Question about SATA and RAID 0

[scs0]

I'm building a new PC. My old PC had a IDE-based main harddrive and a
SATA secondary "drive" that was actually two discs paired up with RAID
0. With my new PC I sent all SATA because I'm sick of the short
ribbon nonsense of IDE.

I have 4 SATA devices and this is how I want them set up:

250GB Harddrive for my main OS harddrive
A DVD burner
A pair of 320GB drives to set as RAID 0

Is this possible?

I set my configuration to RAID mode and then went into a utility that
specified the 250GB and DVD drives as "Non-RAID" and then the 320GB
pair were set to RAID 0. When I tried installing XP the install
eventually blue screens before the first XP-forced reboot of the
system. If I pull the power from the drives of the RAID set I still
see the error.

I think my motherboard needs a bio update because I get some uCode -
error nonsense when I start up and I put the PC into the mode where it
treats the drives as IDE mode then the install is permitted but it
sees my 250GB drive as a 130GB drive.

 

[John Weiss]

I have 4 SATA devices and this is how I want them set up:

250GB Harddrive for my main OS harddrive
A DVD burner
A pair of 320GB drives to set as RAID 0

Is this possible?

In general, yes, but why would you?

RAID 0 is relatively fragile, and ANY error could cause you to lose ALL
your data in an instant. How often are you backing up this RAID 0 set?

I set my configuration to RAID mode and then went into a utility that
specified the 250GB and DVD drives as "Non-RAID" and then the 320GB
pair were set to RAID 0. When I tried installing XP the install
eventually blue screens before the first XP-forced reboot of the
system. If I pull the power from the drives of the RAID set I still
see the error.

Check your MoBo mfgr for a BIOS update, then ask them about the particular
error. Without any knowledge of the hardware and firmware, we can't help
much.

 

[scs0]

RAID 0 is relatively fragile, and ANY error could cause you to lose ALL

your data in an instant. How often are you backing up this RAID 0 set?

This RAID 0 set is my backup disc. So (in theory) the loss of the
data isn't that bad. This drive will also be used as my destination
for video capturing. I never had performance issues using a single
secondary IDE drive for this purpose but I really like knowing RAID0
is better. It's faster for editing too.

I've had a RAID 0 backup for 3 years and have already had the set fail
twice so I know the pain and misery of that. Just recently I had my
main drive, a disc in my RAID set, and my external firewire backup all
die at the same time. I HATE computers.

Check your MoBo mfgr for a BIOS update, then ask them about the particular
error. Without any knowledge of the hardware and firmware, we can't help
much.

There's an error on the MoBo with the Intel chip. It seems to run
fine but I get this stupid error on startup that supposedly can be
fixed with a bios update. Unfortunately I need a Delorean so that can
go back to 1985 and get the floppy drive that's necessary for
installing it.

 

[Bob Fry]

JW> In general, yes, but why would you?

HDD speed.

JW> RAID 0 is relatively fragile, and ANY error could cause you to
JW> lose ALL your data in an instant. How often are you backing
JW> up this RAID 0 set?

Relatively a myth. I've been running 4 WD drives in a RAID0 primary
(boot) configuration for almost a year (computer left on 24/7) with
nary a problem. To be sure, it's backed up every night. But I'd do
that anyway...Windows screws up far more often than hardware failures.

In a modern desktop computer your HDD access and bandwidth is by far
the bottleneck. Ya gotta use RAID0, 5, or SCSI to try to balance the
entire system. My HDD performance exceeds the best comparison metric
in the SiSoftware test suite.

 

[RobV]

I'm building a new PC. My old PC had a IDE-based main harddrive and a
SATA secondary "drive" that was actually two discs paired up with RAID
0. With my new PC I sent all SATA because I'm sick of the short
ribbon nonsense of IDE.

I have 4 SATA devices and this is how I want them set up:

250GB Harddrive for my main OS harddrive
A DVD burner
A pair of 320GB drives to set as RAID 0

Is this possible?

I set my configuration to RAID mode and then went into a utility that
specified the 250GB and DVD drives as "Non-RAID" and then the 320GB
pair were set to RAID 0. When I tried installing XP the install
eventually blue screens before the first XP-forced reboot of the
system. If I pull the power from the drives of the RAID set I still
see the error.

I think my motherboard needs a bio update because I get some uCode -
error nonsense when I start up and I put the PC into the mode where it
treats the drives as IDE mode then the install is permitted but it
sees my 250GB drive as a 130GB drive.

What MB? With my P5B-Plus, the Intel south bridge needs the RAID driver
to function as Raid, and the driver must be installed during Windows
install. Right at the beginning, at the bottom of the screen, it asks
if you have third party drivers, press F6. So, press F6 and a bit
later, it will go to the floppy and install the driver.

There are USB floppy drives out there if you have no room/connection for
a floppy. Perhaps your MB will accept a flash drive with the drivers
and load from that.

 

[John Weiss]

JW> RAID 0 is relatively fragile, and ANY error could cause you to
JW> lose ALL your data in an instant. How often are you backing
JW> up this RAID 0 set?

Relatively a myth.

Well, it happened to me a couple years ago (controller logic error during an XP
update). OTOH, I have never had such an instantaneous failure of a single HD.