P3C800E RAID 1 question

712 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by Lonestar, Sep 20, 2005

Lonestar

Discussion Starter · Sep 19, 2005

Hi,
I've got a P4C800E-D board. Running WinXP Pro, with originally one 200GB SATA drive on the standard SATA1 port. I recently purchased a second 200GB SATA drive to set up a RAID 1 for security of my data. I plugged the existing 200GB drive into the SATA_RAID1 connector and the new 200GB drive in the SATA_RAID2 connector. FastBuild Utility came up as described in the manual and I followed the steps for "Creating a Security Array with Existing Data Drive". Autosetup correctly recognized both drives and I was able to designate the original drive as the source and the new drive as the mirror. The process ran and successfully concluded with a new RAID 1 definition. However, upon rebooting the system, WinXP briefly shows at the splash screen and then the system reboots over and over. I "thought" I had loaded the appropriate drivers, but maybe not? I can plug the original 200GB back into the standard SATA1 port and the system boots fine.
Any thoughts?
Many thanks,
Gary

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please

· #2 · Sep 20, 2005

@ Lonestar
Welcome :smile: . Is your WinXP on the HDD in question? That may be why your system is having trouble booting from the disc. My guess is your boot order is incorrect. You may have to redo the boot order in BIOS. However, it is NOT recommended to boot from a HDD from the Promise controller.

Clintfan said:
A WORD OF WARNING: I do not recommend running your O/S on the Promise chip, RAID or not! However, the PCI controllers on these mobos are a great place to keep your long-term data storage, so consider that if you are planning a multi-drive system.

Intel ICH5R RAID (i.e. RAID built into your Southbridge chipset) is more generally preferable for an OS install, than RAID on ANY add-on controller such as Promise 2037x, SiliconImage 311x, ITE8212F, SiS180, etc.. This is because ports on Southbridge chipsets do not reside on the PCI bus, but the other controllers do. The PCI expansion bus on these mobos has a throughput limit of no more than about 110MB/s, while the limit of a modern Southbridge CPU pipeline begins at over twice that. More importantly, by placing OS traffic onto PCI, you limit the available bandwidth for other PCI devices, such as Firewire, LAN, or add-on expansion cards. This can result in dropped frames and other performance problems.

I would suggest leaving your current OS HDD connected to SATA_1 and attach the new HDD/mirror to SATA_2 and create your array there. Here is Clintfan's excellent how-to.

Keep us posted on your progress

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Lonestar

Discussion Starter · #3 · Sep 20, 2005

Thanks!

Thanks for the info, I had seen a portion of that thread, but it wasn't clear to me at the time that ICHR5 would support a RAID 1 (mirror). At least not by the definition given in the ASUS manual.
But after reading further into the aforementioned thread, I do see an option for RAID 1.

I'll probably go that route. But is anyone running RAID 1 on two drives strictly on the Promise controller? I'd not seen any postings mentioning problems.

Or, I'm thinking about just setting up Ghost to run nightly and image Drive 1 to Drive 2.

Thanks
Gary

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