ABIT KT7-RAID set up

[mrfixtrix]

Hello gurus, please help.
I am trying to set up kt7-RAID with just one IBM Ata-100 for now($$
reasons).
If I have just one HD on IDE1 will it work at UDMA-100 without RAID ?
If not ,what do I have to do to make it work?
One more thing, when I am ready to add two more HDs how do I set it up with
RAID.
Does anyone know good web sites about this motherboard set up and
configuration ?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Tanks Yan

[Toaster]

RAID arrays can be very effective. They can also be the most dangerous thing you could do with your data if you dont understand "how" RAID truely works.
IDE RAID is a newer type implementation and SCSI was designed with RAID in mind.
I suggest you read your manuals and then do a search with your fav web search tool with the keyword "RAID".
Choose wisely, your data depends on it.

[Xayd]

Read your manuals and what guides you can find, but the only advice I'd give is to get IDENTICAL drives when you want to set everything up. IDE RAID isn't gonna be SCSI RAID, but it can work nicely if you don't have pesky drive quirks to deal with.

Xayd

[lsakhvoruk]

How is it going? Just one question, is that the 307030 IBM GPX-75 drive you've got there? Cause thats what I have on my ABIT KT7-RAID board. It works AWESOME. I am not sure as to the mode of data transfer but I think that it does actually use ATA-100 mode (again check me on that).

Anyhow! First of all, the RAID controller is hooked up to the IDE3 and IDE4. So just plug it into IDE3 and the drive should already be preset for PRIMARY MASTER, if not check the jumper position on the hard drive and set correctly. Thats as far as that goes. Then set FIRST BOOT DEVICE as ATA-100 in the BOARD BIOS. You can also mess with the RAID BIOS to set the UDMA values for the HD, I think that its set to the optimal value as a default though. And then it should work like a charm!

Now for the RAID array read your ABIT Users's manual, its pretty good. I will back Xayd here and tell you that the best thing for RAID is to have two identical drives, in capacity as well as brand and model! IBM dirves are pretty much the best as far as quality goes so if you get another IBM drive I'd say you're set.

I hope this helps! Please let us know how the setup went! Leo.

[fordvan]

Here,s a page with lots of info and tips for Abit KT7 setup:
http://go.to/KT7faq

[mrfixtrix]

Thanks to ya all)
So far it works well
I am using ide3 with RAID with UDMA-100)
I have IBM-DTLA-307015.
Yan

[Yerrick]

I have a very similar setup except I have 2 IBM UDMA-100's.

You do not need to have Raid setup on your hard drive.

However I found that I could not install windows 98 while they were attached to the UDMA 100 connectors on the motherboard. I had to switch them to one of the other udma slots.
I believe this is due to the udma 100's being on a seperate bios. I could be wrong.
After loading up windows I installed Abit's drivers and swapped back to the udma 100 since then ive had no errors.

Raid is a very usefull tool however the chance of your drive failing is minimal and I feel its a waste of disk space. Also there are companys that can extract info off problamatic hard drives.

Be very warey of the Bios Setup It is extremly powerfull I managed to fry an athlon 900Mhz. Luckily it wasn't mine although the company I worked for wasn't too happy about it.

[mrfixtrix]

Thanks for info Yerrick,
I installed windows me with hd being on ide1.
Then, after reading to all replies I moved it to ide3
without any problems( all drivers were loaded before moving hd).
Thanks again