Ongoing First HTPC Project (1 Viewer)

[schuess]

Really excited to begin my first HTPC project and share any knowledge I can, and well for those that are interested enjoy reading and please feel free to comment.

Step 1. Equipment Purchased

• Antec Silver Aluminum / Steel Fusion Remote Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case
• XFX MG63Mi7159 LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7150 / nForce 630i HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
• Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
• G.SKILL 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory
• 2 x SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
• 2 x Link Depot 6 ft. HDMI TO HDMI A/V Cable Model HDMI-HDMI-2
• Antec 400w Power Supply
• Lite-on DVD RW

Step 2. Assembly
- To Be Posted - 2 Days due to holiday

 

[schuess]

As many have said, connecting and physically installing all of the components was a bit tough with the Antec Fusion Remote Case due to space contraints, however the looks and functionality will prove to be worth it, I hope.... Now if i could only get it to function. This is the problem I am running into. I want to setup a RAID configuration. RAID 1 Mirror using 2 x 1TB Samsung Hard Drives. This is my first attempt at creating a RAID system. These are the steps I have taken so far and stated by the directions on XFX Help Guide Which I have attached.

1. Enabled RAID in BIOS
2. Created Raid with utility
- status = Heathly, Bootable
3. put in windows cd
4. press f6 to setup raid
5. load raid drivers from floppy disk
- looks good, continue with windows setup
6. when about to choose partition,
"Windows cannot find hard drive, f3 to quit"

Operating System: XP Pro

Can anyone Help?

 

[TheClaus]

Okay I have a question why do a RAID setup at all. I understand about if 1 drive fails you will have the ability to rebuild but if it were me I wouldn't worry about the RAID and instead just setup as a normal setup and partition it however you want.

If anyone could give me a reason to RAID let me know. While I do want to make sure I never loose my movies(I use MP as a media player) I just don't see RAID as a solution.

 

[ryan20021982]

Ya theres no sense to have raid for MP, if your using some other media programs I can see it but its not needed for MP

 

[schuess]

Even the best of the best name brand hard drives fail unexpectedly and I just feel that I am not about to risk 1 TB of movies, pictures, and music.

I know RAID systems are built all the time, i just can't figure out which part I'm getting wrong.

Thanks for the comments. And if i can give any more details please let me know.

Thanks
schuess

 

[mizzourob]

I'm running 3 1TB drives in a Raid5 array so it's really seen by the pc as 2TB, simply for fault protection to protect my recordings. I used to archive tapes, but this to me seems like the digital equivalent.

schuess, as to your problem, my guess is that you've missed a motherboard setup step. The typical process is to enable it in the Bios, reboot, then watch the boot screen carefully for a prompt to press a key to configure raid and format the raid volume.

it sounds like you've got it enabled in the bios, but adding the raid driver during the windows setup only allows windows to interact with the raid setup, not to actually create volumes (unless you're using windows server, or use one of the software hacks for XPSP2, but that's another topic). Essentially windows sees a [single (raided)] physical drive but not an available volume on the drive to be able to use. Think of it this way, the drive is like a book shelf, you can place one continuous collection of books (volume) on the shelf as is most typical (C: volume = physical drive size), or you could have several separate sets of books on the one shelf (multiple volumes C: D: volumes on the same physical drive), at this point you simply have not allotted spaceithin which to place your books (volume).

 

[eetaylog]

re: your problem. i had the same problem until i went into disk management (control panel-->admin tool-->computer management-->disk management) and enabled the volume and assigned a drive letter.

 

[schuess]

eetaylog,

i can't get to disk management because i am attempting to create my setup pre initial windows install. This is a brand new system. I have heard it can be done post windows install but i need a few directions how.


mizzourob,
I am an IT Professional, but i am not sure if i am understanding what you are suggesting I do. I believe you are saying i need to create the volumes? How do I do that.
-----------------------------------

In other notes, i am attemping to pull up my XFX support ticket information but currently the support site it down. I put in my initial ticket with them and they came back saying my system board needed a second disk of raid drivers "for some reason". Problem is i tried that and it did not work. here is what happened after trying 2 floppy disks worth of raid drivers direct from xfx support.

"
The procedure of using two disk failed miserably.

Error Message " txtsetup.oem could not be found"

This was the message i received when putting in disk two.

So i decided to investigate, and so i copied the txtsetup.oem from disk 1 and put it on disk 2 as well. I got a little farther and then ran into this error message.

"File nvrd32.sys could not be loaded. The error is 14"

and then several other errors about not being able to copy around 30 different files

nvraid.cat
nvrcoeng.dll
srgb.icm
etc..........
"

Thanks for the prompt feedback guys. It is real frustrating.
-schuess

 

[reverson1]

Maybe I'm way off here, but it sounds like you're trying to install windows on to a raid array. Afaik, the raid array is ususally seperate from the os partition/disk.

My understanding is that if anything goes wrong with the os partition/drive you aren't totally screwed by losing the entire raid.

I could be wrong, but I think this is what you are after...


Ex

disk 1= OS

disk 2, disc 3, disc 4 etc... raid array

 

[schuess]

You are correct

My System is composed of only 2 Hard Drives. Both 1 TB is size.

I thought i could create Raid 1 Setup with a 15 Gb OS partition?

Is this not possible? Do i Need a 3rd hard drive which to run my OS, or can I do it with just the 2 Disk Raid?