Raid

[Duffman]

First off Clocker, don't say it.

Second i'm trying to install windows on my new raid drives, but it doesn't recognize them and it wants drivers, on a floppy, and I don't have a floppy drive, is there a work around?
or a step by step on raid 0 for newbs =p.

[Virtualbody1234]

What hardware is involved? Motherboard model please.

Temporarily hook up an old floppy drive. It doesn't need to be screwed in.

[clocker]

First off Clocker, don't say it.
Can I say "that" instead?

Installing a RAID array is a multi-step process that seems more complex than it really is.
Firstly, unplug any harddrives that will NOT be in the array...this makes life simpler.
Now, go into BIOS and enable RAID and, if necessary, designate which SATA ports RAID will be used on. (What motherboard/chipset do you have? My board has two RAID controllers and I much prefer the nVidia chipset controller over the secondary SiliconImage 3114).
Exit BIOS after saving settings and enter the RAID menu (if I recall, my board takes an F10 prompt to get to the menu, but yours may vary. In any case your PC will halt at the DOS screen anyway since it's wanting to find an array-you just told it to in BIOS-and there are no other disks to boot from-remember? they're all disconnected and this is why).

Entering the RAID BIOS you will have to tell it what kind of array you want- I assume RAID 0 (striping)- and what drives to include- the two Raptors.
Also pick the stripe size* and if the array is to be bootable (yes!).
Save and exit.
Now, restart the machine, go back into BIOS and make sure that the array is listed in boot devices (mine shows up as "nVidia stripe").
Restart again and boot to the OS CD.

Now you just have to do a standard F6 driver install, exactly as you would with any SATA drive, Windows should ultimately discover your array as the only drive option it has (another reason your other drives were disconnected in the beginning). Format the array (which Windows now sees as just a single 68GB drive) as usual.

Install Windows.

Congratulations.

Now...if you reconnect the other drives, guess what? your PC probably won't boot, giving you the "no system disk found" error message.
Go into BIOS and check the boot order again...your RAID array with the OS has been superceded by your newly attached single drive.
Change the boot order back and all is well.

*Stripe size is a matter of user/system preference.
Probably best to stick with default/auto unless you do some research and want to specify a size. Mine are 32k, but I'm just experimenting. You can read up on the subject and decide for yourself.

Have you run HDD tach to benchmark the speed of your drives running normally?
You might be interested to see what improvement the array will be.

[Duffman]

yeah yeah, I have no floppy drives, i'm gonna go run to a friends and get the floppies now. I already got them working with nix but then I was getting all these random reboots and shit due to the LVM or something and I couldn't get the complicated ass software raid to boot.

[suprafreak6]

but what if you have water on your motherboard what do you do then?

[Shiranai_Baka]

so RAID requires a floppy no matter what? =\

[clocker]

Yup.