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February 7, 2005
More work on the RAID system tonight
So, gave up on 64 bit for now and installing Windows XP.
worked like a charm. Took an hour to install, but Windows XP Pro picked the right drive (the 74 gig Maxtor 10,000rpm) to install the OS on. So after install Windows asks to activate the copy of Windows. I say yea, sure. It says it can't find the internet. I notice that there is red light on the LAN port out the back instead of a flashing green one. I figure there is a problem with my LAN so I fiddle with it and reboot the hub, reboot the firewall. I figure my Watchgaurd Soho only has 10 IP addresses go give out as DNS server and has maxed out so I turn off some devices and reboot it again. No luck. Only five devices connected, should have enough IP addresses. Ah, I wonder if Windows recognizes the Ethernet on the motherboard. Nope. I put in the ASUS set-up CD and install everything. Including the NVidia drivers that do little things like activate your ethernet port in the back (and the SATA controller for my other disks). Of course the ASUS installation manual says nothing about this. And the five question "troubleshooting" section says nothing about what to do if the ethernet port is not working. They do, though, helpfully suggest that if the machine won't power up, you check to see if the power cord is connected. THANKS!
So I am up and running with internet connectivity. I still only find the Boot drive in the system. I have to go into System Utilies to format the other 250Gig drive to an NTFS partition, drive E. Since it is on a different RAID controller I can't clump it with the other 300gig drives, so it lowers my effective RAID partition size to 1.2TB, but ok. If I were using a real RAID controller I could do more disks. One of the trade-offs of using motherboard RAID.
I install the Silicon Image RAID driver and of course no help files install with it. No manual at all. I guess I need to create a new RAID partition. The controller recognizes the four drives there, but they don't show up in Windows. I try to create a new RAID group (the driver installs Java JVM2 first) but keep getting an error. Probably because the drives aren't formatted yet. But They don't show up in Windows as available, so I have no idea how configure this.
Tried to install the USB 2.0 driver for the motherboard and it says I need XP SP 1. So I have to go to windowsupdate and install a BUNCH of security updates then XP SP2. 150mb and two hours and two reboots later, Windows appitite for updates is quenched. In install Firefox, Adobe Reader and Bloggar.
Some reflection:
This is not a job for the meek. You gotta be a geek. You gotta have a get around the shit attitude.
Investment thesis so far: There is still a need for quick easy off the shelf mass storage for the SOHO and mid market. This is still TOO hard. But the solution is a hardware box and I won't make that investment being a Software guy.
Posted by Martin at February 7, 2005 11:48 PM
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