How do I install 2 Hard drives as a RAID 1 array?

[Richard_G]

I'm probably going to get jumped on for this one. I'm building a machine for my brother to use for his business. As losing a hard drive full of data would cause him serious grief, I suggested a RAID mirror array would be a good idea In addition to regular backups). He has just bought an MSI K7N2G-ILSR motherboard and a pair of Western Digital 60Gb hard drives. The booklet that comes with it is about as clear as a pint of Guiness in a dirty glass. It tells you everything you need to know about setting up the RAID array, but nothing about which drive to install where.

The motherboard has onboard Promise RAID controller with 3 ATA133 IDE ports and two Serial ATA ports. His drives are ATA133. Connecting a drive to IDE3 causes the Promise Fastrack screen to appear and tell me that no array is configured and invites me to configure one. But when I try, it is telling me that only one drive (the one on IDE3) exists! I have tried both drives on IDE3, one on IDE3 and the other on IDE1 and one on IDE3 and the other on IDE2. In each case it only detects one drive on IDE3, it seems to know nothing about the other channels. If I don't use IDE3, I get a message after POST that tells me that no drives were detected on Fastrack controller and bios has not been installed. From that point on it works just as you would expect a standard IDE controller to work.

The MSI website (www.msi.com.tw) spec on the motherboard says that it can accept 2 serial ATA hard drives and 1 ATA133 hard drive on the RAID controller. But that has got to be one ADDITIONAL ATA133 drive surely. How can you have a RAID array with only one drive?

Anyone got any clues?

[BJ_M]

set one to master and one to slave and put one on one ide and the other on the other ide and configure as a mirrored array (as you want data security) .. if you use raid 0 you will get better performance but no redundancy what so ever .. even better would be to use 3 drives in a raid 5 configuration

[parsonsj]

Went over and looked and on this MB you have the regular IDE1 and IDE2 that are non raid. Then you have the 2 SATA and 1 ATA133 IDE3 that do RAID. The only RAID is the 2 SATA and the ATA133 IDE3. So to Raid you Need 2 SATA Drives or 1 SATA and 1 ATA133 on IDE3 or 2 SATA and 1 ATA133 on IDE3.
You could get one of the add on Cards that Give you 2 IDE RAID Ports and put the ATA Drives on them, but that defeats the purpose of that MB. The othe solution is to look for a Different MB That has the 4 ATA133 Ports 2 Standard and 2 Raid.

[RabidDog]

Or just backup one drive t'other every night and save weekly copys.
get some ide 2 sata convertors (not ideal but cheap)

[BJ_M]

or do as i suggested on the non promise raid controller and use the mirror function built into windows for two drives .. same result

[redwudz]

I looked at the motherboard manual also. Not very clear. I would think IDE3 would have a master and a slave position. I use RAID, but I have two channels and I put both drives as master on each channel. Looks like this MB is mostly for SATA RAID. If RAID won't work as master/slave, I would cover my ass by getting a PCI RAID controller if you have a vacant slot. They work very well, are fairly inexpensive and I would just give up on the MB RAID.

[Richard_G]

I would cover my ass by getting a PCI RAID controller if you have a vacant slot. They work very well, are fairly inexpensive and I would just give up on the MB RAID.

Having spent the morning confirming the state of things, this is exactly what I am doing and have just ordered a PCI ATA133 RAID controller card. It appears that Gigabyte are the only manufacturers that do onboard RAID that works properly with ATA drives. The Promise controller on this MSI MB will do RAID with 1 or 2 SATA drives and an ATA133 drive but not with a pair of ATA133 drives. This all seems a bit pointless when you check the book and the first thing it recommends is using identical drives!

Vacant slots aren't a problem. As this MB has onboard 5.1 sound, Video, LAN, USB 2.0, IEEE 1394 and TV out as well as the SATA only RAID, none of the PCI slots have had to be used yet! With all this stuff onboard, it would probably be absolute crap for video work, but as it is to be used for business, who cares....

Thanks for all the assistance, I've now got to tell him he got the wrong board.

[rallynavvie]

or do as i suggested on the non promise raid controller and use the mirror function built into windows for two drives .. same result

Does the Windows function allow for the mirrored drive to start instantly after the other drive crashes like RAID would? If so that'd be kinda neat.

[BJ_M]

or do as i suggested on the non promise raid controller and use the mirror function built into windows for two drives .. same result

Does the Windows function allow for the mirrored drive to start instantly after the other drive crashes like RAID would? If so that'd be kinda neat.

it would be -- but i really doubt it (i dont know as i use normal raid setups) ... mirroring is a poor mans data raid ... but works just fine (with either windows only or raid card - no performance diff really) .. as i mentioned above for performance and for safe date -- its better to use 3 or more drives really .. in a raid 5 (or something like raid 5) config..