Dual OS - why cant one HD boot without the other being present?
 

Hi

I've been 5 days trying to hang two pairs of striped SATA HDD on my new system, so I'm not asking for help lightly here !

I have made progress today as my goal is to have a striped pair for system and a separate striped pair for fast HD video editing. I achieved the striped pair OS by first installing OS to a single drive, then making a stripe pair and then adding a second copy of the XP OS to them through Windows. Great! Now I can get rid of the single C:, right? Well I would have hoped so as I need to stripe that with my fourth drive to create the video pair, but NO! The only way the stripe pair will boot is if the C: remains. C: seems to offer the OS choice at startup, and if that aint there first it just wont boot from the stripe pair. Any idea how I kill this OS choice and force the stripe pair to be the ONLY bootables?

Thanks a lot as I'm going nuts with this!!!

D

Sounds like you need to edit the boot.ini file

Right click on my computer, properties, advanced I think it is, you will see the boot menu options and if you click on edit it will open boot.ini in notepad, alternatively it is in the root of C:\

post it up here first, so we can check it before you edit it unless you know what you are doing ;)

I think the problem is that the bootloader itself is on C: and hence taking C away is what causes the boot to fail.

Don't know much about striping but I think theanswer is to somehow get the striped volume with the OS on to be C and hence run the boot loader. Not sure how tricky this is if you have already installed to another driver letter though.

The other option of course is to get a tiny gash disk to use simply as the bootloader disk C and then do the striping with the other four.

I personally wouldnt bother with a striped OS, I would only bother striping the data drives, which I have done in the past for Audio multitrack recording, but tbh thesedays drives are fast enough to not really warrant striping

the overhead of striping the drives in software isnt worth it either, and it isnt 100% reliable either, and with striping you get no fault tolerance, unless you mirror the stripe

Thanks for the help guys. I am very keen to get a two stripe system as I am absolutely fed up of waiting for stuff to render, transcode and export. Exporting media from one 'working media' stripe to the other OS stripe in a different media format should be quick this way - ohh and then there is HD data rates! The software I use is due an update this month which will permit separate use of all 4 Quad cores; you can see why I am keen. The game is moving on....

Back to my rut though:

Boot ini file:

[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

So that points it to default to drive 0 yes - my C: single drive? This clearly overides my BIOS setting to boot first from the stripe.

My RAID manager gives this info:

OS Name: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS Version: 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
System Name: ASUS
System Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
System Model: P5K-E
Processor: Intel Pentium III Xeon processor ~2504 MHz
BIOS Version/Date: American Megatrends Inc. 1013 , 03/21/2008

itel(R) RAID Technology

Intel RAID Controller: Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R SATA RAID Controller
Number of Serial ATA ports: 6

Array_0000
Status: No active migration(s)
Hard Drive Write Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 931.5 GB
Free Space: 0 GB
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: ST3500320AS
Hard Drive Member 2: ST3500320AS
Number of Volumes: 2
Volume Member 1: Stripe 1
Volume Member 2: stripe1 for vist

Stripe 1
Status: Normal
System Volume: No
Volume Write-Back Cache Enabled: No
RAID Level: RAID 0 (striping)
Strip Size: 128 KB
Size: 650 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: ST3500320AS
Hard Drive Member 2: ST3500320AS
Parent Array: Array_0000

stripe1 for vista [THIS IS A SEPARATE EMPTY PARTITION I HAVE CREATED ON THE RAID 2 DISK STRIPE READY FOR 64 BIT)
Status: Normal
System Volume: No
Volume Write-Back Cache Enabled: No
RAID Level: RAID 0 (striping)
Strip Size: 128 KB
Size: 281.5 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: ST3500320AS
Hard Drive Member 2: ST3500320AS
Parent Array: Array_0000

