[Sconartoo]

Hi, I'm new user on this forum, but have used it for help in the past.

I'm trying to set up 2 Raid1 arrays using 2 Promise FastTrack TX2300 cards in PCI slots 3 & 4. My problem is the system sees both cards on initial boot, but as soon as I set up the first array, it then won't allow me to set up the second array on the second card, it just goes on trying to boot the operating system.

I assume that the system is finding the cards, but once it sees the array set up on the first card, it doesn't bother to look at the next card.

So how do I go about getting the system to see both cards so that I can setup 2 Raid1's?

Hope I've explained that properly.

Thanks for any help.

[Kantankerous]

You're not going to like the solution but the boot process is largely determined by the BIOS and most BIOS aren't capable of booting from two add-on cards.

Having said that, you'll probably have to configure each card separately by placing one card at a time and entering the setup individually and hopefully you won't run into any conflict when you run both of them at the same time.

[Sconartoo]

Thought something like that may be the case. I'll give that a try & see what becomes.

I guess the next solution would be to trade the 2 cards (with 2 ports) to a single card with 4 ports. I had the cards so was trying to avoid having to do that.

Thanks for the help

[Sconartoo]

Another thought, what if I introduced an IDE drive that would hold the operating system etc. & the other drives are used strictly for data backup? Do you think it would be possible to use the 2 separate Raid cards then?

Thanks again.

[crjdriver]

If you want to run all of those drives, why not get a 4300 or 4310 series card? Both of these have 4 sata connectors instead of 2 on the 2300. You can create one raid array and then use the unused connectors for non-raid drives.

BTW raid and backup really do not go together. Raid [any version] is not a backup solution. Raid1 or raid5 gives some redundancy in regard to a hardware issue however it does nothing for a virus, bad driver install, etc.

[Sconartoo]

Yes, you're right crjdriver, I used the wrong wording when I said backup, it is redundancy that I'm looking for.

I will probably end up changing the 2 cards for a single, I have the 2 cards so was trying to use those instead of having to purchase a new card.

Thanks again for the help

[crjdriver]

You should be able to sell the two 2300s and pickup a 4300 or even better the 4310 which supports raid5.

Just be sure to use a backup drive that is not part of the raid array to store image files, make backups of important files, etc.

We stress backups so much here simply because of the number of posters who find out the hard way when they loose everything.

[Sconartoo]

I'm starting with a complete fresh install of the OS etc. on an IDE drive and the plan is to use 2 Raid1 for redundancy just as a file server but I couldn't get the 2nd array to function once it saw the 1st array. So initially I don't have to worry about backing things up.

But I think I will still be out to purchase a 4 port card since I know I can create 2 arrays with the one card, as per Promise's info...so much easier.

I agree with you completely about backups. Been there, done that, very annoying, but live and learn.