General Hardware

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

Hanspuppa — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:37:31 GMT

mr2005:
i'm happy to report i have a clean install on raid 1 set up.

Hey mr2005, That is tremendous New Years News. I am very glad you got it all sorted out and working.

Now that you have it working as you wanted, I should mention this.

Since you have a Raid1 array (mirror), if you happen to get a nasty virus or other nasty malware code, it will be written to both the hard drives.

As you already know, the second hard drive in a Raid1 array is an exact mirror (copy) of the other hard drive.

I believe you also mentioned you have an external drive for backup purposes. I would use this to either create an image of you data on the Raid1 array and store it on the external hard drive, or just copy the files that you may need, such as any documents, photographs, and any other files that you may need, in case you have to reformat and re-install due to un-foreseen issues.

Congratulations again, and thanks for the update.

This has been a very good learning experience, not just for you, but others here as well.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

mr2005 — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 10:55:24 GMT

thanks,

i'm happy to report i have a clean install on raid 1 set up.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

Hanspuppa — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:42:43 GMT

mr2005:
If I understand this correctly, since I have drive 1 (refering to the new WD 1tb drive) up and running, I will need wipe it and start over when drive 2 comes (refering to the 2nd WD 1tb drive) or do you just mean the array needs to be set up before windows loads?

Hello mr2005, Even though you have the 1 TB drive up and running, and you want to create a Raid 1 array with this drive and the other 1 TB drive that you have coming, all the data on the first drive will be removed (deleted).

Anytime you create a Raid array, whether a Raid0 or Raid1, all the data on both drives is lost.

As I mentioned earlier, just follow the instructions in step 5, and create the Raid1 array.

Then reboot, with your OS disk in the optical drive, and the OS should install.

After you install the OS and all your programs, you should have the same, or near the same system and programs as you had originally, except with the two 1 TB drives in a Raid1 array instead of the 160 GB drives in a Raid1 array.

The drive will still show as a single drive of approximately 965 GBs. While the mirror drive is still in the system and working, you should not see it. This is by design.

If one of the drives fails, for whatever reason, you can replace it with a new one and boot the system and the new Raid1 array drive will be rebuilt.

If this ever occurs, just let it continue until it finishes on its on.

This would copy all the data from the good drive to the newly installed replacement drive.

This process could take a good while on a 1 TB drive. You noticed it took 10 minutes on the 160 GB drives.

Hope this helps.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

mr2005 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:11:36 GMT

Hanspuppa,

good info.THANKS! I wasnt a big fan of the mirror concept at first but seems very easy in regards to having a back up. I believe will pursue that route.

with regards to this answer:

5. The two 1 TB drives would have to set up as a Raid1 array, by entering the Intel Matrix Utility,

by pressing the ctrl and the I key at the same time when the Intel matrix screen appears.

You only have 5 seconds to do this or the system will attempt to boot into Windows.

The Raid1 array will have to be created before the OS is installed.

If I understand this correctly, since I have drive 1 (refering to the new WD 1tb drive) up and running, I will need wipe it and start over when drive 2 comes (refering to the 2nd WD 1tb drive) or do you just mean the array needs to be set up before windows loads?

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

Hanspuppa — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:12:40 GMT

mr2005:

The questions,

      1.     With the the raid array, what controls that? is it windows? or is it that Intel Matrix storage manager controlling it?

      2.     with raid array 1 (mirrored) is all that backing up done in real time? what effect does that have on performance

      3.     with raid array 1 (mirrored) how do you know when a drive goes bad? will windows tell you that you need to replace a HD?

      4.    is it possible to set up a partition of say 250 gb and just have the raid mirror that partition?

      5.    when the other drives later this week, will the raid just start mirroring the the current 1tb drive I have installed.

      6.    IF i decided i just wanted to have and independent c and d drive and no mirroring, would that be possible?

Hello mr2005, I may be able to answer some or these logical questions.

1. The Intel Matrix Utility is used to setup the Raid arrays but the Intel onboard chipset actually controls the Raid arrays.

Intel Raid drivers control the Intel chipset for the Raid arrays.

Once installed, these drivers are loaded every time Windows boots.

2. A Raid1 array is written to both disk at the same time, and has very little, or no noticable performance decrease.

3. When a Raid1 array fails, you will notice it in the boot screen as you posted, as a degraded mirror array.

You would also notice a performance hit, and Windows may show an error with the array.

