RAID 0 with Asus Motherboard

[Olimain]

I have an ASUS M3A78-CM motherboard and am looking to set up a RAID 0 for encoding large uncompressed video files.

I haven't done this before and was wondering if somebody could shed a bit of light on exactly how to do it please? My motherboard has 6 SATA ports and the drives I intend on buying are as follows:

For the OS (Windows XP Pro):
320 GB Samsung HD322HJ Spinpoint F1, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms

For the RAID:
2 x 500 GB Samsung HD502IJ Spinpoint F1, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ

Your expertise would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,

Oli

[dangel]

Enable RAID in the bios (see your manual) first. Then as the PC boots you'll see the RAID BIOS pop up (after the main BIOS screen) - it says "press blah blah to enter setup/raid bios" - you do that and then create the RAID set by selecting which drives you'll RAID and how (i.e. RAID 0 in your case - which is 'striped'). Follow on screen instructions to save settings, then exit and the PC will reset - and voila! you have a RAID set. You must do this first of all, so that Windows will see both drives as "one" (RAID 0) later on.

The stumbling block is XP - it's too old and stupid to understand RAID (in general) and you'll need to feed it drivers in the setup stage via a floppy disk (yes that's the only way) or slipstream them into the install with nlite. Seeing as you're installing the OS on a single drive, you could always install the RAID drivers later from within Windows (correct me if i'm wrong kids) though (as it doesn't matter that it can't see your RAID during setup in your case).

[Olimain]

Ah, that sounds easier than expected (famous last words). Is that 320GB drive OK for and OS? I don't really need it that big as won't be storing much on it but it does seem hard to find something much smaller nowadays!

Thanks very much for your help.

[dangel]

No worries

320gb is more than enough for any version of Windows - most of my XP partitions are 20gb-30gb tops.

Asus manuals usually cover RAID reasonably well (with screenshots) so you should be fine

[ps3ud0]

Quick related question if thats ok - how is Vista with RAID? Dont have a floppy drive

Just about to setup an OS Raid of 2 RE3s on a P5Q-Deluxe - setup the BIOS so its RAID not IDE or AHCI mode for the SATA controllers...

ps3ud0

[Olimain]

No worries

320gb is more than enough for any version of Windows - most of my XP partitions are 20gb-30gb tops.

Asus manuals usually cover RAID reasonably well (with screenshots) so you should be fine

That's what I mean, I don't really need anywhere near 320 but am looking for a decent fast drive for around the £30 mark. I'm more than happy to sacrifice space for a faster/better quality drive but can't seem to find one that easily! Any ideas?

[dangel]

Quick related question if thats ok - how is Vista with RAID? Dont have a floppy drive

Just about to setup an OS Raid of 2 RE3s on a P5Q-Deluxe - setup the BIOS so its RAID not IDE or AHCI mode for the SATA controllers...

ps3ud0

Vista sees quite a lot more RAID controllers by default - but if it doesn't you can feed it the drivers via a USB key, a CD/DVD or even from another hard disk/partition (it's a lot easier to work with than XP). I'm pretty sure my P5Q RAID was directly supported by Vista

[dangel]

That's what I mean, I don't really need anywhere near 320 but am looking for a decent fast drive for around the £30 mark. I'm more than happy to sacrifice space for a faster/better quality drive but can't seem to find one that easily! Any ideas?

Big drives usually perform better - because they're most likely more modern and therefore have more cache and higher data density (which increases speed). There's nothing to say you can partition it and use it for different things - but then I presume you want the data drive seperate from the OS one (else why have 3 drives)?

[Olimain]

The RAID is for actually doing work on to increase speed when encoding 40GB files rather than for storage.

Asus don't make it easy to find the RAID drivers. Would it be the "AMD Raid Xpert"? 70MB sounds large for a driver.

[dangel]

Somewhere (perhaps in that raid xpert thing too) on the CD that came with the board there's probably a utility to create the floppy disk. Again, check the manual - it may provide a clue.

[Olimain]

The drives arrived today. A problem though I am afraid...

The OS installed without a problem on the 320GB drive. I then connected the two 500s on SATA2 and SATA3 and changed the SATA Configuration in the BIOS from SATA to RAID. Then pressed Ctrl+F on boot to get into the setup menu and set the two of them to be a RAID0 on LD2 with a capacity of ~1TB.

Then when booting into Windows the system restards before it gets anywhere close. When I undo the RAID0 and change the BIOS back to SATA the system boots fine and I can see the (unformatted) drives in Disk Management without a problem.

Any ideas? Is a windows configured RAID as good as one done from the BIOS?

Thanks

[Will404]

Use the Jbob controler for the RAID...plug the two RAID drives into the orrange sata ports.
Boot windows, install drive xpert on the computer.

reset, and boot into bios, and under tools enable drive xpert. Ensure that mode is set to mode change. Ensure that it is set with your 320 GB drive as boot drive and save changes. Reset computer, and load windows.

Open drive xpert, and set it to raid 0, or super speed. Not sure what exactly to click on, to do this, should be self explanitory. Then reset the computer

[Olimain]

Just been reading further into this... I didn't enable RAID in the BIOS until after I had installed XP on the single drive. Would this be a problem even if I wasn't installing on the RAID?

[Will404]

Should be fine that way round

[Olimain]

And do I have to use Jbod? There must be a way to do this properly? In the BIOS is SATA Configuration>RAID the only variable I need to change?

Really need this up and running for work! Thanks for your help so far...

[Sputnik]

Don't use Jbod. As there is no performance gain from it. It just makes all disks Jbod'ed into a single drive.