More computer questions... drive & file mgmt.

[woody]

OK, first off assume I know very little, but enough to be real dangerous. Especially inside the "disk management" utility :laugh2:

Background info: I built a ground up Windows desktop PC, (XP Pro SP3) over the weekend...

Basic stats: Pentium core 2 duo E5200 2.5GHz, EVGA 610i mobo 4GB DDR, Graphics card w 1GB, dual internal 320GB 7200rpm WD Caviar SATA drives, dual internal SATA HP DVDRW drives, 400w PS... Nothing exotic by today's standards, but by far the best one I've ever had.

My goal is to have both internal HDDs in RAID 1 (mirror). The steps to get there aren't exactly clear, so if someone in the know can steer me...

Drive #1: I got XP, hardware drivers AV, ISP & a few games loaded up, surfed the web, played a few missions, everything seemed great!! Trouble is I set a huge partition 270GB NTFS where this stuff resides.

Drive #2: I set up a 30GB NTFS partition last night: Loaded the same as #1 -OS, drivers, AV, games on the small partition, then set another 268GB NTFS partition that is currently empty(just a -100MB shell).

I'm going to say that my efforts have been good practice drills, (and I have created two stand-alone drives that run XP & games well) but I bet that it's all needing erased and start over.

I guess step 1 is getting into the CMOS and setting boot drive heirarchy?

Assume priorities here 1--> DVD#1, 2--> DVD#2, 3-->HD#1, 4 --> HD#2, 5 --> Floppy. I don't have a 3.5 floppy installed, but there is one showing up in there as boot #1 ...might be seeing an empty USB/SD card slot? Or just a built-in default to the MOBO?

Then I guess we need to get into the BIOS and set it up to RAID 1 mode? (I burnt a CD with the RAID driver from the MOBO driver CD, and the MOBO will support mode 0 or 1)

When reformatting the drives... will I have to reformat each one independantly? (if one at a time, then set identical sized NTFS partitions?)
I read that in RAID, both drives need to have the same volume? (H: ) & (I: ) in my case... OR will enabling the RAID mode automatically do the same actions to the drives together?

How big, and in what format should I make the partitions??? (My old PC with a 40GB HD has like 5GB in FAT32, and the rest in NTFS)

Drive volume assignment: I grew up with the old (A: = big floppy, (B: = small floppy, (C: ) = HDD etc... then we got high-falutin CDs and (D: ) or (E: ) was the optical drive. On this new POS, C-D-E-F are the card reader slots, (G: ) is the DVDRW #1, and the first volume HD was (H: ) and the second partition became (I: ) DVD #2 is going in this evening... dunno what letter it'll assign to it yet...

Assuming both HDs were empty... I doubt would it hurt anything to reassign the volume names? OK then... assuming my (H: ) drive has 20gb of system shtuff, program files, drivers etc... would renaming it (X: for example) cause all the drive path stuff in there to change from (H: ) to (X: ) with the rename? Or would renaming an existing drive foul up all sorts of things? :laugh2:

Oh yeah! Wildcard: I have a 1TB external drive, which will be for off-system backups. It is currently set as one huge FAT32 volume... It has aprx 20GB of pix & docs on it from the old PC (no biggie to backup to DVD-R in other words) Before I feed anymore slop to this one, should I reformat it to all NTFS? If it needs a partition, how big?

I guess that's enough questions for now... :eyes: before my head explodes! As you can probaby tell, I am lost in the woods, big-time. Learning curve = cliff scaling at Pont du Hoc.

Thanks for any good advice...

 

[kunaji]

You need to go into your RAID Bios and build the array first. I haven't monkeyed with that particular motherboard so I can't help with the specific steps. Basically you want to tell the controller to mirror the each hardrive. You will end up with a single 270 GB hardrive. When the computer restarts, go into the motherboard bios and select to boot from RAID after cd drive. Insert your windows disk and start the install all over again. When it asks if you need to install any third-party drivers, insert the RAID drivers and let it use those when you install so it can see the RAID array. After that it's pretty much install and update as usual.

 

[woody]

OK Thanks...

I Just found a good tutorial on PCmag.com:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2249572,00.asp

It pretty much says what you just did... I haven't added the second DVD drive, but will reassign those to something far out (Y: & Z: maybe)

Also found out that one DOES NOT want to relabel the drives that have data on them

When Wndows asks to set a partition... still clueless how big, FAT32 or NTFS etc...
I guess I want a small partition for the OS and drivers, then store all the other day-to day BS on the big one yes? If so, How to make it seamless...???

 

[kunaji]

I prefer to just use one large partition. You can choose to setup more than a single partition during the setup process or use a tool like partition magic after everything is installed. After you setup the RAID array in the RAID BIOS, your two hardrives are now logically operating as one, ie the computer sees them both as the same physical drive, but knows it's actually two.

You will want to use NTFS for the partitions unless you need a windows 98 or older computer to access that information. You would also be limiting your partition size to 32 GB if you used FAT32 during setup. NTFS has a limit of 2 TB.

