Although I have studied my Asus P5LD2 Deluxe motherboard manual, I am not sure how to configure my two data drives as RAID 0. This is what I have done so far:

WD 250MB SATA2 installed on SATA1 (red). IDE Configuration set to Standard IDE. Windows XP loaded onto that drive. Windows XP runs fine.

Now, I want to install 2 WD 250GB SATA2 drives and configure them as RAID 0. I am thinking that I plug them into the SATA3 and SATA4 (black) connectors. According to the mobo manual, I have to change the IDE configuration in BIOS to Configure SATA as RAID before I can set up the RAID 0 using the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Option ROM Utility.

But if I do that, what happens to the Standard IDE setting I had previously for my boot drive? Won't that change?

I really need some guidance here because I am at a loss on how to do this.

Not all those who wander are lost.

j.r.r. tolkein

My advice is to not use Raid. It's not that beneficial for home users and if you lose one of the Raid drives you lose all the data on both.

Do yourself a favor BACKUP!
Sorry, I do not check for private messages

What are you trying to do with your non-RAID drive? Do you want to use it to mirror your RAID drives (I believe this is called RAID 2), or are you looking to have it completely separate from the RAID? I suppose it might be possible to set up all three HDDs as a single RAID 0 drive, but I've never heard of such a thing.

OK, to clarify:

1. I have three identical Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATA 2 hard drives.

2. I want to insall one HDD as non-RAID, to be used only as my boot drive (loaded with Windows XP).

3. I want to install the other two HDDs as RAID 0, to be used as my data drive.

I have been racking my brain to figure out how to do this. The motherboard manual is not entirely clear (to me, at least). I am not sure about the IDE Configuration setting ("Standard IDE" or "RAID"?) I am not sure if a RAID driver needs to be installed. I am not sure if I need to use the Intel ICH7R SouthBridge chip or the Silicon Image RAID utility to configure the RAID. I am not sure of all the steps, or in what sequence they should be carried out.

Assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Not all those who wander are lost.

j.r.r. tolkein

You should be able to set your SATA as RAID without losing the functionality with your boot drive. Until you create a RAID array the drives should be recognized as standard drives. Even if it doesn't work you would not lose anything unless you instigated some type of action on that drive (i.e. add it to a RAID array).

Michael J

All I can tell you is that you will need raid drivers of some sort. These probably came with your mobo. I know that to load mine, I had to use my mobo CD to create a floppy disk that had the drivers on it and then install them immediately prior to installing XP. Since you're not using your RAID to boot, I'm not sure how that'll work out for you. I will say that, in my experience, order of process is absolutely crucial to coaxing RAID into working correctly. Best of luck with this; I wish I could be more help.

You do not need to load the RAID drivers prior to installing XP - because you are not installing XP on the RAID array. The F6 driver installation is only needed to allow the Windows installation to access the RAID array.

Also, I'm not up to date on the Intel side of things. But, with the NForce4 chipset for AMD processors, RAID functionality is built natively onto the board, so you do not need to install any drivers at all.

Michael J

For anyone who may be considering doing what I was asking about: it can be done.

1. Install boot drive to SATA1 connector.
2. In BIOS, set IDE Configuration to RAID.
3. Save changes and exit BIOS.
4. Boot from Windows CD.
5. Press F6 and follow on-screen instructions to install Intel ICH7 32bit RAID driver (made previously on a floppy using the mobo CD).
6. Complete Windows installation.
7. Install the other two drives to be configured in RAID 0 to SATA2 and SATA3 connectors.
8. Reboot and press Ctrl I (for those who don’t know, and I was one of them not too long ago, Ctrl I is Ctrl “eye”) to enter the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Option ROM Utility.
9. Follow on-screen instructions to set up RAID 0.
10. Go to Windows, Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Disk Mangement, and follow instructions to initialize, format, and assign a drive letter.

The steps above were not clear (to me, at least) from reading the mobo manual. I arrived at this sequence through a combination of discussions with people on various forums, friends, Asus technical rep, the store where I bought most of my components, the manual, and thinking about it.

The bottom line is that my setup now includes one non-RAID boot drive, and a RAID 0 data drive. And it works!

Note 1: The P5LD2 Deluxe has four SATA ports: According to the Asus technical rep, SATA1 and SATA2 are Master, and SATA 3 and SATA4 are Slave. I connected my boot drive to SATA 1, and my two drives to be configured in RAID 0 to SATA 2 and SATA3.

Note 2: The Asus technical rep told me that I could create my setup only by installing the boot drive to the single SATA_RAID2 red connector on the motherboard located near the I/O connectors. I would first have to install the Silicon Image 32bit SATA Driver Disk. After talking about this to the store person, who also installed a setup like mine, I ended up doing it the way described above. It is interesting that the Asus technical rep did not propose the setup as it was actually done.

Hope this helps anyone who wants to do the same thing.

Not all those who wander are lost.

j.r.r. tolkein