0g1
05-22-2008, 10:34 PM
Hi, I recently set up 6 640GB WD drives on RAID 0 for the first time. Took me quite a few windows installs to get it right, so I thought I'd put up a guide for others to make it easier. :clap: Im on a Gigabyte X48T DQ6 btw.
1. Enable RAID in the bios. (Usually under integrated peripherals at the top, and also enable the native sata just below it cos legacy probably sucks). Save n exit.
2. Press control + i when prompted to get into the raid bios utility.
3. Create your arrays. Windows can only recognize max 2TB volumes and my utility only seems to let me create 2 volumes. Choose 128K stripe size. Also, make one volume about 50+ gigs bigger than the other one. I made mine 80. This is for windows and needs to be at least ~50 gigs to make a dynamic volumes work (not necessary if you dont want to combine volumes and/or exceed 2TB volumes).
4. Need another PC handy to slipstream some Intel drivers into a windows XP install using nLite because you probably wouldn't have a floppy drive to put the drivers on and do the F6 thing. And you probably don't have the drivers already in your XP installer. Pretty straight forward. Just go to your mobo manufacturers website, download the Intel SATA RAID drivers. Get nLite to add those drivers in. Hopefully the Intel drivers you got are older than these ones for ICH10R: http://www.station-drivers.com/telechargement/intel/sata/intel_msm_8.0.0.39(www.station-drivers.com).exe because you will need to install these later. If you're using Vista (shame on you), you can put the drivers on a USB stick and click on the volume during install to apply the drivers.
5. Now I'm not sure if step #4 is needed. :p: :rolleyes: You could just skip it and go here where we install the OS. With XP, find the 50+ Gig larger volume, and create that size partition on it. It will probably give you a gay driver letter like G:, so delete it and do it again and it will be C:. Then create partitions on the remaining volumes' spaces. They may also be a gay letter like 'I'. Try delete and do again and hopefully get 'D' and 'E'.
6. OS installs. Install video, chipset, and whatever other drivers you need. Go to administrative tools --> computer management --> Disk Management. Right click the "Disk 0" and "Disk 1" and convert to Dynamic Volume. You will conveniently be forced to restart the computer and all those drivers you just installed will be initialized.
7. If you wish you can combine the 'D' and 'E' volumes to break the 2TB barrier. Go back to Disk Management. Right click the 'D' and 'E' volumes and delete volumes. Then create a new volume, spanned or raid (same thing IMO) making a combined 'D' from those. Choose options "quick format" and "64k unit size".
8. Install the newer Intel SATA RAID driver. http://www.station-drivers.com/telechargement/intel/sata/intel_msm_8.0.0.39(www.station-drivers.com).exe This way you can get the Intel Matrix Storage Manager application, whereas the XP integrated driver wont install this app. This app is very important. Without it your speeds will be something like this:
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/6127/raidnormalze6.jpg (http://imageshack.us).
9. Open the app and go to advanced view. Right-click your volumes and enable write back cache. Then your speeds will jump way up to this: :up:
http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/6706/raidwritebackcachevol0xt1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Hope you find this usefull, and if you have any improvements to add, please do. :cool:
1. Enable RAID in the bios. (Usually under integrated peripherals at the top, and also enable the native sata just below it cos legacy probably sucks). Save n exit.
2. Press control + i when prompted to get into the raid bios utility.
3. Create your arrays. Windows can only recognize max 2TB volumes and my utility only seems to let me create 2 volumes. Choose 128K stripe size. Also, make one volume about 50+ gigs bigger than the other one. I made mine 80. This is for windows and needs to be at least ~50 gigs to make a dynamic volumes work (not necessary if you dont want to combine volumes and/or exceed 2TB volumes).
4. Need another PC handy to slipstream some Intel drivers into a windows XP install using nLite because you probably wouldn't have a floppy drive to put the drivers on and do the F6 thing. And you probably don't have the drivers already in your XP installer. Pretty straight forward. Just go to your mobo manufacturers website, download the Intel SATA RAID drivers. Get nLite to add those drivers in. Hopefully the Intel drivers you got are older than these ones for ICH10R: http://www.station-drivers.com/telechargement/intel/sata/intel_msm_8.0.0.39(www.station-drivers.com).exe because you will need to install these later. If you're using Vista (shame on you), you can put the drivers on a USB stick and click on the volume during install to apply the drivers.
5. Now I'm not sure if step #4 is needed. :p: :rolleyes: You could just skip it and go here where we install the OS. With XP, find the 50+ Gig larger volume, and create that size partition on it. It will probably give you a gay driver letter like G:, so delete it and do it again and it will be C:. Then create partitions on the remaining volumes' spaces. They may also be a gay letter like 'I'. Try delete and do again and hopefully get 'D' and 'E'.
6. OS installs. Install video, chipset, and whatever other drivers you need. Go to administrative tools --> computer management --> Disk Management. Right click the "Disk 0" and "Disk 1" and convert to Dynamic Volume. You will conveniently be forced to restart the computer and all those drivers you just installed will be initialized.
7. If you wish you can combine the 'D' and 'E' volumes to break the 2TB barrier. Go back to Disk Management. Right click the 'D' and 'E' volumes and delete volumes. Then create a new volume, spanned or raid (same thing IMO) making a combined 'D' from those. Choose options "quick format" and "64k unit size".
8. Install the newer Intel SATA RAID driver. http://www.station-drivers.com/telechargement/intel/sata/intel_msm_8.0.0.39(www.station-drivers.com).exe This way you can get the Intel Matrix Storage Manager application, whereas the XP integrated driver wont install this app. This app is very important. Without it your speeds will be something like this:
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/6127/raidnormalze6.jpg (http://imageshack.us).
9. Open the app and go to advanced view. Right-click your volumes and enable write back cache. Then your speeds will jump way up to this: :up:
http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/6706/raidwritebackcachevol0xt1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Hope you find this usefull, and if you have any improvements to add, please do. :cool: