[Krendog]

I need help acquiring the correct RAID drives and how to install them. I have been very confused and know what I need to get, but don't know where and how. So if someone could supply a link and hen info on how to get them onto a floppy, that would be greatly appreciated. Obviously I am typing from a different PC right now. Here are the specs for the PC I am trying to install XP onto:
Asus A8N SLI
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual
Nvidia 7800 GTX
Western Digital 70gb hard drive &
Seagate 320gb hard drive
2GB of RAM (I have 4 but currently one is dead and it came in a pair so I am sending it to the factory to be replaced)
Windows XP Home Edition 32bit (I am probably getting Vista Ultimate 64bit soon, but until then I want this installed)
I had an XP error and decided to just reformat all of my Hard drives and erase Windows and do a fresh install on my PC.

THE BIOS IS ALREADY SET TO RAID, I JUST NEED A LINK AND A HOW TO ON HOW TO INSTALL THE RAID. Thanks!!

[Krendog]

I've seen things on how to do everything, but they never supply a sufficient link and everything I find doesn't seem to work

[Justawind]

What kind of RAID are you planning on setting up? There are a few flavors.

[Krendog]

um, one that'll work with that? I've been trying to get this to work for a while so I'm kinda beat, but I beleive it's the........well to make sure why don't you tell me where I can find out what I have it set at in the BIOS?

[Justawind]

I would try this link.

http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/RAID.htm

2 HDD makes me think of raid 1 or 5, but more of RAID 1

[Krendog]

Oh thank you. I was thinking you were talking about something else, but I actually didn't know which one I was going to do .

[Justawind]

RAID 1 is a mirror of the drive with striping. Having 2 drives kinda sets you up for that one alone. But try that link and see how it works for you.

[Krendog]

On this page http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/RAID_Prep.htm it is saying,"Locate the relevant drivers on the supplied CD-ROM. In this case, they're labelled ITE_RAID drivers," what supplied CD-ROM is it talking about

[Justawind]

After doing some research, it doesnt look like you can do it with XP home. XP Pro does support it though.

[DoubleHelix]

Krendog, are you familiar with what RAID is? Honestly, I'm not sure you can even set it up with two hard drives so vastly different in size. The 70GB drive is definitely not going to perform as well as the 320GB drive, so at the least, you'd be dragging system performance down.

[Justawind]

Straight from MS KB

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314343

[Krendog]

At the beginning of XP setup it looks for a RAID file that it cannot find. So what are my options? What do you guys reccommend then? The reason it was setup on RAID is because it used to just be the 70 gb hard drive.

[DoubleHelix]

The question is why do you want to use any type of RAID? The two main reasons are usually a slight performance improvement or data redundancy.

I can't imagine any performance increase with such an old drive, and for data redundancy, you'd be reducing your entire storage capacity to 70GB essentially wasting 80% of the larger drive.

I don't see a benefit here.

[Krendog]

Why would I be wasting the space if I don't even use the larger drive for my boot and XP files? I use it for my entertainment files, it has nothing to do with XP, but that's why I asked what would you guys suggest I do instead of RAID? What do I set it to in the BIOS so when I first start to install Windows it doesn't search for a RAID file and instead justs load the Windows files?

[Hughv]

The ASUS site is pretty good:
See here for RAID info:
http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx...&model=A8N-SLI
Here for the manual:
http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx...&model=A8N-SLI
For RAID, the drives should be the same (Approx) size, as the smaller drive determines the Array size.
I would not recommend using the on board RAID in your case.