This will depend on exactly what the error is related too, such as a complete hard drive failure.

4. It may be possible to set up a 250 GB partition on the Raid1 array, but this is not advisable.

5. The two 1 TB drives would have to set up as a Raid1 array, by entering the Intel Matrix Utility,

by pressing the ctrl and the I key at the same time when the Intel matrix screen appears.

You only have 5 seconds to do this or the system will attempt to boot into Windows.

The Raid1 array will have to be created before the OS is installed.

6. You can set both the 1 TB drives up as single drives. You would not need to enter the Intel Matrix Utility to do this.

You would just remove the current drives and install the drives in the drive bays, connect the cables,

making sure the SATA cables are connected to port0 and port1 on the motherboard.

The original drives probably are already connected there.

The two 1 TB drives will have to be partitioned and formatted before they can be used.

You mentioned your first 1 TB drive was done using the WD disk already.

The operating system should be installed on the drive0 when you install it and the drive1 will be your backup drive.

You will have approximately 965 GBs on each disk available for use. This capacity is normal for a 1 TB drive after formating.

After the OS install, you can then copy your backed up files to the C: drive, the D: drive, or both.

I would install my anti-virus program and go to the Microsoft Windows Update site and download and install all the updates for Windows.

You can purchase some external USB enclosures and install the 160 GB drives as backup drives if you would want to.

There is al lot of information here, but your questions are thoughtful ones, and this can be done fairly easily.

If you have any further questions, please ask, and someone will try to answer them.

I wish you much success in whichever option you choose.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

mr2005 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:11:39 GMT

Jackshack and Yaowing,

Thanks for the input. Jackshack is right in that at this point i may not have a problem but i do have more questions.

to clarify, my goal is to get more capacity and get rid of the old 160gb drives completely. I have manually removed all my important files from the old 160 gb seagates and have them on externals. I have 1 WD Hard drive 1TB installed and I will have another arriving later this week. I don't plan on using the old seagates any more.

The questions,

With the the raid array, what controls that? is it windows? or is it that Intel Matrix storage manager controlling it?
with raid array 1 (mirrored) is all that backing up done in real time? what effect does that have on performance
with raid array 1 (mirrored) how do you know when a drive goes bad? will windows tell you that you need to replace a HD?
is it possible to set up a partition of say 250 gb and just have the raid mirror that partition?
when the other drives later this week, will the raid just start mirroring the the current 1tb drive I have installed.
IF i decided i just wanted to have and independent c and d drive and no mirroring, would that be possible?

thanks again all for your help.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

Davet50 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:28:40 GMT

ah you are correct there about the waste. I looked that up an you are correct about the pre SP1 seems 750 was somewhere around the limit. Well hopefull the OP will get this all figured out and report back with the results

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

Hanspuppa — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:28:52 GMT

Davet50:
Just out of curiosity, I noticed that on the first screen the drive was listed at 935.5 gigs. Is ~65 gig loss normal for a 1tb drive?I know about the formatting an such again not having been dealing with drives this size much was just curious. It does appear though from the first screen that the system does indeed recognize the drive and as far as i know XP has no limit on drive size so it should be good to go.

Hello Davet50, The normal size for a 1 TB drive after a partition is created and formated, will show as approximately 936 GBs (+/-) a few bytes.

What a terrible waste of drive capacity.

The only reason I made mention of recogonizing that capacity is that all the XP OS before SP1 had an issue with that much capacity.

Sp1 was supposed to take care of this.

Hope this helps.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

JackShack — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:02:37 GMT

Arrrgh! You're making me get out my calculator!

The basic problem is the difference in arithmetic between binary and decimal. Hard drive makers all like to use decimal so that the drive looks larger. When you use the binary arithmetic, however, 1 TB turns into about 910 GB or so. The difference between that number and what is reported is most likely caused by the drive being just a bit larger than 1 TB decimal.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

Davet50 — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:39:35 GMT

Just out of curiosity, I noticed that on the first screen the drive was listed at 935.5 gigs. Is ~65 gig loss normal for a 1tb drive?I know about the formatting an such again not having been dealing with drives this size much was just curious.

It does appear though from the first screen that the system does indeed recognize the drive and as far as i know XP has no limit on drive size so it should be good to go.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

Hanspuppa — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:22:37 GMT

JackShack:
Actually, he is using a Dimension 9150, as stated in his subject line. He has four SATA ports and an IDE port for the optical drives. As the screens show, this machine is perfectly capable of using a 1 TB drive all in one piece.

