Author Topic: RAID controlers (Read 2803 times)

GoGeTa006 · « **on:** December 13, 2009, 06:35:10 PM »

I bought a PCIe to IDE card and I cant get it to work!
I looked around and found some drivers.
I used to get 2 "unknown devices" in the device manger but then I installed the drivers and now I only get 1. but I dont see the hard drives anywhere!

I went into the BIOS setup and on the "hard drive boot priority" option I saw the 2 hard drives that are connected via the PCIe card.
Also after the the bios theres a "raid controler setup" and I wen there and theres a "create a raid drive" (i dont know wtf that is)
but anyways I created 1 163 GB drive out of the 2 hard drives (160 + 80 GB) I dont know why it wont let me create 2 raid drives or whatever.

anyways. I cant seem to find them anywhere in windows (windows 7) and I was wondering if anyone can help me
thnkz.

http://cgi.ebay.com/PCIe-PCI-express-to-1-IDE-2-SATA-ports-card-adapter_W0QQitemZ320459580950QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item4a9ce12616

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Ok Check this out!:
http://img152.imageshack.us/i/capturea.png/

Mcgreag · « **Reply #1 on:** December 13, 2009, 08:05:59 PM »

Open "Computer Management", in windows 7 just type it in the search bar on the start menu.
In there select Storage->Disk Management.

This should give you a real view on what drive you have and how they are partitioned etc. It also allows you to partition/format/activate etc.

kostya · « **Reply #2 on:** December 13, 2009, 08:57:41 PM »

Yes, if you set the two drives in a RAID, you will only see one drive. That is the point of a RAID (a redundant array of inexpensive disks). It allows you to have a single logical drive on multiple physical disks by alternating which drive a piece of data is written to (RAID 0), having one drive act as a mirror of the other (RAID 1), or mix thereof.

If you want to know more about RAIDs, the Wikipedia article explains it very well though is a bit too technical.

kureshii · « **Reply #3 on:** December 14, 2009, 04:02:10 AM »

If you "dont know wtf [a raid drive] is", how about finding out what it is first before proceeding? Information is just a google away.

Maybe then we can skip the simpler questions that have been answered time and again, and move on to actual issues.

GoGeTa006 · « **Reply #4 on:** December 14, 2009, 04:57:35 AM »

Quote from: kureshii on December 14, 2009, 04:02:10 AM

If you "dont know wtf [a raid drive] is", how about finding out what it is first before proceeding? Information is just a google away.

Maybe then we can skip the simpler questions that have been answered time and again, and move on to actual issues.

Done!
thanks for those links. specially that one kureshi, pretty simple language used there.

Question:

- If my Hard drives are already around 80% full, how can I treat them as a RAID drive?
they arent mirros of each other
they arent "split pieces" of data in each.
Cause i have some REALLY important data on one of them and if RAIDING them is going to reformat em then I better back off.

also, as I was reading, theres no way to have them like separate? cause say they are 2 hard drives 160GB and 80 GB. I could only get up to 163 GB RAID disk. (that also scared me for any data loss)

and thank you again for educating me.

Quote from: Mcgreag on December 13, 2009, 08:05:59 PM

Open "Computer Management", in windows 7 just type it in the search bar on the start menu.
In there select Storage->Disk Management.

This should give you a real view on what drive you have and how they are partitioned etc. It also allows you to partition/format/activate etc.

(click to show/hide)

done!
It finds the 2 hard drives as "Unallocated"

how do I allocate them?
cause If I right click I get:
new simple disk
new spanned disk
new stripped disk

and the "New" part is what scares me (since I already have precious data in those HD)

kureshii · « **Reply #5 on:** December 14, 2009, 05:44:22 AM »

RAIDING hard drives WILL involve wiping and reformatting them. You will have to back up data on them elsewhere before proceeding with RAID-initialising.

The whole point of RAIDing multiple hard disks is to 'combine' them into a single 'volume' (technically a logical disk as mentioned earlier, but let's not throw too much terminology in yet). Once you have your combined RAID volume, you can partition it and do other things to it. If you prefer to keep your disks separate, RAID is not what you are looking for.

If you already "created a raid drive" like you said in the first post, chances are the data is wiped already (some data might still be recoverable)... unless you got lucky and didn't actually create a raid drive.

GoGeTa006 · « **Reply #6 on:** December 14, 2009, 06:37:36 AM »

Is there a way to not RAID it?
like to actually just have them as hard drives just sitting there? using them offcourse

kureshii · « **Reply #7 on:** December 14, 2009, 06:39:17 AM »

Quote from: GoGeTa006 on December 14, 2009, 06:37:36 AM

Is there a way to not RAID it?
like to actually just have them as hard drives just sitting there? using them offcourse

Umm... just don't RAID them? Hard drives come unRAIDed by default, and you already know how to set them up the unRAIDed way...

Mcgreag · « **Reply #8 on:** December 14, 2009, 06:52:58 AM »

Also 2 drives of different sizes don't work well in raid configuration, the array size will be based on the smaller drive (raid 1 will give you 76gb, raid 0 will give 2x76gb). You could do JBOD (just a bunch of disks) but that's mostly pointless IMHO.

GoGeTa006 · « **Reply #9 on:** December 14, 2009, 06:56:42 AM »

Quote from: kureshii on December 14, 2009, 06:39:17 AM

Quote from: GoGeTa006 on December 14, 2009, 06:37:36 AM
Is there a way to not RAID it?
like to actually just have them as hard drives just sitting there? using them offcourse
Umm... just don't RAID them? Hard drives come unRAIDed by default, and you already know how to set them up the unRAIDed way...

