DS3 - RAID problem

[FatRakoon]

This one is bugging me now.

I have setup the DS3 just fine with a paid of Hitachi 80GB Drives, and another pair of Seagate 250GB Drives... The 80GB's on the RAID and the other 2 are standard IDE.

That went on sort of fine, with only one issue... The 250GB Drives came first, and NOT the Raid Drive ( The 80GBs )

Now, as I said, I did it fine apart from that, using the Floppy etc, it went on first time and it was all haha and that was that.

Now, what has now happened, I dont know, but I am trying to use just the 2 80GB Drives on their own, no other drives, they are setup in the BIOS as RAID and they are giving me a 164GB Striped Drive as it should, but can I install it? NO!

I put a drive back onto the others and it went on, I took it off and it failed to boot again?

WTF?

It turns out, that it must be putting the boot onto the NON-RAID drive, even though Windows is on the Raid drive.

I just cannot avoid this.

Why?

Anyone know what is happening here?

 

[FatRakoon]

You could try removing the IDE drive then booting from the XP CD and repairing the XP installation on the RAID.
Another way round it might be to put the IDE drive back so you can boot then copy the files boot.ini, ntdetect.com & ntldr to the RAID. You'll probably also need to run FDISK /MBR from a DOS boot floppy. You might need to edit boot.ini to get this to work.

Jonathan

Not using ANY IDE Drives, although, installing it as before and removing the other SATA Drives and attempting a repair was one thing I did try... Didnt work.

Its as if it will only boot from SATA/IDE and not from the Raid array at all?

Something to do with boot priority in the BIOS?

No, obviously its set to boot from the Raid array and not the SATA, It also treats the SATA drives as first drives even though it can boot from the Array, and have C: on the array, it still seems to want to use the Sata to actually hold the boot?

Bit confused on that?

------------

On a similar note, when I have SATA Drives in the PC, I just press return on selecting which controler to use from the Floppy, and it goes on just peachy.

Now, if I have just the RAID Array in, and no SATA Drives, then whatever one I do, seems to go fine until its actually copying the files from the CD / Floppy, where it fails to find JRAID.SYS ?

Can anyone expend on this?

 

[FatRakoon]

Hiya Cob.

Thanks for the link mate... I will go there is 1 minute and see what I can see etc.

The Drivers I am using I have downloaded from Gigabyte site.

They work fine if I have another SATA HD connected to the normal SATA Ports, but if not, then they fail to find the JRAID.SYS file??? - my next port of call, is simply to intergrate the drivers into an installation CD and see how that goes, but I have had mixed success with this in the past, so dont hold out much hope.

AH!

I just been there and I went here yesterday, and had no luck really... Only had a quick shufty however, so I will read it fully this time.

 

[FatRakoon]

Yeah, the IDE has 2xDVDRW, and normally, I have a single Hitachi 80GB on... Well, the TOP Orange Sata connection, and a pair of 250GB Seagates on the bottom two Orange ones.

Thats running just fine like that.

Now, I have noticed, ( unless I have lost the plot totally ) is that the IDE line is also the same as the Purple SATA isnt it?

I also notice that if I disable the RAID port,. I also disable the IDE port that the DVDs are connected to you see...

But then in XPs Device Manager, it does actually show up a 2-port and a 4-port SATA controler??? - Sodding thing.

Are those purple ports ( The RAID ones ) actually got anythign to do with the IDE Port or not?

Anyway, I got those drivers, will try them out later on.

SATA DVD Drives.
No, I dont have any yet, however, I got a Serillel controler that does allow a DVDROM to work on it... Not sure about booting yet, I just tested it on a naff Mobo using a SIL3112 SATA Card and a near-dead DVDROM... Just in case... and it did work, so I dont see a problem ( Famous last words ) in trying a good ROM through the Serillel adapter on that board, if that will help me out, but I dont see where it would??? - Like I said, if I have a normal SATA HD connected to one of the orange ports, it finds the floppy files ( jraid.sys ) and it installs just fine, but it treats the RAID array as anythign but the first HD, almost as if it wants it to install to D:, E: or anything but C:

And like I said, it wont play at all if there is no SATA Drives, meaning that I cannot ( Seemingly ) install windows if I only have the Array?????

Anyway, lets see what happens with the other drivers yeah?

 

[FatRakoon]

Thought it was... Sure I read it, but not sure where?

Is there any way to disable the SATA, leaving just the JMicron left over?

---------

Nope, Just been trying ( In vain ) toget it to install onto RAID and failed miserably.

I have tried 3 different downloaded drivers, including a couple off the CD, but they are all failing on trying to install this JRAID.SYS file from the Floppy?

I have also tried 2K ( SP4 ), XP Home & Pro ( SP2 ), and XP64 and NOTHING works.

Im on the F6 BIOS, and I am seriously considering F7, but the thing is, that the first time I tried the RAID install, it went on just fine, so its got sod-all to do with the BIOS has it?

Could anyone possibly give me a direct link to the FLoppy-RAID driver that they have successfully used to install Windows with?

