SATA HDD help

[gloco]

Hi Everyone,

Alright, I have two HDD's in raid and would like to figure out how to get my fucking computer to allow me to access them sometime this century. Their set up in the raid utility and it says both HDD's are functional. I have a P4 2.4Ghz, asus P4P800-E Deluxe Mobo which I updated the bios (1010-001) this morning with no issues. I don't know where to go from here, any help is appreciated.

[tkam]

By raid utility are you referring to the raid bios/setup? Or some windows based utility? Oh and which raid are you using I believe that board has intel raid and promise raid on it.

[gloco]

By raid utility are you referring to the raid bios/setup? Or some windows based utility? Oh and which raid are you using I believe that board has intel raid and promise raid on it.

Yeah, the raid bios/setup when the PC is booting up. I guess thats promise? I don't have a raid controller set up based on the computer management box I'm in right now, guess it got wiped when I updated the bios?

sigh....my A drive is missing from xp...wtf?

[gloco]

Ok, I rebooted, my floppy drive is back and now I can see both 320GB HDD's in device manager but I cannot access them. Any ideas/tips?

[n_maher]

Ok, I rebooted, my floppy drive is back and now I can see both 320GB HDD's in device manager but I cannot access them. Any ideas/tips?

Are you seeing them in the disc manager or just the device manager. If you can see them in the Disc Management portion of XP you can try assigning one them a drive letter. Although really you should only see one of them in the Drive Manager since the other is supposed to be an inaccessible ghost, right? I'm guessing you're part way home but not all the way there.

[tkam]

Did you ever format the drives and did you actually want to set them up in a raid array?

If the RAID array is initialized correctly you should only see one logical drive and you'd be able to partition and format it.

[gloco]

Got it! I clicked "scan for hardware changes" and it found a second component for SCSI and Raid controllers...upon installing that I went back to Disk Management and bam, got a message to set up this new HDD...its formatting it right now. Thanks for the help guys!

[tkam]

Ah yep I kind assumed you had installed the drivers for that already . Glad you got it figured out and remember while raid can be a savior at times its not a replacement for doing backups.

[gloco]

Ah yep I kind assumed you had installed the drivers for that already . Glad you got it figured out and remember while raid can be a savior at times its not a replacement for doing backups.

Scratch that...it was formatting then the HDD vanished....wtf? Yeah, its two 320GB HDD's, but raid array (based on my mobo, the first two sata slots are regular sata which are taken and the second pair are sata raid...which these two are plugged into) displays both HDD's as one combined drive....640GB's or so.

Alright, I'm officially lost...

edit: the HDD has completely vanished from device manager and disk management.

[tkam]

Ok if it's showing up as one 640gig drive then you setup a RAID0 array. Be aware that this is designed for increased speed but comes with some serious drawbacks. If either drive dies you lose everything on both.

Have you tried getting the latest promise drivers?

[gloco]

Ok if it's showing up as one 640gig drive then you setup a RAID0 array. Be aware that this is designed for increased speed but comes with some serious drawbacks. If either drive dies you lose everything on both.

Have you tried getting the latest promise drivers?

Let me look into that...It turns out that one of the HDD's became "unplugged or unavailable" thats why the drive just vanished. I love my PC...it creates problems all on its own. I set up one of the HDD's and it worked (298GB), I can see it now and access it. I'll look for new promise drivers and open up my PC case and see whats up in there...maybe one of the cables is a little loose.

edit: the drivers are the most recent....1.0.1.37 iirc. So, can I partition this 640GB? Anything else I can do short of setting up in mirror, it would suck to lose hundreds of gigs of data if one of them crapped out.

[Ben Gramain]

Your whole computer sounds as though it's borked

As far as I know (and my practical knowledge in this respect is limited since I tend to buy computers already set up) you should ideally have:

- BIOS support for RAID (i.e. Press x for RAID setup, etc appearing during boot) and enabled

- RAID enabled for SATA/IDE in the 'normal' BIOS

- HDD's plugged into RAID-capable ports. Some computers have say six ports, of which two or more for example may not be part of the RAID bit.

Then, you should go into the RAID BIOS and set up an array. If the drivers are already installed in Windows (or you install it during the Windows install process), it should see the RAID array as one drive (unless of course you set it up as JBOD). You should be able to treat this, be it RAID 0, 1 or other, as a regular HDD within Windows.

[gloco]

Whew....Now I think I got it. I shut down, went in, cleaned out the PC with a vacuum and re-seated the sata plugs, now I have full access to the raid HDD (596GB). Thanks again for all the help!

[tkam]

edit: the drivers are the most recent....1.0.1.37 iirc. So, can I partition this 640GB? Anything else I can do short of setting up in mirror, it would suck to lose hundreds of gigs of data if one of them crapped out.

Not really you pretty much have to do with mirroring (RAID1) unless it can support using the drives in non-raid mode. Then you'd just have two separate 320gig drives.