my first raid question

woody79 · 18 Oct 2007 at 15:52

Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A32728) will theys drives be sata-2 out offf the box ???

just bought two of theys to go with my 400 and 500gig drives goint to use them as me main boot drive in raid 0 vista 64bit.

was going to get a rapter but decided too save me some money and put towards some new memmory

do i have to fdisk them?? and how in vista 64
what contrpoller would you put them on
i have a ga-p35c-ds3r mobo with i think a gigabyte and intel controller witch one should i use ???

i have no floppy but to have a 2gig usb flash drive

thnx for any help fellas

semi-pro waster · 18 Oct 2007 at 17:48

I'd probably use the Intel controller but I doubt it will matter hugely.

I'm not sure what the required keystrokes are to get into the Intel Raid 'bios' but at a guess something like "ctrl" + "I" (or perhaps "ctrl" + "m") at some point in the boot sequence will get you there. Then you will have to choose the type of array that you want - Raid0 and possibly the stripe size - 64kb is a fairly good choice. Once this is done your drives will be clean but will still need formatted, Windows can do this for you but I don't know if how Vista handles Raid installs i.e. whether you need the drivers on floppy disk/USB stick.

Camalot · 18 Oct 2007 at 17:56

So the two drives then show up as one drive in windows? Say i raid0 two 250gig drives, do they show up at one 500gb drive at a higher speed?

semi-pro waster · 18 Oct 2007 at 18:18

Camalot said:
So the two drives then show up as one drive in windows? Say i raid0 two 250gig drives, do they show up at one 500gb drive at a higher speed?

In very simplistic terms, yes you create on logical drive from two physical drives, however I'd suggest you read up on the benefits/drawbacks first before considering. You won't get double the speed although it will be a bit quicker depending on what you do but you do get a greater risk of data failure because you are relying on two drives to work as one.

jbloggs · 18 Oct 2007 at 20:03

Have a read at THIS article.

Vista contains the ICH9R drivers "out of the box" so you don't need to run them from a floppy, USB flash drive etc, or if you wish dowload the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers make floppy, or copy drivers from floppy to USB flash drive etc, and as soon as Vista DVD boots, you will be asked to press F6 to specify another device etc...from the list that appears (after a while) choose ICH9R....complete Vista install, as soon as Desktop appears, install Intel Chipset Device Software, then Intel Matrix Manager software....

woody79 · 18 Oct 2007 at 22:58

when i set sata AHCI mode windows fails to boot but as soon as it disable it goes back on,so are my sta drives only working ide mode now then??????

my bios setting

SATA RAID/AHCI MODE IS DISABLED
SATA PORT0-3 NATIVE MODE DISABLED

any idea as to why ahci mode wont work

my drives
sata dvdwriter
sata-2 seagate 400gig boot disk
sata-2 wd500gig

RaiderX · 18 Oct 2007 at 23:07

you need to set SATA to RAID in the bios, not ahci, you will need to do a fresh windows install on the raid drives, once raid is enabled, during boot you will briefly be prompted to press CTRL+I to enter the Intel Storage Manager setup, once in, click create RAID drive, set to RAID0, name the drive, and select strip size, larger strip sizes are better if you use it for storing large files, smaller strip sizes are used for OS partitions and game partitions as there made up of lots of smaller files. i use 32kb strip size and it is very quick. run windows setup and select your raid drive to install onto, you do not need to click format as windows will do this once the drive is selected as installation drive, once installed, install the raid drivers off disk and in the intel storage console in windows, right click on your current raid config and click enable write-back caching, this will increase your burst speed by about 10x. i have more than doubled my drive speed by using raid with write-back enabled. creating 2 raid drives helps with speed aswell, create a smaller one, about 1/4 of total size for OS, and seek time will be reduced on that raid drive to about the same as a raptor

woody79 · 18 Oct 2007 at 23:15

thnx for the help ive gone back to windows xp,but i dont unstand why i cant select ahci mode with the hds and cdrom i have at the moment,im a little confused as are the sata drives running at the full speed.does it matter if there on ide mode.

i just wont to make shaw that all my drives are running as they should be.

RaiderX · 18 Oct 2007 at 23:18

its because the drives are using a different type of connection than native IDE so when booting to windows, it doesnt know where to look for the files as the ide drive is gone, running in IDE mode wont slow the drive down, its just an easier way of using single drive

woody79 · 18 Oct 2007 at 23:35

I understand now that it doesent make a difrence ide or sata mode,ive been reading up that thers no performance benifits with having ahci enabled.thnx for you help fellas