So Far So Good !

[10pups]

I had my first PC built to my specs. in 2002. It still serves me well today. However, I have become obsessed with 3-D and plan to make a career out of modeling and animation. This is my first build. I plan to use it to create and serve up a 3-d enviroment. A starter for a much bigger plan. Something like gaming but NOT. I have the hardware together and have gone as far as BIOS settings, CMOS, and installing XPprox64. #I love a challenge and I started to learn computers when XP first came out. I am a self proclaimed XP ground breaker. Besides if nobody helps Bill find the bugs you will all have to wait 10 years before it becomes stable. Because this is all new to me I have already had to go back and reset some things. The Nvidia floppy for example does not know what x64 means. The downloaded update driver is 23MBs in size.. so I had to learn to go back and change settings to see the cdplayer first. Tonight I will try to get the HDs formated and feel I have already made a mistake that is going to cost me some time. I set the hard drives up so that Raid is possible. The enable thing. I am also new to raid and when chosing drives to format with XP it wound up on drive F:. Hmmmm C: & F: are showing up on (My computer) but XP is on F: and the other drives are not showing yet. I assume that what I have done is format C: & format/installed on F:. I am going to format the others with XP tonight because the Seagate CDs are also x64 blind. But I am wondering what kind of trouble I am getting into. I will go to Seagate and look for update downloads first but XP will format the drives ok right ? Ok enough for my intro. LOL. If you see me making fatal mistakes grab my shirt tail before I go over the edge please.

[glc]

If you have any USB storage devices connected when you install Windows, that device will grab drive C. Common examples are flash card memory readers.

[10pups]

Nothing external. My mistake was formating C: and then the windows format option came up again showing all 4 drives I moved to the 3rd drive on the list (thinking raid, format and what ever all at the same time.) You see where I am going with this. I was thinking of formating C: and the 3rd drive for the raid. Thinking I might do it in order for some reason. When the next window came up it was install only. Hence it formated and installed on F:. I tend to over think things at this point. I should have just stayed on the first drive and finished XP. The raid I am thinking is 0+1 by the way. Do you think I should start over ? Or will I be able to keep this from becoming a mess? I am reading the seagate disk utility CD now. My problem is I do not know the order in which to proceed. Ok question 1. XPx64 is on drive F: will it hurt to leave it there or cause problems with the raid set up later? #2 should I use the seagate CD to format from here before installing the Nvidia raid disk?

[David M]

If you want RAID 0+1, you have to set it up in your BIOS before you load your RAID drivers and your OS.. You need to designate 4 drives to be your 0+1 RAID drives. You will need to load the RAID drivers from the nvidia CD to a floppy and when Windows prompts you, load the drivers from the floppy. I am not real clear on what you are doing. I do know that your OS will be mirrored and striped across the four drives. Your OS will not reside on only one drive. Feel free to PM me about setting up a RAID 0+1 array if you have questions. I have done it a few times and there are a couple "tricks" that I had to learn before I got it right. I would imagine the Abit and the Asus RAID setups are similar given they are both using the same nvidia4 chipset.

[10pups]

Thanks for the offer to help David M. I may take you up on that soon. Sorry about the confusion of my post. I claim temporary insanity due to the flu. What happened was my update boot disk was bad and I let xp install. Intead of starting over I kept plugging along mindlessly. I did start out by setting the drives correctly in the bios. I had been reading the threads here and many other places trying to prepare. I have regrouped and am formatting the drives now. 12 hrs into it and maybe 4 more to go. I did have to make a choice I am not sure about. When downloading the nvidia update, there were4 items in it. The first 2 easy choice all sata. The other 2 pata,pata,sata and what evea. When I clicked the 3rd a note came up saying windows already had a driver for that and I should use it unless manufacturer insists. I tossed a coin and windows won. Well low and behold the format froze at 29% for 2 hrs. I restarted the format process and chose to install all updates plus I removed the floppy this time. Did I say this is all new to me LOL. I just learned how to make a boot disk.

[10pups]

Typing this on my new rig. All seems good. I guess any more posts will have to go somewhere else . I hope. :<0)