How Do I Access RAID Disks

[Big Dave]

I have set up (at least I think I have) a raid drive using two old disks on a ABIT KT7-RAID board via the raid bios. However when I look for the drive in 'My Computer' it is not there. The system properties identifies it with a status of 'not initialised' and the unallocated space the same size as the raid capacity. I am sure I am missing something but I don't know what!!!

Thanks

[tsj]

Go to: Control Panel > Administrative tools > Computer Management

Then click Disk Management.

Is the drive listed there?

If so... right click it and click 'Format'



Let us know how you get on.

[streetster]

control panel -> administrative tools -> computer management -> disk management...

then click on the drive, initialise/format/assign drive letter/etc

then it should turn up in My Computer. magic eh?

[e!] beaten!

[tsj]

Hehehe... too slow

[Big Dave]

Errr I must be missing something again!! Are those directions for XP or Vista. I am using XP Pro SP3 and cannot follow the path you specify.

Who wants to be first this time. ho ho ho

Thanks

[Big Dave]

Hold the bus.... I think I have found what you are pointing to. Will let you know shortly..

[Big Dave]

OK so the latest is that I managed to find how to locate/format etc the raid disks. However one of them failed to format, despite me formatting them previously in a usb caddy. Then I got a little lost with the various options on what type of drives they would be, can't remember what the exact terms were (except base)?? As it stands I have put them back as individual disks, given them a quick format and guess what, they all seem ok. Going to leave it for tonight, tomorrow is another day...

[peterb]

I haven't used that particular RAID implementation, but if it is similar in concept to others, you don't format the drives as such, you format the array. The disks have to be initialised into the array, then formatted as one drive.

The exception is where you use an OS RAID system (such as mdadm) when you raid partitions - so the two (or three or whatever) drives are all partitioned individually and the partitions are the combined to form an array (which is then a virtual drive)

[directhex]

do you have an actual RAID driver installed?

onboard RAID systems are not really RAID - the actual RAID operations are done by a driver, not by the hardware. and i'm pretty sure older boards give two different drivers - a RAID-enabled one and a normal one

if you see two drives, then your RAID is broken. you should never see two drives - only one merged RAID array "drive"

[tsj]

Yeah... your using *fake* RAID... so get them drivers installed ASAP