XP Pro - 3 SATA II System

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom Allen
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Tom Allen

Here's a good one....would love some help

Built a new rocket of a system, two sata 2's on raid 0, a
third sata 2 drive as storage (or so I intended).

XP Pro gave my C volume id as BOOT, and my storage
drive D as SYSTEM, as indicated in ( )'s in disk mgt.

My boot.ini, cache files, etc, are all on D too....

Any ideas why?....should I reinstall?.....thoughts?


Thanks in advance,
Tom
 
What controller are 2 Sata connected?
What position are they on ribbon cable?
what controller is 3rd Sata connected? What position on ribbon cable?
Could you post your boot.ini?

Was windows installed on any of the other HDDs?
 
There is no such thing as "position on ribbon cable" for SATA drives. The
only connection possible is one drive - one cable - one controller port.

:-)

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I am no expert but I would leave the "Storage" drive unconnected when
installing Windows XP. It can be connected and installed later.

HTH

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Thanks. I didn't know that. No that familar with SATA drives.
I was trying to determine hardware configuration.
Thanks Again.
 
Avatar,

Asus P5WD2 Premium is motherboard, all is running well.

SATA drives are on ICH7R controller.

Wonder if I would benefit from re-installing so that cache
files, etc are all on the same drive?

Here is my list...

ASUS P5WD2 Premium
Pentium D 830
2 GB DDR667
ATI Radeon X850XT PCIEX16
3 Samsung HD160JJ SATAII
and so on......
 
I guess I'm learning.
So Raid controller has 2 ports and only one HDD can be connected to each.
Only one position on cable.
 
Hi,

If it were my system I would do a fresh install so that all Windows files
are one the same drive.

The pagefile can always be moved to a secondary drive later (for faster
performance).

As I said, I am no expert, but do know enough to have only the main hard
drive (or array) connected when installing the OS. I do assembly of new PCs
and OS installs often and the fact that boot.ini and any other system file
is not on the boot drive would be cause of concern for me. It is not my
profession though!!!

Also, after the install (if you chose to go that way), I would suggest you
rename the C drive(array) as "System". Then after the other hard drive is
installed rename it as "Storage" or whatever you want to call it. This is
not to be confused with the status designations showing in Disk Management.

Remember to back up your files and documents before doing anything! I would
sincerely advise you to take into considerations other advice you might
receive as well to reach an informed decision.

By the way, that is a great hardware set-up you seem to have there!!!

HTH

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You are most welcome.

:-)

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Dixonian69 said:
Thanks. I didn't know that. No that familar with SATA drives.
I was trying to determine hardware configuration.
Thanks Again.
Click to expand...
 
Most desktop motherboards provide two ports if they come with a SATA RAID
controller on-board, AFAIK. Higher end boards can come with more than two
ports. And there are PCI-Card controllers that provide multiple ports.

A SATA drive is connected to the motherboard (or PCI-Card) controlled with a
single thin cable. One drive per cable and port. Unlike the familiar PATA
flat-ribbon cables that can connect two drives to a cable and port. Or
certain SCSI cables that can daisy chain five or more hard drives!

Also, one has to look at PATA RAID controllers and SCSI RAID controllers,
besides as SATA RAID controllers. Connectivities and set-ups depend on what
controller is used/available.

I would recommend the following for a very good explanation of the RAID
system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/buildingblocks/raid.htm

http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=VTrak&product_id=149

http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?segment=RAID 5 HBAs&product_id=141

This link outlines the motherboard that is used by the OP:

http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/printpage.php?id=368

:-) HTH

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