Problem configuring RAID O on ASUS

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by LATSINT, Feb 17, 2008.

  1. LATSINT

    LATSINT Private E-2

    I have an ASUS M2A-VM HDMI mother board

    I have 2x 500gig SATA II Drives and have enabled the RAID SB600 ONBOARD SOUTH BRIDGE RAID CONTROLLER.

    Everywhere I look to enable the difference between RAID 0 and RAID 1, it says to press CTRL + F

    I do this and I get the FAST SETUP RAID BIOS just like the web, but i cant do anything in it. All these sites tell me to go to #1 selection for auto configuration and then select RAID 0 or RAID 1. I dont have this option. I can define and they say the two HDD's are there and RAID types are L1 and L2 . No idea.. when I go thte manual on the mother board CD, It tells me nothing, other than this stupid WEBPAM garbage. I think this is how to set the RAID 0 up.

    Anyone here every done a RAID 0 on this type of board before.

    I always pick the days where Asus isnt open for there phones.

    So far this is how far things have gotten.

    I have enabled the on board SB600 RAID controller. It finds both my SATA HDD's. when i go to load up I press F6 to load the raid driver from my mother board i downloaded. it works fine. it went through all that stuff and then goes to the part to install the new OS. XP PRO. I see two HDD's at 499,869 Gigs each. Exact same HDD's, even same part numebrs. not joking around with this one. I delete both units, but it asks me to install one one of them. I thought it said on the web, that if I see two seperate logical drives, then something is screwy. I ahev no idea anymore. It wont let me configure anymore. maybe this WEBPAM, has something to do with setting up the RAID 0 afterall. So rite now I am slow formatting the one HDD (500gigs is gonna take a while) and then we will see what happens later on.

    Any suggestions please message me asap.

    Thanks a lot guys and girls
     
  2. patomalo88

    patomalo88 Private E-2

    Hey Latsint,

    Looks like i'm in this spot as well... have done searches on google for info on how to setup raid 0 on this board, but nothing... the only thing the Asus M2A-VM HDMI say is to refer to the RAID manual on the support CD. Is that that WebPAM stuff... i don't know? Anyways, I'm going to tinker on with this any let you know of any progress I make.....
     
  3. LATSINT

    LATSINT Private E-2

    When booting in the computer never keep your Motherboard driver disk in the drive. it goes to boot from Dos or make dos, and it confuses you.


    Hey yeah i finally got it to run.

    here is what I did. Just like all the other forums you have to load a new operating system for this board. I suggest if you like everything you have setup rite now, then download Norton GHOST (you have 30day full trial) and back up your whole hard drive to an external. Or if not, just back up the important folders. like My docs and Programs and Windows folder. It will be the same. as for programs make sure you just have the disks......

    here we go

    Before re formatting make sure you make a 3.5 floppy drive with the RAID drivers on the CD. You till find them but you also might have to explore the cd from my computer to find them. took me while but i finally did find them on the cd. I Beleive it is on the main menu when the cd starts up "RAID CONTROLLER DRIVER" just follow the steps to make a 3.5 floppy boot disk.

    once this is done. make sure there were no errors. you have backed everything up. SATA II doesnt have master and slave. so dont worry. NOW that WEBPAM program is what you need. but it wont even recognize the drive until you run the raid drivers in installing a new OS.

    So keep that in mind.
    step 1


    reboot wtith you new XP or (whatever) press DEL to enter the BIOS. go to wher your south bridge controller settings are in there and change it from IDE to RAID. Save and reboot. now reload windows xp and boot from CD.


    step 2


    now make sure you have that 3.5 floppy ready too. you will have to press I believe F6 or F7. when the part comes up if you have third party raid or SCSI at the very start of the XP new OS process. press F6 or F7 a bunch of times to make sure you got it pressed. then push in the 3.5 floppy when asked. (usb floppy doesnt work) follow the directions.. then just reload the OS system on the main HDD. dont worry about the other. make sure you do a long format. not the quick format

    NOW, this is the first step.

    second step. I have not been able to figure this out from anone. this is how i got it to work. This doesnt put it into RAID of any sort yet. just "JBOD" format. Just a Bunch of Disks. you now load in drivers just enough to make your system be able to run. like SP2. don't worry about any special drivers. Just make sure you have your RAID drivers in Device manager with no !

