Trying to change SATA disk to RAID mirrored disks

[woods.81]

Hi,

I'm having difficulties with setting up RAID on an Intel Desktop Board
DG965OT.

I have a perfectly fine working system when using SATA configured as
IDE emulation in the BIOS.

I want to use the RAID features but when I change in the BIOS to SATA
configured as RAID the system becomes unbootable.

The hard drive will not boot, and when I try to boot from the XP
installation CD it is extremely slow and once I get into XP setup, it
doesn't allow me to repair my installation.

I am using 2 SATA hard drives and have tried the above procedure
several times, with and without other devices connected.

It allow me to go into the CTRL-I RAID config utility at boot, however
I don't wish create a RAID from there as it will destroy all my data.

I cannot install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager to perform a RAID
migration until I've sleceted RAID from the BIOS. There are lots of
RAID documents on the Intel support site, and they all talk about a
"RAID Ready" system that allows migrations from non-RAID.

The hard drives were used successfully in a RAID array in a Via-based
PC up until recently. I performed a repair install on one of these
disks whilst it was in my new system, set up as SATA-IDE mode.

Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[Justin Brown - SYNACS]

I will assume that your current standalone drive is not one of the two
you want to use for the RAID array. If it is, no huge deal but there's
a procedure for that path which takes a long time and I would highly
discourage it.

Basically what you want to do is to unplug your current hard drive, and
install the two RAID drives. Create a RAID array using the RAID
configuration utility you mentioned. Use fresh hard drives (or move
everything onto a backup) so that you do not lose any data. Once your
array is available, boot to your Windows CD and create a partition on
the array. Make the new partition bigger than the partition on your
Windows system drive. Format it (slow method) and when that's done,
cancel the "copying files" process, power down, plug your original
drive back in, and boot up into Windows. Make sure your BIOS is not
configured to boot to RAID just yet. In Windows, enter the device
manager, expand IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, and right click and
uninstall the onboard SATA controller that your boot drive uses.

Restart the computer immediately, interrupt the boot process by
entering the BIOS --if you allow Windows to boot again, it will
reinstall the controller driver and you lose a step, change the boot
order so it shows your RAID array and does not show your standalone
drive. Boot to your imaging software (I like Image for dos:
http://terabyteunlimited.com/image.html), and clone the drive to your
array partition. When the cloning is finished, power back down, unplug
the original drive, and boot to your RAID array system. Be sure to have
the RAID driver diskette handy in case the system refuses to boot. If
that's the case, you may need to run the repair installation you
mentioned in your post.

Hope that helps.

By the way, try not to cross post the way you did. You're going to get
responses that will only show in certain forums, and people in your
same predicament may not get the benefit of seeing all the replies to
your post.

 

[woods.81]

I thought that may be the case, ghost my set up to a third drive, set
up my raid, then ghost the image back again...

I'm sure I didn't have to do all this when I set up my previous RAID
array on my old Gigabye motherboard, and all the "RAID Ready"
references in this Intel motherboard's documentation implies there's an
easy RAID migration path.

 

[woods.81]

I wonder if I could let the RAID ctrl-I utility wipe and setup my
disks, then for me to boot using something like Partition Doctor to
recover the data? Obviously making a back-up first...

I think I'm going to have to go down the route of buying a third hard
drive to move my data onto whilst I setup my RAID drives, it's a bit of
a pain especially as the manual and documentation talks of RAID
migration from normal drives, yet in practice it doesn't quite work...

 

[Bill Davidsen]

I wonder if I could let the RAID ctrl-I utility wipe and setup my
disks, then for me to boot using something like Partition Doctor to
recover the data? Obviously making a back-up first...

I think I'm going to have to go down the route of buying a third hard
drive to move my data onto whilst I setup my RAID drives, it's a bit of
a pain especially as the manual and documentation talks of RAID
migration from normal drives, yet in practice it doesn't quite work...

At the risk of asking an obvious question, you are going to RAID-1,
right? So the little ones and zeros will still be in the right place on
the original drive?