Hard Drive 0
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 1
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: ST3500320AS
Serial Number: 9QM2BRST
Firmware: SD15
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Write Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 465.7 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Volumes: 2
Volume Member 1: Stripe 1
Volume Member 2: stripe1 for vist
Parent Array: Array_0000

Hard Drive 1 (THIS IS THE C: ORIGINAL FIRST OS INSTALL SINGLE DISK)
Usage: Non-RAID hard drive
Status: Normal
Device Port: 2
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: ST3500320AS
Serial Number: 9QM24T24
Firmware: SD15
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
System Hard Drive: Yes
Size: 465.7 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes

Hard Drive 2
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 5
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 2
Model: ST3500320AS
Serial Number: 9QM24ATM
Firmware: SD15
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Write Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 465.7 GB
Physical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Logical Sector Size: 512 Bytes
Number of Volumes: 2
Volume Member 1: Stripe 1
Volume Member 2: stripe1 for vist
Parent Array: Array_0000

Unused Port 0
Device Port: 0
Device Port Location: Internal

Unused Port 1
Device Port: 3
Device Port Location: Internal

CD/DVD Drive 0
Device Port: 4
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 1
Model: SONY DVD RW DRU-190S
Serial Number: Data not reported
Firmware: 1.62

On another note shoudl Ihave HDD write caching enabled - all thes drives have 32MB cache..

Thanks!

D

Why not build the stripe first then install OS onto it?

I dont think you can do that, as, if I build a stripe pair in DOS & BIOS Windows just doesnt see them. Once IN Windows and with all SATA/RAID drivers installed you cabn then install a second OS on yer stripes. But I'm stuck with the old one too!

1hr away from ordering a small 10krpm Raptor and having this as the OS. Then I'll stripe these 4 bugger$ together with some parity and admit defeat!

6 days and counting! Why did I think I was clever enough!!!

D

D

what raid contolller are you using?

oh you need build the array using bios tools and set it to bootable. Then start the install and Hit f6 during the windows install to add in the raid drivers. You could also slipstream in the drivers to the install disk or use nlite to add them to the windows install image.

So the 2nd boot menu option does this boot your striped windows ?

[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


If so then can you not just change the default to the 2nd menu option ?

Yep thats the way to do it, the raid controller/motherboard driver disk should have the raid controller drivers on to allow this to work.

I dont like striping disks, RAID array is much better and more reliable. You do need to make sure your mobo is capable of running redundant drives, such as a server board minimum.

RAID is built easily enough with SCSI, so I assume SATA is pretty much the same. Its much easier to limit the boot drive to 10gb, then install whatever you want after the array is built.

Hope this helps? :)

Just noticed you are running a Xeon, in that case then enable 32mb Cache.

Thanks for the replies - I got there in the end.

Booted off XP optical, deleted the current C:, re-installed OS on the already created strped pair.

They are a RAID array - thought that was just a posh term for a stripe:). Existing C is now nicely array (aRaid?) with another drive too. Two strpes; bingo! 6 days later - WHAT a palaver!!!!! I understand the principle but DOING it in XP with a floppy disk???? Arghhhhh!

D

LOL

Raid 0 = Striping (2*500gb = 1000gb) Better performance
Raid 1 = Mirroring (2*500gb = 500gb) Some resilience
Raid 5 = Mirroring with a Parity Disk (Very basic description) :) (3*500gb = 1000gb roughly) Better resilience, can be more than 3 disks also, but always lose the capacity of one disk.

And dont forget RAID 0 +1 for the best performance with fault tolerance

Basically you mirror the Stripe, but lose 2 disks for the redundancy

Oh another tip if you are recording large video files then format the stripe with a larger than default cluster & sector size to increase performance a bit more :)

I lost the will to live just listing those 3 ;)

I got this far and now I have to start again for RAID 0 +1 . PLUS ONE???? My brain cant take any more!!! At least I have video friendly 128k strips (so why they called stripes not strip's) and all W/R caches are enabled. Tomorrow it earns its living (fingers crossed). D