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XP Install: partitioning the drives

Discussion in 'Windows XP' started by granimal, 2006/10/08.

  1. 2006/10/08
    granimal

    granimal Inactive Thread Starter

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    Hello everyone,

    This forum has been the source for solving many problems and I appreciate all the help that everyone gives.

    My question has to do with partitioning and formatting hard drives for a SATA Raid installation on xp.

    I have a Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro and two 80 GB Maxtor SATA drives. I enabled Raid 0 in the Silicon Raid setup, got the drivers in with f6 and got to the partitioning section which is where my questions arise.

    1. Only one mass storage device is listed as 156320 MB Disk 0 at ID 0. Is this correct? It appears that my drived have been combined into one large drive. I was under the impression that Raid 0 did not do this, but was limited to the size of only one of the drives.

    2. I have two options on how to format the drives, normal and fast. Are there any disadvantages to formatting the drive utilizing the fast method that I should know about?

    Thanks
    Granimal
     
    granimal,
    #1
  2. 2006/10/08
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    granimal - Welcome to the Board :)

    Read the mobo manual - Raid options are described in Section 4.1.4 in my copy of the manual for your board .....

    To elaborate, from my Asus manual - a little clearer ....
    In other words the two disks are seen as one disk with a capacity double that of the individual disks. However you should be aware that if one disk fails all your data is gone.

    For data integrity you would be far better off using Raid 1 (Data Mirroring) - if one hard drive fails operations switch to the second which is a mirror of the first.

    Normal vs Fast format - Normal formats the whole drive (preferred IMO) and fast just formats the file system area.
     
    PeteC,
    #2


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