    Having a cd with SP2 already on it is a huge time saver.

    now, load up WEBPAM again and this is where you will see your drives now. stupid instructions make it look so easy but, you will understand now, just like i did. LOL.

    You have to delete one of the drives. Make sure you dont delete the one with your stuff on it (OS) cause your comp will crash. You should see TWO LOGICAL DRIVES in webpam. Not one. Only see one drive on C drive in My computer.

    This stupid WEBPAM program is kinda cool, but useless to someone like us that want to make a nice RAID 0 for games and stuff and not admin work. Now ADD a logical Drive and now you can save it as whatever raid you want. RAID 0 is fastest. RAID 1 is secure and backs up everything so if one fails. But like me, I re load a fresh OS every couple months. so.... RAID 0 is the fastest and the best option for me.

    now once you see that you have RAID 0 on one of the logical drives. you will physically see it says RAID 0 and the other will say JBOD. write on a peice of paper the Letter logical it was assigned. C, D , E ect. important

    This point i have nit figured out how to make the other one RAID 0 unless there is something i missed reading for about 5 hours. now, once your ready.
    you will do step 2 again. BUT BEFORE you do this. erase the other Logical Drive. Your comp will crash if done rite. then reload everything again with the 3.5 floppy like before. but when installing you OS, you will only see one drive. the other is still completly blank and you wont see it ever until you get back into WEBPAM. i did this on a whim. haha. just do step 2 all over again. This time you can use the Quick format. there is nothing on the HDD anyways.

    now you can erase the blank logical drive and ADD a new one and make it RAID 0. your done. play with the webpam program if you want. kinda useless and this way not be the fastest way, but now you have a HARDWARE RAID 0 all good to go. it takes time, but it has worked for me now twice in 3 weeks on two computers using same motherboard, and different HDD'd. two were 750gig x2 caviar SATA II 10,000rpm on my gaming machine. and the other was 250gig x2 hitachi SATA II . Now when you ever want to add in more drives, the webpam program see's what you Have and changing things around is easy now. ;)

    make sure you reset the computer first just to make sure that when on boot up you will see on the boot up screen the two drives acting in raid 0. and they should say functional. now load in all your drivers. make sure you go to the asus website and get some of the newer drives. there are a couple that will work, but use the asus update utility to get the newest drives (4 of them or so) there is also a new RAID driver.

    Good luck. If you have any questions. my email gets the responses from this thread. so I can respond asap. well try to at least.
     
  4. Toke

    Toke MajorGeek

    Hi LATSINT having searched around for an answer to your problem have found a reference to a fact, have you got the latest BIOS update installed might be worth checking.
     
  5. LATSINT

    LATSINT Private E-2

    I got everything working.

    No need for a bios update. There is one available I will prbley take. but my whole write out, worked perfect. I m running RAID 0 no problem. took a while but it worked. This mother board doesnt let you select the RAID 0 or 1 at the begining of the boot up. you have to use WEBPAM.
     
  6. patomalo88

    patomalo88 Private E-2

    Hey Latsint,

    I'll give these steps a try... haven't had time this week to look at it too hard... i was wondering if you could give me a hand... the drivers that I have from my mothercard CD don't seem to work... i've tried creating two different floppies and they both say that there is an "error 512" when i'm in windows setup (after pressing F6). Would you mind sending me the contents of the floppy in a .zip file (or .rar). My email is patomalo88@hotmail.com. Thanks
     
  7. mdashner

    mdashner Private E-2

    trying two wd500gb drives did as you say, have os on second drive both now say raid0 in webpam but still show up in xp as one drive at 500gb how do you get the two combind partition magic shows
    disk 1 drive E: as ntfs as 476,827mb
    disk 2 unallocated 476,835

    never used partition magic except to look at drives, xp disk management says same thing so only have one drive available it seems. also in your setup did you go back and reinstall a 3rd time so xp is on both drives not just the one, when you do xpsetup does it show one drive at 1000gb ? been fighting with this for 2 days now, please help if you can! thanks!
     
  8. plodr

    plodr Major Geek Super Extraordinaire

    mdashner. welcome to MajorGeeks.
    Please do not tack your problem onto another thread and a two year old one at that.

    Start here http://forums.majorgeeks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=22
    click on the New Thread button near the top on the left and start your own thread.
    Also give the specs on the ASUS (model of computer or motherboard).
     

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