Josiah Carlson (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} chouyu_31) wrote,@ 2008-03-18 08:54:00 |
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Adventures in software RAID, take 2
It seems that at some point, Windows XP really stopped liking to boot. When it didn't hang while scanning USB for floppy/cd rom drives, it would restart after hitting 'mup.sys' (thank you boot logging to the console). The advice available seemed to be generally lacking in anything except "try unplugging USB" or "try disabling cache to update your bios/patch your OS". I don't really know what to say about what went wrong, but I don't care, XP didn't work quite right. It seemed to choke after the first set of 3 updates after installing SP2. Before that, it worked. After that (and also after enabling the raid mirror), it didn't. Maybe it's RAID, maybe it's the patches, I don't know.
In looking around, it seems that almost everything that supports 2k and XP also supports 2003, so I gave that a shot this morning. There was some silliness where 2003 decided it would add an entry to the 2k's boot.ini, making 2003's boot drive 'G', etc., but I'll disable the drive in the BIOS and reinstall this evening (it's maybe 30-40 minutes when I don't install drivers, etc.). RAID is definitely available in 2003, and any SATA card available at Fry's supports 2003.
One interesting thing is that even after I installed the Intel chipset drivers, XP refused to copy disk to disk faster than 33 megs/second (this is using PATA and mirror building), suggesting that I don't have the correct drivers for enabling ATA/133 support on the motherboard (despite installing the drivers from Dell). I guess I'll have to go straight to Intel. Also, Windows XP does not actually support > 128 gig volumes from a slipstreamed SP2 installation CD; uck (2003 sees the full drive without issue).
So far I have noticed that RAID is far more difficult to get working than it really should be.
It seems that at some point, Windows XP really stopped liking to boot. When it didn't hang while scanning USB for floppy/cd rom drives, it would restart after hitting 'mup.sys' (thank you boot logging to the console). The advice available seemed to be generally lacking in anything except "try unplugging USB" or "try disabling cache to update your bios/patch your OS". I don't really know what to say about what went wrong, but I don't care, XP didn't work quite right. It seemed to choke after the first set of 3 updates after installing SP2. Before that, it worked. After that (and also after enabling the raid mirror), it didn't. Maybe it's RAID, maybe it's the patches, I don't know.
In looking around, it seems that almost everything that supports 2k and XP also supports 2003, so I gave that a shot this morning. There was some silliness where 2003 decided it would add an entry to the 2k's boot.ini, making 2003's boot drive 'G', etc., but I'll disable the drive in the BIOS and reinstall this evening (it's maybe 30-40 minutes when I don't install drivers, etc.). RAID is definitely available in 2003, and any SATA card available at Fry's supports 2003.
One interesting thing is that even after I installed the Intel chipset drivers, XP refused to copy disk to disk faster than 33 megs/second (this is using PATA and mirror building), suggesting that I don't have the correct drivers for enabling ATA/133 support on the motherboard (despite installing the drivers from Dell). I guess I'll have to go straight to Intel. Also, Windows XP does not actually support > 128 gig volumes from a slipstreamed SP2 installation CD; uck (2003 sees the full drive without issue).
So far I have noticed that RAID is far more difficult to get working than it really should be.
