The system (6 years old)uses an Intel D845EBT motherboard and utilizes two 80GB Western Digital WD800 Caviar IDE hard drives with the following RAID setup: 2+0 Stripe/RAID 0 and Promise BIOS. One of the drives has been occassionaly sounding off like a jet engine and has caused a lock up or two (runs ok right now but I am assumming death is approaching). Backups are up to date. I would think it makes sense to replace both drives. So, do I buy the same drives or are there drives that would work that have more space (better performance, more modern)? Am I able to change the RAID to set up from RAID 0 (no mirroring) to a setup that allows one drive to mirror the other. OR, should I just buy one large drive (can I do this with RAID; how to configure? What are the BIOS concerns (never been updated).

Thanks! I have learned a lot lately but obviously not enough. Any help is much appreciated.

-ElRoy

Raid 0 to me is a bit of a waste, because even though it sees two hard drives as one it doesn't have the option of backing up incase one of the hard drives crash. You're better of getting another hard drive and config one as a backup hard drive to store all your backup files in.

I'd buy another hard drive and use the good 80gb for windows and use a larger secondary hard drive for backups.

Great idea! In this case, if the older 80gb drive failed, all I would loose would be the OS and other applications (disks on hand). However, any files (docs, pics, and so on) should go to the new large drive...and...to go without saying, back it up externally.

But, in that set up, how do I remove or delete the RAID array? Do I do that in the BIOS where I located the settings? And where, when, and how do I assign drive names (C:,E:) to these drives?

One more thing...is there any limition that my version of BIOS would have on the size of the new hard drive? I was told that some versions will only recognize up to a max limit regardless of the hard drive size.

dont know about RAID, but hard drive size can be limited by not having windows service packs installed &/or it not having 48bit LBA capability
see www.48bitlba.com

Thanks for the link; very helpful. This is like opening a can of worms.

If I want to update the BIOS do I do it before or after I put in the new drive?

Then at what point would I install xp sp2 (my disk is pre-sp2)?; I am assuming I would do the sp2 at the end of the process)

And you know what...might as well take my ram to the max 2gb while i am at it. When do I do this?

I doubt you will find a BIOS update to make that MBoard 48 bit LBA compliant. If you have an Intel chipset there is a patch that will help. I have never used it so I am not up to speed on it. Check the Intel site. It only applies to certain chipsets.

You may stil need to slipstream your intallation CD if it currently doesn't contain at least SP1.

Thanks. When you say "slipstream" does this sound right? It came off of www.48bitlba.com:

"If your Windows XP install CD does NOT include any Service Packs, the following is an alternate method for install:

Additional Reguirement:

3rd party partition utility such as Partion Magic or Partition Expert.

1. Install Windows XP from the install CD.
2. During the install, partition the 48-bit LBA hard drive to maximum capacity allowed during install which will be less than 137 GB.
3. After Windows XP is installed, update to Service Pack 1 or greater using Windows Update.
4. Using a 3rd party partition utility resize the original partition on the hard drive to full capacity."

All you have to do in the Bios is disable the Raid settings and it will use your computer as an ordenary drive.

You motherboard supports 48bit Logical Block Addressing. So you are able to install over 137gb hard drives without a problem.

http://www.intel.com/support/mother...

It doesn't matter if you update the BIOS before or after you put the hard drives in.

You can install sp2 at any time it doesn't really matter.

Thank you so very much. I like you suggestion for this arrangement. Out of curiosity, how and when do I designate/name the drives (C:, D:)?

Elroy

If Cobra_R is correct then I am in error. I was simply going by the age of the system in assumming your MBoard wouldn't support large drives. If in fact it will then you may be good to go. Original WinXP is not 48 bit LBA compliant wo as I stated above you do need at least SP1 integrated into the CD.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcas...

http://www.nliteos.com/download.html

"nLite" is one easy way to slipstream SP2 and post SP2 updates. If you use IE7 you can also slipstream that. If you need to install SATA drivers you can alos slipstream those. Below is a link to another site that walks you thru slipstreaming.

Thanks, these will be helpful. I appreciate the advice. What about the naming process of the drives?

Input/Output:

"Does the Intel Desktop Board D845EBT support Ultra ATA/100 hard drives?

Yes. The Intel Desktop Board D845EBT supports Ultra ATA transfer rates up to 100 MB/sec (ATA/100) by way of the ICH4 IDE controller with two independent bus-mastering IDE interfaces. An Ultra ATA/100 supported hard drive and an 80 conductor IDE cable are required to take advantage of the increased bandwidth available on the IDE channel.

One of the features of the Intel Desktop Board D845EBT is its ability to support larger ATA/100 capable hard drives with 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) within the BIOS along with all Ultra ATA transfer rates (i.e., 33 MB/sec, 66 MB/sec and 100 MB/sec). To realize a true throughput performance difference, a hard drive may need to implement higher spindle speeds, such as 7200 RPM, and a large onboard buffer size to take advantage of the increased bandwidth available on the IDE channel."

http://www.intel.com/support/mother...

if you are reinstalling windows with both drives in they will be both auto signed C and D based on what hard drive will be primary and which one will be secondary.

If you already have windows installed and something and you are putting in a secondary hard drive and something else is taking the place of D you can manually sign the hard drive to D by going into the manage section under windows.

So it will look at the drives and other devices such as cdrom and dvdr and 3.5 floppy and assign names accordingly automatically?

if you are installing windows again it will, but if you aren't you might have to assign the D drive as the secondary drive depending upon what is or was your D. You don't have to assign it to the D drive if you are putting in a secondary hard drive and it's replacing something that was already D like another hard drive. If something else is already D and if it assigns your secondary hard drive to E or F i wouldn't worry about it.

The floppy drive will always be A, regardless unless you manually assign the floppy drive to a diff letter, which i wouldn't.

Thank you. I appreciate everyones help. Being ignorant of the considerations, I am enjoying being able to learn and understand this tech. I am going to dig into this process and see what happens. It will be a week or so before I get my stuff and do the work but I will post a follow up as to the good news (or a reqeust for more help!). Take care everyone!