I bought the PCI-e card for the sole reason that my motheboard , modern as it is only has 1 IDE slot. therefore I can only fit 1 hard drive and my optical drive (or two optical drives)
ergo I have 2 hard drives that are just chilling somewhere else.

also if the PC does detect them as separate hard drives, no way around it? to just tell it "yo! use it as is!"

what happens if I right click and use one of the following:

new simple disk
new spanned disk
new stripped disk

Xiong Chiamiov · « **Reply #10 on:** December 14, 2009, 07:01:59 AM »

I'm pretty sure that the card you bought doesn't have hardware raid, because those are much more expensive. So then, your OS should be able to see separate drives.

kureshii · « **Reply #11 on:** December 14, 2009, 07:02:44 AM »

Mmm? Install IDE controller drivers, plug in hard drives, configure them the usual way?

also if the PC does detect them as separate hard drives, no way around it? to just tell it "yo! use it as is!"
No way around what? If they are separate drives, they should be detected as separate drives if the controller is set up properly, shouldn't it?

And I'd suggest you not use any of those options until you know what they are (i.e. google time again...)

GoGeTa006 · « **Reply #12 on:** December 14, 2009, 07:04:43 AM »

I actually bought those IDE-to-SATA adaptors, bought 5 only 2 worked for a couple of months. and they use an aditional power cord.

kureshii · « **Reply #13 on:** December 14, 2009, 07:19:41 AM »

Wait, why're we talking about IDE-SATA adapters? I mean install drivers for the IDE controller you're using (which seems to be the JMB363 chip, if the ebay description is to be trusted; no comment on JMicron's chips here since that would be counterproductive). 7/Vista should be able to do this for you, and chances are it's already done so for you (since the disks are already detected in Device Manager).

So, once again, what do you want to do with those 2 detected hard drives? You're confusing the hell out of us...

Maybe Windows 7 Help can help. You probably want a simple disk.

kostya · « **Reply #14 on:** December 14, 2009, 07:40:37 AM »

Quote from: GoGeTa006 on December 13, 2009, 06:35:10 PM

Also after the the bios theres a "raid controler setup" and I wen there and theres a "create a raid drive" (i dont know wtf that is)
but anyways I created 1 163 GB drive out of the 2 hard drives (160 + 80 GB) I dont know why it wont let me create 2 raid drives or whatever.

This is probably where you messed up. Undo what you did in that step and see if you can see the drives in either your BIOS or Windows.

GoGeTa006 · « **Reply #15 on:** December 14, 2009, 04:21:39 PM »

I can see the drives in both Windows and the BIOS
and I can see them as separate drives (as you saw in the screen shot)

what I want to do is access them kureshi.
you know, just go to my computer and select either of those drives and double click and browse whatever information is on them. thats what I want to do. cause as I posted I can see both drives in the device manager and in the BIOS. but I cant access them (as u saw on the first screenshot) they do not appear in "my computer" and they do appear in the device manager as separate hard drives (not as 1 big RAID drive)

it says "unallocated"
how do I allocate them?
and as mentioned I dont want to reformat them or anything, they have precious information (and If it was deleted then I want to use recoverydr or whatever software to recover that data)

kureshii · « **Reply #16 on:** December 14, 2009, 05:09:45 PM »

Quote from: GoGeTa006 on December 14, 2009, 04:21:39 PM

it says "unallocated"
how do I allocate them?

Right-click on the unallocated portions, New Partition (or whatever the option is labelled as). For what you want to do, "simple disk" is the most appropriate option. But you don't want to do this yet, because...

Quote from: GoGeTa006 on December 14, 2009, 04:21:39 PM

and as mentioned I dont want to reformat them or anything, they have precious information (and If it was deleted then I want to use recoverydr or whatever software to recover that data)

When you did the RAID creation in BIOS (assuming that's actually what you did, since I don't know if that's what you actually did), you likely wiped the drives. AFAIK there is no way to set up a RAID without first formatting it, and since the disks are now uninitialised ("unallocated" in Windows) there's good reason to believe this is what happened, if those disks originally contained data.

If you want to do any data recovery, now's the best time to do it before you do anything else to those drives. I hope you have file recovery software that can work with uninitialised drives.

Proin Drakenzol · « **Reply #17 on:** December 14, 2009, 11:49:15 PM »

RAID 0 isn't really RAID, it's pure data striping. True RAID has redundancy, hence "redundant array of independent disks."

...

Yes, I can be a purist, sometimes.

vuzedome · « **Reply #18 on:** December 15, 2009, 01:20:08 AM »

So......you didn't backup your data first?

GoGeTa006 · « **Reply #19 on:** December 15, 2009, 04:25:30 AM »

Quote from: vuzedome on December 15, 2009, 01:20:08 AM

So......you didn't backup your data first?

that was supposed to be the backed up data.
and the "in queue to burn into DVD" data.

so yeah. Ill see if my recovery software can work on those, I guess ill hook em up to the main cable that goes to the motherboard, see what I can do from there.

and about the RAIDING.
I did go to the "Raid options" and created a new raid. but it did so quickly i dont know if ti actually did re-format the drives.
and I want to think Proin's words are positive and mean "your data is safe"