 

[Ralph]

You need to go into your RAID Bios and build the array first. I haven't monkeyed with that particular motherboard so I can't help with the specific steps. Basically you want to tell the controller to mirror the each hardrive. You will end up with a single 270 GB hardrive. When the computer restarts, go into the motherboard bios and select to boot from RAID after cd drive. Insert your windows disk and start the install all over again. When it asks if you need to install any third-party drivers, insert the RAID drivers and let it use those when you install so it can see the RAID array. After that it's pretty much install and update as usual.

Yeah, x2 on that.

A couple other things. One thing, you can only install the drivers using a floppy drive. I know it's crazy, but I have an external USB floppy just for that purpose. Also, you partition and format the drive as normal once you get past loading the RAID drivers. The size of your primary partition depends on how much stuff you're going to install on it. For me, 50GB would be plenty big enough.

 

[RichP]

The only time I setup different hard drives is if I am putting a tv tuner card in. Then I use a separate hard drive for each tuner. As for partitioning my main hard drive into multiple partitions, nope, whether it's 80gig drive or a 500gig it ends up as one. The main reason that folks got into partitioning was the drives were growing faster than the MS operating systems. I still have my first hard drive from my first home computer, it's got a whopping 20meg of disc, pre windows

 

[woody]

OK cool... thanks for the replies. No partitions needed then, and I just so happen to have a 3.5" USB drive at work... and a stack of blank 1.44mb disks (that I almost threw out last weekend - found while hunting down my printer software)

 

[RichP]

OK cool... thanks for the replies. No partitions needed then, and I just so happen to have a 3.5" USB drive at work... and a stack of blank 1.44mb disks (that I almost threw out last weekend - found while hunting down my printer software)

Yea, I actually had to go buy 3.5usb drive for some 1u servers I built. Very annoying and dam pricey too, that tarus one was like $27 but I needed it NOW.

 

[Ralph]

I like to partition the drive to keep the OS separate from the data. If ... I mean, when the OS needs to be reinstalled, you don't have to worry about recovering your data. Let's say Woody has XP Pro installed on the C drive and all his data is on the extended partition called D. He's surfing for gay porn one night and his OS get's hosed by some off-the-wall virus. All he needs to do is re-install the OS on C. His data is safe on the other partition.

 

[kunaji]

I use a different hard drive to have all of my data backed up on so one partition works fine for me. You can just as easily get a virus in your data partition and be forced to do a complete format and reinstall. To each his own. There truly is no "correct" way to handle it. There's simply several different options available that handle the task.

 

[RichP]

I like to partition the drive to keep the OS separate from the data. If ... I mean, when the OS needs to be reinstalled, you don't have to worry about recovering your data. Let's say Woody has XP Pro installed on the C drive and all his data is on the extended partition called D. He's surfing for gay porn one night and his OS get's hosed by some off-the-wall virus. All he needs to do is re-install the OS on C. His data is safe on the other partition.

Virus=total wipe no matter how you slice or partition it. Usually with a linux install first then windows, don't want any hiding in the cracks. I also keep my holy water sprinkle bottle handy too

 

[woody]

OK crap.

I have the BIOS & RAID controller set to mode 1, (array is builtget into the 'load windows' stage where it asks for the 3rd party discs (RAID drivers) and they won't load. Then -f course the WXP doesn't "see" anywhere to load to, and aborts

Part of that problem might be that the floppys (whoda thunk we'd use 3.5" on a 2009 build, but WTFE) has vista drivers on there too... will see if I can't split the XP ones off and retry

 

[CherBear]

I cant help you, but i wish you good luck

 

[woody]

Thankya Sir... I need all the luck I can get.

You did help! By bumping this up, maybe the Geeky folks will read it and pipe in. I hate doing "tech in non-tech" but WTF... maybe we need a "Geek Tech" sub-forum for me to lurk & annoy folks in? I know people who could make that happen... Like in 5 minutes.

We bailed on the RAID 1 array (for now) and I reloaded the OS and all my useful farkles onto one drive - and it seems to be pretty stable... (DVD playback is a little dodgy, but I'll sort that out) Unlike the last few loads... I resisted a custom install and just let it all load as OEM. (IExplorer, OutlookEx and Messenger me no like & me no need, I usually go headhunting just after install)

I also reformatted the second internal, and the external to NTFS. No partitions. Empty as last year's birds nests...

What I have loaded now is aprx 5.5GB (WXP + drivers + device software + apps (Avast AV, SpybotSD, Firefox, ISP, Media Player #11, Calc Plus) Nothing else.

How do I back this crap up??? (or copy-save to another drive) so I don't have to spend another long evening casting & retreiving CDs and clicking "Yes or I accept..." BTW, ever read one of those things your accepting? It's a good thing they don't let me write them :viking: Especially after spending the last 10 days "free time" clicking on them.

Allworkandnoplaymakesjackadullboy
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Allworkandnoplaymakesjackadullboy

FWIW and if anyone cares... I am posting with the new one @ a blazing speed of 24.0 Kbps.

 

[RichP]

Norton ghost is the quick easy way, couple of things first, download a linux distro, HawkPE is one off of bittorrent, boot it up and let it load, fire off the disc resizer and downsize the disc to the size of the OS. Ghost that drive with the smaller image to a blank formatted hard drive but don't do a disc to disc do a disc to FILE. At that point you will end up with two ghost files [size issues in ghost]. You can then burn them to two dvd's, then those files can be done again using ghost to do a FILE to disc image to any size disc.