Adding up to 8 devices soon. Help!

[SandTiger]

Ok.. i have an asus A7V333 mobo with raid. Im going to use the raid channels.. but not as a raid.. just as extra ide channels.. I will have 3-4 hardrives. Probably only 3 but i may stick a small 5 gigger on there. 1 cd drive. And one future Cd Burner.

Is there anything special i have to do in bios.. maybe im blind.. but i didnt see anything. Im using Win XP also.

Should the HD's go on the Raid Channels? or the regular Ide channels. Im new at this. I remember a post wayyyyy back when that i cant seem to find now that was helpfull.

If Anybody can send some advice this way, that would be way cool. thx

[Midknyte]

If you have RAID, why not use it? I would only put hard drives on the RAID. Leave your cdroms on the standard IDEs. :D

[SandTiger]

Because I dont need Raid. I need extra HD space. And the drives that will be installed are a 40 gig. a 20 gig and a 10 gig. Why would i want to loose HD space? I dont need to backup any data or speed things up at all. Just need more room.. And 4 devices just isnt enough.. 8 is just enough for now.

[Midknyte]

In a RAID 0 stripe, you won't lose any space. however, if 1 drive goes, the whole volume goes. not pretty. It's really up to you, I was just wondering. :)

Abit, Asus, etc, recommend that you put only hard drive on the raid controller, even if you're not using RAID. :D

[Kurylo]

Yeah, Midknyte is right: putting HDD's into RAID level 0 don't eat your disk space, and additionally speeds up your HDD system.

[SandTiger]

Heh.. I knew that. I had only been awake for about 30 seconds when i was replying to that. I dont even remember what it says. It might scare me if I read it.

I dont want to do raid 0 as the other harddrives are a bit on the old side and were not taken care of much. Ill bet money that at least one of them dies in 3 months. the 20 gig or the 10 gig.

[SandTiger]

HELP!!!!!!!!!!! My computer wont boot! (using old crappy spare)
Ok. Previous setup: 2 harddrives on primary IDE with CDrom on secondary IDe.

Setup now: 4 hd's. Bootable HD (40gig) and 20 gig on primary raid IDE. 2 smaller HD's on secondary Raid IDE and cdrom on primary non-raid IDE.

It wont boot... gets past the bios fine.. gets to the MBFastTrack133 Raid Bios or whatever.. and says Scanning for IDE devices.... then just hangs.

Was I supposed to setup the Promise MBFastTrack133 Prior to putting HD's on the raid IDE channels??

ARGH. I want my computer to boot. POS. It should be easier then that.. whos bright Idea was it anyway to limit 4 devices on regular IDE channels. I neeeeed HD space.

I baked cookies today... ill send you a batch if you help me get my computer working! Taste sooo good they can pick up any woman. heh

PS: incase it matters.. Both the HD's on each Raid are setup as master and slave.

[SandTiger]

Update: Put main HD's on IDE 1 and CD on IDE 2. Left 2 other hd's on Raid 2. Promise scanned the Drives.. and autosetup an array 0+1(******* software) and then rebooted and then hung when trying to boot off of OS.

Sad thing was.. it only detected the 3.8 gig on the Raid channel.. the one that was set to slave. Not the 10gig drive set to master.

Next: switch the 2 hd's from Raid 2 to Raid 1. Then if that doesnt work set them both to slave?

Ill continue posting updates untill this POS raid works. I should have gotten a freaking non-raid mobo and a controller card. :D


EDIT: switching HD's to primary raid worked. recgonized both drives.. computer booted. But the freaking PROMISE controller keeps auto arraying my drives. Windows sees 1 drive.. and gives me tons of errors when i try to read it.. not quite sure what im seeing either.. I think im going to install a HOT SWAP bay to put on 1 HD and then I can switch back and forth drives if i need to. Stupid RAID controller. Im gonna keep trying to get both drives to appear individually and not on any raid setup.



EDIT 2: I GOT IT WORKING. I found a fix. Ok.. when windows XP boots with the raid array it will show the 2 HD's as 1. You go to control pannel.. device manager.. and right click on the 2 raid/promises devices under your HD listing.. you choose disable on both of them. Then... you reboot.. when you reboot.. My Computer will show neither of the drives. Then you go back to Control Panel and System and you enable them again... then you go to my computer.. and you have TWO FREAKING BEAUTIFUL DRIVES. However... as soon as i reboot.. i can kiss them goodbye. So.. before i turn off computer or reboot.. i have to go back and disable the drives.

This is a pain in the ***... please.. somebody help me! heh

[Logan2002]

can i8 ask a question? why do you need the hdd space?

I want to get another hdd (Have 40gb now) but i am un sure about how big the second hdd should be.

[SandTiger]

Ok. I got everything Working. A 80gig and a 40 gig on my Main IDE. CDROM and CDBurner on IDE 2. And a 20gig and a 3.8gig each on their own raid channel. That way it doesnt try to put them in an array with each other.

As to why I need the HD space... im a bum. I Download tons of useless ****. The obvious question is.. why not just copy it to CD's. Without going into mass detail.. its just easier to store it on the HD for now. Once DVD burners become cheap and have a uniform standard ill go with that. Something that can hold 10 gigs would work for me. But 700meg CD's are just not going to work now. Secondly.. i play a lot of games. Third... im a geek, more HD space is good :)

Lets put it this way.. this computer is pretty new.. its maybe 40 days old. And i have already filled up 60 gigs on it. Both the 80gig and 40gig HD's are half full..

"Hi, my name is Brian. And im addicted to High Speed Internet connections"
"HI BRIAN"

heh.

[Logan2002]

yeah i am the same way.

I have a notebook 6 gigs (it has one gig free only because I need that space to download movies and big programs) had it for over 2 years never had a problem, secondly I have a 13 gig ext HDD that only has 600mb free (i will free about a couple gigs later)
and on my new system (nothing great but it is the first computer i ever built) the 40gig hdd is half full. So I have nearly 60gigs of Hdd space but I use more than half.
So I want to get a BIG hdd 120 gigs or something like that.....for movies, games, music (i collect mp3)


So I am a geek too I am glad to hear that your system works!