I honestly dont care what OS I put on it... Hell, right now, Im open to Win3.11

 

[FatRakoon]

I'd update your BIOS to f7.

And try these. They're v1.17.3.2 and are dated 5/10/06.

Thanks.

I think I will give it the one last chance then...

Today Im expecting my new RAM. I went for Corsair 6400 because with the DDR range for my AMDs I have been totally happy, even though many say to go for the GSkill/Geil...

What I did last night, was to remove the array, and I have re-installed onto one of the Drives...I did that the other day also, and this is the third time I did that... I have reinstalled, killed the install off to try another driver, killer the array off when I got nowhere,ied another and so on and so forth...

Like I said, the first time I did it, it was perfect, but it boot the actual boot sector onto a standard drive, and not the Array, and this is what I dont want.

Ok.. Once more I will try these drivers... The ones I tried previously, are 1.13 1.14 and 1.16 so a new driver again might help.

Updating the BIOS probably wont help, but then again, the ones getting the success stories have indeed upped the BIOS, so it look like there is no choice there..

Cheers mate... Ill let you know later on.

 

[FatRakoon]

BIOS is now at F7

I have tried the RAID drivers I got from COB but they do the exact same thing

I am now working through all my drivers

1.13
1.14
1.16
1.17 - Just done that

and the CD Drivers which I am sure are 1.13, but dont quote me on that and those are the drivers that I was able to do it first time, but as I said before, only if the Boot Sector goes onto a normal ( NON-RAID ) Drive... Which I dont want.

This is now the final time I am going to bother with RAID on this board. My new RAM came a few minutes ago, its in, and the first thing I have done, is gone up to 2.8Ghz and it posts just fine, so you can understand that I really dont care that much for RAID anymore... Not with this thing I dont.

No, Im trying to setup on stock settings in case you are thinking...

Ok, the only thing I am thinking of now, is the BIOS settings rather than the BIOS itself... Considering I have already managed to get RAID on it previously, then can anyone suggest anyhting in the BIOS then?

 

[FatRakoon]

Right, I have now gone all the way through my RAID Drivers...

1.13 through to 1.17

I have also now gone through Windows versions 2000 SVR & Pro ( SP4 ) and XP Home, Pro, MCE ( SP2 ) and XP64

I have tried out a fair few settings in the BIOS, and I have come to a conclusion, that installing Windows to RAID on the DS3 is impossible.

Now, this contradicts the fact that it does, but only if I have a normal SATA Drive connected to one of the other ports.

EVERY SINGLE time, it has failed to load up the JRAID.SYS file, but it has been able to access the array cos I am able to format it just fine during the install, its just when it tried to re-load it from the floppy it fails.

I have also tried intergrating it into a BootCD, using nlite and the cd seems to work fine, but it does not seem to find the right drivers that way either? Unless I did summat wrong?

I am now giving up completely on the DS3, which is such a shame, cos when I did get it sorted last week ( Yeah, only last week ) with the F6 BIOS and the Driver off the CD, I had a good 120MB/s Xfer rate which cant be sniffed at.

I got a pair of WD200's in my opteron and once thats finished its one month prime run, ( so far 18 days - 24/7 @ 9x330 Wohoo! ) I will have another play for a bit using those drives, but these hitachis have been RAIDed and IDE'd and formatted and re-formatted at least 30 times in the last couple of days, so enough is enough, or I will never get to use my conroe.

Unless someone can offer a walk-thru of course.

COB:
Hey, even you have said you could not do it and had to ghost your SATA drive over?

The thing I find with many many RAID setups, is that the Drivers used for SETUP and for after the setup are different... What drivers did you use?

 

[FatRakoon]

I've just had no problems installing XP Pro on the S3's RAID. Just whacked F6 at the appropriate point, put in a floppy of the 1.17 drivers, selected the top item from the list and let the install do the rest. Just as it should be.
Now all I need is to find out how to update the drivers on an existing installation so I don't have to do a couple of complete rebuilds.

Jonathan

Hmm....

On reading this, I just had a thought...

During the loading of the installation program, I noticed that it looked on the floppy automatically...

I wonder if I need to actually insert the floppy as it asks me abotu adding my own, rather than having the floppy in all the time during the whole boot process????

Can anyone verify this one for me? Im just not quite up to that one for a minute? - maybe thats the point? Maybe it cannot load it when it finds *** one on the floppy, but it will, if its the one we tell it to?... Even though they are the same thing?

 

[FatRakoon]

This all seems far too much hassle to be worth even bothering with doesnt it?

I wonder if anyone can verify if its at all worth it?

I mean, when it was working for me, I had a good 120MB/s rate when I used HDTACH to test it, and this was encouraging, and Windows did indeed boot up a little quicker, and defragging was a breeze, but other apps didnt really seem to have THAT much of a boost at all... Not enough to warrant such a hassle to get it all on anyway, and what if Windows needed to be repaired in any way, then are we going to be stuffed?

Im thinking that if you just want to add a pair of drives on there, and just use them as IDE and let Windows set them up as RAID, then you might as well do that?