Thanks JackShack, for that clarification. I almost never look at the subject line. I need to be a little more careful when reading these post.

It wouldn't have made any difference in resolving his issues, or non-issue, as you pointed out.

I just took a look at the specifications on his system. He does have everything you mentioned.

The only issue that he may have is a location to install the third hard drive.

The case appears to be much like the XPS 420 where the third hard drive would need to be located in the flexbay area.

If this is the case, it would have confused him and many others as well. When I added a third hard drive, I had to do some research to get the information as to how to do this.

It is quite simple after you read how to do it, but somewhat confusing if you don't.

Thanks again for your input.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

JackShack — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:41:45 GMT

Actually, he is using a Dimension 9150, as stated in his subject line. He has four SATA ports and an IDE port for the optical drives. As the screens show, this machine is perfectly capable of using a 1 TB drive all in one piece.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

Hanspuppa — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:18:18 GMT

JackShack:

I'm not sure that a problem exists. The first screen shot shows a degraded RAID, which is to be expected if you have a failing or failed drive, plus the 1 TB drive. Note that it is listed as "Non-Member". It is not part of the RAID, just a second drive. I would think that if you had a C and a D drive before you installed the 1 TB, both of these logical drives would be on the RAID, which is treated as a single drive. The second shot shows two working 160 GB drives. The numbers listed are both Seagate numbers, not WD. If you install the second 160 GB, and you should unplug the 1 TB while you do this, you should wind up with a RAID 1 consisting of two 160 GB drives. Once you have the RAID working properly again you should be able to reconnect the 1 TB drive and effectively have two drives, the first being the combination of two 160 GB in the RAID, the second being the 1 TB drive.

Thanks JackShack, for that simple explanation. I couldn't agree more.

Just to add a little more information to your very fine explanation, the reason he had the 10 minute boot time would have been caused by the Raid1 rebuilding the array after he disconnected the second drive of the array and then re-installed it. This would have been expected and would be normal.

It could take as long as an hour or more, depending on the Raid1 array capacity to rebuild a Raid1 array. He is fortunate it only took 10 minutes.

Another issue that he may or may not encounter, would be if the full 1 TB (965+/- formated) will be recogonized.

He did not provide a model number, so we could not look up the specifications of his system.

And since he didn't provide his model number, his system may not have the capacity to add a third hard drive.

To be fair with Davet50, he may have to format the 1 TB drive into 2 or more partitions, depending on the system and the OS he is using.

Thank you for the correct information and your reply.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

JackShack — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:52:50 GMT

I'm not sure that a problem exists. The first screen shot shows a degraded RAID, which is to be expected if you have a failing or failed drive, plus the 1 TB drive. Note that it is listed as "Non-Member". It is not part of the RAID, just a second drive. I would think that if you had a C and a D drive before you installed the 1 TB, both of these logical drives would be on the RAID, which is treated as a single drive. The second shot shows two working 160 GB drives. The numbers listed are both Seagate numbers, not WD. If you install the second 160 GB, and you should unplug the 1 TB while you do this, you should wind up with a RAID 1 consisting of two 160 GB drives. Once you have the RAID working properly again you should be able to reconnect the 1 TB drive and effectively have two drives, the first being the combination of two 160 GB in the RAID, the second being the 1 TB drive.

Edited to correct confusion between the two screens.

Re: Dell 9150 wont recognize new Hard drive or load with out the 2 old HD's in the box.

YaoWing — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:38:05 GMT

Your computer is setup with RAID 1 or disk mirroring - meaning you have two 160gb hard drives and they have the exact same data on both drives - when data is written to one, it is also written to the other. If one drive fails, the other drive continues to work and you do not lose your data.

Ideally, you should keep both drives in and keep RAID 1. If there are any free SATA ports on your system board and if you have an open bay in your computer (you might have to buy a 5 1/4" to 3 1/2" adapter), put the 1tb drive in - in addition to the two other drives. If you do no have any more sata ports, you may want to add another sata controller card.

If this is all too complicated and you just want one 160gb drive and one 1tb drive, you will have have to unmirror the two 160 drives. In your screenshot, it shows "Press <CTRL-I> to enter Configuration Utility". You would use this utility to do this. Once you unmirror it, just replace the secondary 160gb drive with the 1tb drive and you should be set. You will probably have to reformat the 1tb drive or run the WD tools again since the raid tried to rebuild.