P4P800 Deluxe - Questions about moving from standalone IDE to IDE RAID

Greetings,

I have a P4P800 Deluxe box currently running Windows XP SP1+. I have
the latest BIOS update installed. Currently all my IDE drives are
standalone. I am hoping to reconfigure things so that I can take
advantage of the mobo's IDE RAID 1 capabilities for my boot drive w/o
losing any data. The mobo user manual is not clear on whether or not
I can accomplish this or, if I can, how to go about it.

My current drive configuration is shown below:

PRI_IDE1 M --> WD 120GB HD (standalone) (XP boot drive)
PRI_IDE1 S --> WD 80GB HD (standalone) (data disk)
SEC_IDE1 M --> NEC 1200 ATAPI CD-RW/DVD+/-RW
SEC_IDE1 S --> IOMEGA ATAPI ZIP 100
SATA1 --> none
SATA2 --> none
PRI_RAID1 M --> none
PRI_RAID1 S --> none
SEC_RAID2 M --> none
SEC_RAID2 S --> none

The IDE PM WD 120GB HD is my boot partition and is configured as one
large dynamic disk partition.

I have obtained a clone WD 120GB HD in the hopes of setting up a RAID
1 with my boot drive. Ideally, I would also like to keep all my
current IDE devices, including the standalone WD 80GB HD. I have
never set up an IDE RAID and have some questions:

1) Can I just move my boot HD to the PRI_RAID1 channel, along with the
new drive, w/o having to reformat? IOW, can I just enable the RAID 1
in the BIOS and move drives so that my configuration is:

PRI_IDE1 M --> none
PRI_IDE1 S --> WD 80GB HD (standalone)
SEC_IDE1 M --> NEC 1200 ATAPI CD-RW/DVD+/-RW
SEC_IDE1 S --> IOMEGA ATAPI ZIP 100
SATA1 --> none
SATA2 --> none
PRI_RAID1 M --> WD 120GB HD (RAID 1) (current HD)
PRI_RAID1 S --> WD 120GB HD (RAID 1) (new HD)
SEC_RAID2 M --> none
SEC_RAID2 S --> none

My hope here is that the RAID controller will automatically build the
mirror from the existing data on the the current WD 120GB HD and that
I can then simply boot to this new RAID 1. Is this possible?

2) If the above is not possible, can someone please explain, or point
me to instructions explaining, how to go about migrating from a
standalone boot drive to booting to the same drive image, but in a
RAID 1 configuration, in the easiest manner?

3) Assuming I can get the above somehow working, can I still boot to
the RAID, yet keep standalone IDE devices on the PRI_IDE1 and SEC_IDE1
channels? Or do I have to leave one or more of these channels empty
in order to boot to the RAID? IOW, is it at all possible (within the
limits of the box's power supply) to ultimately have a configuration
such as:

PRI_IDE1 M --> NEC 1200 ATAPI CD-RW/DVD+/-RW

PRI_IDE1 S --> WD 80GB HD (standalone)
SEC_IDE1 M --> IDE Tape Drive or other IDE/ATAPI device.
SEC_IDE1 S --> IOMEGA ATAPI ZIP 100
SATA1 --> Misc SATA drive A (standalone)
SATA2 --> Misc SATA drive B (standalone)
PRI_RAID1 M --> WD 120GB HD (RAID 1)
PRI_RAID1 S --> WD 120GB HD (RAID 1)
SEC_RAID2 M --> Misc IDE drive A (RAID x)
SEC_RAID2 S --> Misc IDE drive B (RAID x)

Where I still boot to the PRI_RAID, but can access all the other SATA
and IDE drives?

Any pointers, suggestions and/or dope-slaps anyone can provide would
be greatly appreciated.

 

Bob,

1. best of luck

2. I have not had a deluxe so can't be specific.

3. For IDE RAID 1, have disc 1 as primary on 1 channel and disc 2 as primary
on the other channel. Not as Pri / Sec on the same channel - performance and
resilience will suffer. (for another RAID 1 on the same controller, both
drives will obviously be secondary). Since they are WD drives, be prepaped
to use cable select.

4. I would remove all other drives / opticals (and USB drives of all types)
while doing this as you would be likely to get boot issues if all drives are
present the whole time. Add the drives back in controller by controller
after you have it going and double checked your bios boot settings to
ensusre the system boots ok.

5. take a drive image before you start.

6. depending on the IDE RAID controller, when you convert the exisitng disc
(and new one) to RAID 1 you may lose all data on the disc - read the manual
and be prepared to image back the drive contents. Some controllers can do
online non-raid to raid conversions, some cannot. RTM.

7. you will need to either install the raid driver onto XP before you start
or via a Repair install using F6 firt time you boot on the newly raided
disc. (FIRST boot, no stuffing around and trying a boot, you will get a BSOD
if the drivers are missing).

8. I would check the bios version and raid driver version before all else.
Look for comments on bios dependancies for the raid driver. Test the bios
out before starting if you need to upgrade.

9. Consider (this is a good idea actually) configuring a raid DATA setup as
a test so you have to get the drivers installed and can prove stablity and
performace meets needs / expectations.

Best of luck again. You won't need any luck if you are prepared. Please let
us know how you get on.

 

Mercury,

Thanks for the pointers... I'm giving it a go this weekend.

 

Well that was ridiculously easy. I was able to migrate from
standalone IDE to and IDE RAID 1 configuration in ~2hrs, and most of
that time was creating the Mirror disk from my Source.

If anyone cares, here's what I did:

* Ghosted OS to a third HD (just in case... it turned out I didn't
need the backup).
* Enabled onboard RAID in BIOS.
* Installed the latest XP VIA drivers.
* Moved existing HD from PRI_IDE1 M to PRI_RAID1 M.
* Attached new HD to PRI_RAID1 S.
* Entered VIA BIOS setup on reboot. Configured the two disks as a
"RAID 1 for data protection", with my existing disk the Source and the
new disk the Mirror. Allowed the VIA setup program to copy the data
from the Source to the Mirror.
* Specified the new RAID as the boot array.
* Rebooted and viola, I had a RAID 1 setup. No need to edit my XP's
boot.ini or anything.

The only weirdness is I've found I can't install any other IDE devices
on my PRI_IDE1 channel, in either the Master or Slave position. If
any device is attached there, the PC will not boot. There may be a
way to solve this, but I couldn't find it. Instead, I attached my
standalone WD 80GB HD on the SEC_RAID2 channel as a standalone HD.
Everything works beautifully. So now my IDE configuration is:

PRI_IDE1 M --> none
PRI_IDE1 S --> none
SEC_IDE1 M --> NEC 1200 ATAPI CD-RW/DVD+/-RW
SEC_IDE1 S --> IOMEGA ATAPI ZIP 100
SATA1 --> none
SATA2 --> none
PRI_RAID1 M --> WD 120GB HD (RAID 1) (boot array)
PRI_RAID1 S --> WD 120GB HD (RAID 1)
SEC_RAID2 M --> WD 80GB HD (standalone)
SEC_RAID2 S --> none