To RAID or not to RAID

[caddelma]

I am getting ready to reload win2k on my machine. Prior to the last load I had used a Promise Fastrack66 RAID card in a RAID 0 (stripped) setup on two 20gb wd 7200rpm hard drives. Every so often win2k would hang on start up and give me a blue screen. I am trying to remember what it said. I am thinking it was related to not finding the boot device. It's been a while. I got fed up with it and yanked the fastrack out and reloaded dos/win98/win2k. Well i am fixin' to reload again, only win2k this time in a ntfs file system. Never used win98 when I had win2k anyway! I am trying to decide if I want to go through the headache of using the RAID. Which for some reason for me is a pain when trying to install win2k. I don't know if the card is fighting with the scsi card or what but during an install it would lock up at least twice. I was curious if any one had problems with raid (especially w/ a promise controller card) or had any thoughts or comments.

spec:
MSI (micro-star) 694D Pro w/ Promise ultra 100 controller
(dual socket 370)
2 - PIII 667mhz
128mb crucial pc133 cas 2
2 - wd 20gb 7200rpm hd
soundblaster live w/ drive
plextor 12x4x32 scsi
tekram 390 u/f scsi card
us robotics 56k pci modem pro (has on-board controller)
linksys 10/100 nic
Diamond viper tnt2 32mb
Promise fastrack66 raid card
antec sx-1030 case w/ 300watt ps

[Jeffbx]

RAID itself is a rock solid, proven technology. However, setting it up properly can be a major pain in the ass. If you can get W2K specific drivers and have a few hours to kill, go for it. You've already got the hardware - might as well get a little speed boost.

[caddelma]

Originally posted by Jeffbx
RAID itself is a rock solid, proven technology. However, setting it up properly can be a major pain in the ass. If you can get W2K specific drivers and have a few hours to kill, go for it. You've already got the hardware - might as well get a little speed boost.

I think I might give it another go round. If I remember correctly I wasn't able to put a hard drive on channel 2, because the bios never seen it. I was foreced to run a master/slave on channel 1. I haven't played with it in awhile and am going to try updating the bios and drivers first. I hate formatting 40 gigs, and you're right it takes hours to get everything setup. If I can't get the second channel working I am going to call Promise and find out why. Seemed like when I first got the card there was some question/problem with western digital drives and their jumper settings.

[Jeffbx]

Here's a tip for NTFS - when formatting, always choose 'quick format'. Unlike FAT, even drives that are formatted differently can be quick formatted with NTFS. A 40GB format will take, oh, about 10-15 seconds.

[caddelma]

Originally posted by Jeffbx
Here's a tip for NTFS - when formatting, always choose 'quick format'. Unlike FAT, even drives that are formatted differently can be quick formatted with NTFS. A 40GB format will take, oh, about 10-15 seconds.

I fortunately have one drive setup as ntfs, the other is fat16 and fat32 (dos and win 98). My memory is a little fuzzy, but when I setup the raid I will have to use fdisk and re-partition the combined drives as necessary. But I am trying to remember what options are given in win2k. Does it need a partitioned drive or does it give the option to partition one? I am pretty sure it allows you to delete partitions or change them to ntfs. I guess i am going to have to get the old book out and clear out some cob-webs! If you have any other tips to jog my brain they are certainly welcome. At least this go around i am not under a time-constraint to setup everything for a term paper :)

[Jeffbx]

NT will allow you to do the partitioning during setup.