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Homer:
I can't answer about built in mirroring. I have the Asus A8N-E
motherboard on two systems using the NF4 raid 1 arrays without any problems
or errors. There were problems with the NF4 raid drivers during Vista beta
but that was corrected in a later build. Have a great day.

--
Dennis Pack
XP x64, Vista Enterprise x64
Office2007
"Homer J. Simpson" <root@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:...
> I'm running XP x64 on an ASUS A8N-E motherboard.
>
> I'd like to RAID a pair of small-ish 80GB IDE drives on which I'd run the
> OS. I have a bunch of larger SATA and IDE drives (of various sizes) for
> my own data; these don't need to be RAIDed.
>
> Judging from various posts in various forums it seems the consensus is
> that my motherboard's nForce4 RAID solution isn't the greatest, so I'd
> like to stick with the OS's own mirroring capabilities. I've done it
> before for data drives on other machines, and it seems to work pretty
> well, so I'd like to do the same thing on this box for the OS itself.
>
> I've done a clean XP install on one of the 80GB drives, set up with a
> single partition; once the OS has booted, I've converted both drives from
> Basic to Dynamic with Disk Manager...now when I right-click on the drive
> that contains the OS, I see the "Add Mirror" option, but it's grayed out.
>
> Is it not possible to use the built-in tools to mirror the OS drive? If
> it is, what's the general procedure?
>
>

I'm running XP x64 on an ASUS A8N-E motherboard.

I'd like to RAID a pair of small-ish 80GB IDE drives on which I'd run the
OS. I have a bunch of larger SATA and IDE drives (of various sizes) for my
own data; these don't need to be RAIDed.

Judging from various posts in various forums it seems the consensus is that
my motherboard's nForce4 RAID solution isn't the greatest, so I'd like to
stick with the OS's own mirroring capabilities. I've done it before for
data drives on other machines, and it seems to work pretty well, so I'd like
to do the same thing on this box for the OS itself.

I've done a clean XP install on one of the 80GB drives, set up with a single
partition; once the OS has booted, I've converted both drives from Basic to
Dynamic with Disk Manager...now when I right-click on the drive that
contains the OS, I see the "Add Mirror" option, but it's grayed out.

Is it not possible to use the built-in tools to mirror the OS drive? If it
is, what's the general procedure?

XP doesn't support software mirroring - it is a Server only feature, I'm
afraid. You can use the motherboard's RAID controller, since that doesn't
have any dependency beyond drivers on the OS.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64


"Homer J. Simpson" <root@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:...
> I'm running XP x64 on an ASUS A8N-E motherboard.
>
> I'd like to RAID a pair of small-ish 80GB IDE drives on which I'd run the
> OS. I have a bunch of larger SATA and IDE drives (of various sizes) for
> my own data; these don't need to be RAIDed.
>
> Judging from various posts in various forums it seems the consensus is
> that my motherboard's nForce4 RAID solution isn't the greatest, so I'd
> like to stick with the OS's own mirroring capabilities. I've done it
> before for data drives on other machines, and it seems to work pretty
> well, so I'd like to do the same thing on this box for the OS itself.
>
> I've done a clean XP install on one of the 80GB drives, set up with a
> single partition; once the OS has booted, I've converted both drives from
> Basic to Dynamic with Disk Manager...now when I right-click on the drive
> that contains the OS, I see the "Add Mirror" option, but it's grayed out.
>
> Is it not possible to use the built-in tools to mirror the OS drive? If
> it is, what's the general procedure?
>
>

Correct.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64


"Homer J. Simpson" <root@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:...
>> XP doesn't support software mirroring - it is a Server only feature, I'm
>> afraid. You can use the motherboard's RAID controller, since that doesn't
>> have any dependency beyond drivers on the OS.
>
> Even XP x64, despite being derived from Server 2003?
>
>

Homer:
NForce 4 raid is safe to install in both XP x64 and Vista x64.
That's the way it is running (RAID 0, stripping) in my PC.
XP x64 install needs the F6 floppy.
Vista RTM has embedded drivers, so RAID is automatically detected during
install.
Of course, RAID has to be set up in BIOS first of all.
One more thing that brought me a lot of headaches.
When installing your OS's, unplug any other non-RAID hard disks present.
Plug them back once you have done with your RAID.
Don't know why but the presence of those additional disks would make install
stall after the first reboot of the process.
I unplugged them and install quite happily did its job.
BTW, my mobo is an ASUS A8N-SLI (NForce 4 chipset), socket 939.

Carlos
"Homer J. Simpson" wrote:

> I'm running XP x64 on an ASUS A8N-E motherboard.
>
> I'd like to RAID a pair of small-ish 80GB IDE drives on which I'd run the
> OS. I have a bunch of larger SATA and IDE drives (of various sizes) for my
> own data; these don't need to be RAIDed.
>
> Judging from various posts in various forums it seems the consensus is that
> my motherboard's nForce4 RAID solution isn't the greatest, so I'd like to
> stick with the OS's own mirroring capabilities. I've done it before for
> data drives on other machines, and it seems to work pretty well, so I'd like
> to do the same thing on this box for the OS itself.
>
> I've done a clean XP install on one of the 80GB drives, set up with a single
> partition; once the OS has booted, I've converted both drives from Basic to
> Dynamic with Disk Manager...now when I right-click on the drive that
> contains the OS, I see the "Add Mirror" option, but it's grayed out.
>
> Is it not possible to use the built-in tools to mirror the OS drive? If it
> is, what's the general procedure?
>
>
>

> Homer:
> I can't answer about built in mirroring. I have the Asus A8N-E
> motherboard on two systems using the NF4 raid 1 arrays without any
> problems or errors. There were problems with the NF4 raid drivers during
> Vista beta but that was corrected in a later build. Have a great day.

