dell pc Raid stripe array ? wot???

[BMC123]

I today had a look at a brand new DELL Dimension 9200 PC my mate bought. It has windows vista on it, and he wants to put XP Pro on, for a number reasons, not least of all his work software (3ds max studio 9) won't run on it.

we tried booting with the xp disc as usual, but it bluescreens as soon as it tries to boot. I have never seen one of these array things and its confused me.

We would like to try a dual boot, or failing that strip vista off alltogether and start from scratch, but I don't know what I am doing, and have no idea how to get it to install. Microsofts own website had something on it but it may as well have been written in double dutch.

has anybody here managed to put XP onto one of these things? I am sure there is something simple, but I am having a "blonde" moment.... :shrug:

[Simon]

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks for the full definition.

You can dual-boot Vista/XP but you need to have the RAID drivers on an installation disc BEFORE hand so that Windows Install can use them to acess the RAID drive. Without those drivers, Windows will not 'see' the harddrive and the installation will therefore be unable to continue.

You have two options
1. Do as above and create a dual-boot but you'll need the RAID drivers.
2. Forget RAID and use the two HD's as seperate entities. Doing this will erase EVERYTHING on BOTH drives. This option is only do-able (as far as I know) from BIOS or from using special installation discs to uninstall the RAID setup on the computer.

[nairda]

If you want to use the disc drives in a RAID setup and want to install XP on this RAID array, when performing a clean install of XP you are presented with the Windows Setup 'blue' screen. At the bottom of the screen there is the following;

"Press F6 if you need to install any third-party SCSI or RAID drivers"

It is at this point that you would press F6 and you will then be prompted to insert a floppy/CD with the RAID drivers. Once this has been done, you will then follow the XP install as normal, i.e. creating partitions, formatting, etc.

Personally, I have a 120GB system disk with the OS and applications installed and four 120GB drives in a striped RAID 0 array. I've partitioned the array into two logical drives and use it for all my data. I didn't have to do the above during install, I configured the array from within XP after I'd installed XP on my system disk.

There are probably third party applications that will do all the dual-boot hard work for you, but as I've not done this, I can't speak from experience.

[BMC123]

cheers for that... so if I get the raid drivers onto a floppy or memory key i should be ok? the chap does not really care about a dual boot, XP will be fine on its own. Thanks for the help :)

[nairda]

You won't be able to use a USB dongle/pen drive/memory stick. It has to be a floppy as the prompt for the drivers, (upon pressing F6), assumes that there is an "A:/" drive. If there is no floppy installed on the new PC, there should still be the connector on the motherboard. All you have to do is connect a floppy drive temporarily using a red/black/black/yellow molex power plug and floppy cable for the duration of the install. Once you've installed the drivers and completed the install of XP, the floppy drive can be disconnected.

[BMC123]

as luck would have it, there is a floppy on it, as when ordering it, he specified one. I would have plenty of spare drives and cables kicking about anyway :)

[radi8or]

Correct me If I am wrong , but isn't the F6 option just to instal SATA or SCSI drivers.

My array was set up from the post screen with several options, which I guess were within the bios.

I have a Giga-byte board do other boards load Raid differently ?

I have also reinstalled XP several times without having to reset Raid.

[Simon]

Correct me If I am wrong , but isn't the F6 option just to instal SATA or SCSI drivers.

My array was set up from the post screen with several options, which I guess were within the bios.

I have a Giga-byte board do other boards load Raid differently ?

I have also reinstalled XP several times without having to reset Raid.

SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) is computer bus designed to deliver much faster access speeds to the hard drive.

Most computers will have IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) or ATAPI which is are all synonyms or near-synonyms of ATA (Advanced Tenchnology Attachment) .

SATA is the more advanced of the current ways to attach things like hard drives to your motherboard.


Hope that clears things up a little more :)

[Keith]

It depends if the array controller reports a logical drive the the bios
If so then yes configure the array and away you go

I built several Dell servers with Perc array controllers last week and Cots windows 2003 server worked out of the box but results to vary from machine to machine.

It used to be a different story a few years ago with Compaq Servers and NT4 as they definately needed a driver first.
If a driver is available then the F6 prompt is the time to use it