Boot from drive other than Promise Raid Array (Dimension 8300)

Question

I have a Dimension 8300 Rig with the Promise Raid Controller and a pair of Seagate 120gb SATA harddrives running off the controller, and striped for RAID 0: G0101 PROCESSOR, 80532, 3.0G, 512, 800FSB, SOCKET N X2797 CARD (CIRCUIT), CONTROLLER, Serial ATA, PROMISE, DIMENSION, PRECISION WORKSTATION This was the shipped configuration, and it has worked fine from day one. I am doing some video editing, and I would like to use the raid array for the video work, and actually boot from a third drive. This means I will have to remove one of my DVDs' from the 5 1/2' bay and use that bay to house the new boot drive. First, have any Dimension owners who read these boards done something like this, and if so, what is the best way to pull it off? Will the system BIOS allow booting from a harddrive other than the RAID array? If so, I would like to know some of the possible pitfalls or warnings that you may have for trying to pull something like this off. Thanks in advance!

mombodog · Answer

It is a matter of connecting the other hard drive, then go into the bios and see if you can set this new drive as the first boot device, or do a F12 at the Dell logo at boot and see if you can see the new drive there, and select it as the boot device for that session.   You will have to install an OS on the new boot drive for this to work also.

mobilelawyer · Answer

And I assume I am relegated to an IDE drive, because my mobo does not support SATA without the Promise card, and I am not going to be able to run both raided and non- raided drives off the Promise?

mombodog · Answer

We would need to know the model of promise card, but it is unlikely to be able to run raid and non raid on the same card.

mobilelawyer · Answer

OK. Here is where I am. I finally had the the opportunity to open up my case last night and look around. I was surprised to find an available bay for another hard drive drive between my floppy drive and the two installed Seagates which are RAIDED. I noticed that the case had two extra pairs of rails to snapped into the side. I had forgotten that those were available. I have the A06 bios. SATA Primary, Secondary, and Primary Master and Slave Drive settings are all 'OFF'. The Secondary Master and Slave drive are set to CD-ROM. IDE UDMA Drive is On, and the hard disk drive sequence is: 1. FT S150TX (The Promise Card, I assume) and 2. USB device (not installed). This tells me the mobo must support SATA, so that if I connected an SATA drive directly to the mobo, and enabled SATA in set up, the BIOS would see it and allow me to select that drive as the first drive in the hard disk drive sequence. I have not looked for an SATA port/connector on the mobo, but assume it is there. My mobo model is listed in my original post. Let me ask this question again. Has any Dell owner with the Dimension 8300 tried to do this, and has it worked, or has it failed to work in your experience? For those who have already been kind enough to reply to my original posts, is the additional information provided helpful in providing additional insight in answering my original question? I have a ton of home video editing to do. I would like to RAID 0 a couple of 500gb serial drives and use that array as my 'workhorse' to render and store my various projects on. It seems to me that using the RAID array for the OS and to boot from is a waste of resources, when I could install the OS on a single, smaller boot drive and use the faster RAID drives feed my projects to. Can anyone see any fallacy to this line of thinking? My current set up is working just fine, but I think it could be a lot better with this hardware change.

mobilelawyer · Answer

Apparantly, it is all doable. I purchased an SATA drive, used the exra rails in the case to slide it into the available bay, connected it to my mainboard, and enabled SATA in the bios. The drive was seen immediately.   I tried to used bootit ng to create an image of the promise array (which is now my C: drive) but when I copied that image to the new drive, I could not get it to boot. Looks like I am relegated to reinstalling the OS on the new drive, since I want it to be my boot drive.   I just have too many irons in the fire to try that immediately, but I do not expect any issues when I do.   I will be left with a new 320gb drive as my boot drive, and will use the promise array soley to render projects on.   An external WD will serve as my 'default data keeper'.   Sorry about the ignorant questions, and thanks for the help!

mobilelawyer · Answer

Finished the job this weekend. Everything is working fine. Booting from newly installed SATA drive attached to the mainboard, and using the Promise raided drives as seperate drives for editing videos.

mombodog · Answer

Congrats!  :smileyhappy:

Storage, Drives & Media

Boot from drive other than Promise Raid Array (Dimension 8300)

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