Dennis,

I'm glad to hear that the Nvidia RAID drivers are working out for you (are
you now on Vista and using corresponding RTMed RAID drivers?). I've been
reading a lot of bad things about Nvidia's native RAID support, and I've had
bad experiences with it myself (eg, NVRAID.SYS would cause BSODs, and the
array would be broken after rebooting...that sort of thing). When I first
toyed with it, I've had to rebuild my system three times within a month, and
have sworn off using Nvidia's RAID solution, at least until they sorted out
their driver issues. Mind you, this was on XP 32-bit--I'm now using XP
64-bit. Have you used either of these? If so, what driver version? Did
the installer complain about two missing .CAT files on the floppy?
(nvraid.cat and nvata.cat, which ultimately don't seem to stop the
installation from completing successfully)...


In any case--and this isn't directed at you specifically, so anyone please
jump in--this is what I'm now trying.

I've temporarily put both drives in a secondary machine and I'm trying to
set it up there just for tinkering--I'm not gonna do this again on my
primary machine until I'm comfortable with the procedure. Thing is, my
secondary machine's CPU is 32-bit only, while I'd prefer to stick with XP
x64 on my primary one. So I'm making the assumption that whatever procedure
works on XP x86 will be the same (or very similar) with XP x64.

I've made a single partition using the drive's full 80GB capacity, and
reinstalled XP x86. Both drives show up in XP's Disk Manager as two
individual 74.53GB drives. I know all about the 80 gigabit vs gigabyte
issue, yada, yada...I'm not questioning the size discrepancy.

I then converted both drives from Basic to Dynamic.

After rebooting, I'm now seeing two partitions on the primary master drive
(Disk 0): a 74.52GB NTFS partition, and another 8MB unallocated one. I
don't know why this tiny partition got created, but there it is. So be it.

The second disk, Disk 1, is still one single unallocated 80GB partition.
Actually, unallocated space.

Disk 0's first partition's right-click menu displays a grayed-out 'Add
Mirror' option, as well as 'Extended Volume'. 'Extended Volume' is
selectable, but selecting it only displays a message saying "This selected
volume is a system or boot disk or was created on a basic disk in an earlier
version of Windows and cannot be extended".

Granted, it was created on a Basic disk, but that's because you don't have
the option to select Basic or Dynamic disks during the actual OS
installation. The 'earlier version of Windows' part is just plain bogus.

At this point I can select either the 8MB partition at the end of the first
disk, or Disk 1's unallocated 74.53GB space, select New Volume, and be
presented with choices of Simple, Spanned, and Striped. Reading from the
description, Striped is the mirroring option. The next dialog box lets me
select the 'other' drive and add it to the striped set. However, I can only
allocate 8MB to it--matching Disk 0's unallocated space.

If I go through with it, then great, I end up with one single E: drive
mirrored across both physical disks. So it kinda works. I suppose if I got
this far, I could restart the installation, resize the OS partition to the
bare minimum and stripe the rest. But that's not what I want--I want the OS
partition itself to be mirrored, not the free space beyond it. When I used
Nvidia's native RAID (which had no problem mirroring the OS partition), I
saw a *tremendous* speed increase, and this is what I'm ultimately after. I
suppose the catch is that in Nvidia's case, you get to load a RAID driver
from a floppy (with the F6 key) before the OS partition gets set up...

So what's the catch?

> XP doesn't support software mirroring - it is a Server only feature, I'm
> afraid. You can use the motherboard's RAID controller, since that doesn't
> have any dependency beyond drivers on the OS.

Even XP x64, despite being derived from Server 2003?

Carlos,

Thanks for replying, but whether NForce4 is safe to use or not is not in
question. I still wanna know whether XP x64 can do it (the OS partition,
that is) without third-party drivers. See my other posts--I've had terrible
luck with NF4 in the past, and I'm wary about using it again on my primary
machine.

I've now tried the procedure on Server 2003...

It's pretty obvious to figure out (just a couple of clicks), so it doesn't
look like I've missed anything at all while trying it on XP...I would have
to conclude that indeed mirroring the OS partition is not supported on
XP--either 32- or 64-bit versions.

I'd love to understand the rationale behind that decision though. If
RAIDing a data drive is gonna be supported on XP, why not include the OS
drive as well? For a home user, I would think it makes more sense to RAID
the OS drive than any data drive. I don't need quick access to huge
database files, but I would love to see the OS benefit from the increased
throughput. I have no need to RAID my data drives.

What I'll probably end up doing in this case is to RAID the drives, but
install all my programs on it instead of letting them default to C:\Program
Files. I won't get the benefit of having the OS RAIDed, but at least it
might help a little for launching applications and games.

Thanks to all who contributed to this thread.


(I still wouldn't trust the NF4 drivers with my life) )

Homer:
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
You want to do the RAID thing from WITHIN the OS while I was speaking of the
install.
BTW, the install allowed me to partition and format at will.
ASUS Nforce4 F6 disk was needed indeed for XP x64 in order to see RAID
properly.
Carlos

"Homer J. Simpson" wrote:

> Carlos,
>
> Thanks for replying, but whether NForce4 is safe to use or not is not in
> question. I still wanna know whether XP x64 can do it (the OS partition,
> that is) without third-party drivers. See my other posts--I've had terrible
> luck with NF4 in the past, and I'm wary about using it again on my primary
> machine.
>
>
>