverse as that would wipe the drive.

thekemp · November 21st, 2002, 05:08 PM

in the highoint bios you will have to create the array, when you do it will destroy all your data so back up.

sechs · November 21st, 2002, 05:46 PM

thekemp is correct. I'd suggest taking an image and then restoring after creating the the RAID if you're really attached to your current install. A clean install, however, never hurts.

Barak_P · November 21st, 2002, 07:27 PM

They are correct, I also have the higpoint 372 and I have striping with two 80 gig maxtors and when you create an array you will also wipe the drive.

You should have each drive in master and connected to ide3 and ide4 respectivly. You don't have to if you dont' have the cables but that is what is reccomended.

If you wern't going to use the RAID you wouldn't have to reformat but if you need to create the array then you will.

Once you create the array when you RAID BIOS comes up it will detect the drives and show you the name of the array in each slot, should look something like this.

master

name of array)
slave: none
2 master

name of array)
2 slave:none

then boot into windows.

Do all that and let us know how it goes!

You will probably need to put the RAID drivers on a floppy as well because if you have XP you have to manually install them from the floppy.

You can use your mobo CD or just copy all the files from the patch if that is what you have done.

Barak

Thumper12 · November 22nd, 2002, 08:43 PM

Well I opened the case and found the hard drives linked to eachother and plugged into IDE1, the CD-R being plugged into IDE2.

(I expect you will all cringe at this - I am a novice when it comes to hard drives and RAID)

So I plugged the hard drives into IDE3(still joined to eachother) and the CD-R into IDE4, started the machine and hey presto! the RAID Bios saw the hard drives and asked me if I wanted to set up RAID - so I did and the Bios merrily mirrored my hard drive - so far so good.
However when I rebooted the machine the main Bios didnt detect any hard drives! nothing I could do would make it, I tried every variant on the main Bios to no avail.

So I am back to the original set up (IDE1 and 2) having had to reinstall windows XP and am somewhat puzzled.

So what did I do wrong?

PS: and now I cannot use the other hard drive - I can see it in device manager) but I cannot access it in explorer - whats the fix for this?.

Regards and respect