How do I set up Raid 0 with Windows XP Pro

  • Thread starter Thread starter Adam Sartin
  • Start date Start date
A

Adam Sartin

I have purchased the new Intel D875PBZ motherboard, which
has on-board RAID 0 (zero). I want to use this resource
but am not quite sure how. Should I install windows on an
ide hard drive and then try and set up Raid 0 or should i
just do everything on the 2 hard drives running raid. By
the way, I am running serial ata 80GB hard drives on the
raid. Do I set up raid before I install windows? I just
need a little guidance on the how-to

Thanks,

Adam Sartin
(e-mail address removed)
 
Adam,

I found the following with my Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, using
2 Maxtor 80GB IDE drives in Raid 1 (just choose RAID 0
instead), and 2 other 120GB IDE drives.

1) XP install CD doesn't seem to see the RAID combo. So,
I installed XP on the primary IDE port with RAID turned
off in the BIOS for now. Do not activate Windows. If you
do, it'll take a while before you can re-activate a
second time on the RAID combo.
2) Loaded the Promise software and made a driver disk.
You'll need this once you turn on RAID in the BIOS.
3) I shut down, disconnected the 120GB. Boot and went
into BIOS; turned on RAID, made CD-ROM 1st bootable
device, floppy the second.
4) Restart, and created the array using Promise BIOS
menus. Had to do a reboot and go into BIOS twice often -
seemed like the certain things were recognized the second
time around. Always check before proceeding.
5) Boot off XP CD-ROM. Because of the BIOS, XP asked me
if I had drivers to load (F6). I said yes, inserted the
floppy with previously created Promise driver disk and
continued. XP now sees the array.
6) Choose the array, partitioned it, formatted it and
installed XP on it.

Again, this was RAID 1, so I'm not sure exactly what
you'll see using RAID 0.

Good luck.
 
Adam,

Oh yeah. After RAID array has XP installed, I added each
120GB one by one, each time rebooting and checking if the
BIOS saw the disks. Also, after making the array, always
check to see what the boot order is.
 
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