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goodrichm

5 Posts

21808

November 4th, 2004 16:00

Precision 670 - Connect how many internal SATA Drives?

I recently ordered online a Dell Precision 670. To avoid shipping delays, I opted for non-RAID configuration thinking that I could configure the RAID via included software upon arrival.  

How many SATA drives can I physically attach to the PWS 670 integrated SATA Controller that I ordered online?

Can multiple drives be connected to each onboard SATA0 & SATA1 connectors as you can for normal IDE connectors with a special cable?

I wish to configure the hard drives as follows:

- System Boot Drive (SATA or SCSI separate from RAID Array);
- 2 or 3 drive Serial ATA RAID(0) array for video post production.


Thanks for anyone's help...Mark

mcdonald09

12 Posts

November 23rd, 2004 20:00

Did you ever receive a response? I have a 670 for photoshop work with a raid-1 SATA (2 x 400 gb Hitachi/IBM drives) and was thinking of adding a new 15K SCSI boot disk.

goodrichm

5 Posts

November 24th, 2004 11:00

I got no response from this forum, but I called Dell Tech Supt and got some answers.  Can only attach 2 SATA drives to the onboard controller.  I was able to hook up a normal IDE drive to the onboard EIDE controller on primary channel (as cable sel) and boot off of it as my system drive.
 
You have to go into BIOS (F2) and setup the boot priorities.  The BIOS lists all the drives you have connected and it lets you setup which one it tries to boot from 1st, 2d, 3d, etc...  I believe it would let you boot from a SCSI drive.  I'm not 100% certain though because I recall reading somewhere that the system boot drive must be an IDE type (SATA or EIDE). Doesn't make sense though because you can select in BIOS to boot off whatever you want, e.g. floppy, CD, DVD, SATA, EIDE... 
 
One thing I don't like about the 670 is that it no longer has an external SCSI connector to set up an external expansion drive bay.  Have to either buy another SCSI controller card or rig up a special cable to connect it internally...  Mark

mcdonald09

12 Posts

December 2nd, 2004 18:00

 I added 2 x 400G Hitachi SATA drives and a 15k Fujitsu SCSI as boot disk to my 670. While I can boot from SCSI and access the two 400G drives, I cannot find a way to configure them as a raid-1 sata array. Even though the raid controller sets them up as raid-1, and mirrors the drives, they are addressed under Win XP as separate independent drives. Greatful for any help, none from Dell Tech Support.

goodrichm

5 Posts

December 3rd, 2004 19:00

Being my first time at setting up a RAID, I had similar difficulties when I setup my SATA RAID 0. This is the process I used...

1) At bootup, do you see the drives listed, then Array #0 RAID 1 (Name you gave to your RAID Array), then "One Logical Device Found."? If so, you're one step closer. If not, something didn't get setup properly in the "Array Configuration Utility" (ACU) which is accessed pressing "CTRL-A" right after bootup.

2) After I setup the RAID in ACU, I ran "RAID Storage Manager". If it's not installed on your computer, it is found on the "Dell Resource CD" under "Applications" tab. However, there it is called "Adaptec SATA HostRAID Controller". After you run the prog and log in, double click on "Controller 1" icon. You should see a picture of your two drives (called Ports 0 & 1) plus an icon next to them under "Logical Drives" for the RAID Array. If not, I suspect again that something didn't get setup correctly in the ACU prog at bootup (CTRL-A). Right clicking on the Logical drive icon and selecting "Properties" should show the RAID level (0 or 1). Under "Status" tab, should show "optimal" and partitioned "yes". At first, mine said that it was not partitioned. So I right clicked the RAID icon again and selected "Initialize". It took an hour and a half for my 150 GB RAID and Win OS still couldn't see my RAID drive. I'm not sure if this "Initialize" step is necessary or not.

3) In order for Windows OS to see and use the new RAID drive, I had to partition and format the new logical drive. I did this by logging in as Admin and went to:

Control Panel - Admin Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management

An automated wizard started up and I went through the prompts to partition and format the RAID array. Mine is setup as Layout: "Simple", Type: "Dynamic", File system: "NTFS".

Still a mystery: My two 80 GB drives only show up as a 150 GB RAID array. I lost 10 GB of space somewhere. Your 2 x 400G Hitachi drives might show a similar problem because I've heard that some HD drivers, plus the OS, may have some problems seeing large volume drives.

Please let me know how you came out.  Good luck...Mark

mcdonald09

12 Posts

December 3rd, 2004 19:00

Well, I had no problems implementing Raid-1 with SATA drives alone; however as soon as you add a separate SCSI device, even if you enable SATA Raid (which is necessary it appears) you still don't have a real raid array; you can establish a raid as you describe but it is really two independent adressable drives. I wonder if that is what you have? Do you see one drive or two under XP explorer?
 
To work around these issues I have purchased a PCI-X SATA raid device to set up Raid-1 with the SATA drives and use the 15K SCSI as system disk. If I get really greedy for speed, will set up SCSI-Raid 0 with another 15K. I reply after I deploy the PCI SATA raid controller.

mcdonald09

12 Posts

December 3rd, 2004 22:00

Got you. So, Raid-0 array.

goodrichm

5 Posts

December 3rd, 2004 22:00

After formatting & partitioning the RAID array (Logical Device), Win XP explorer sees only one large drive (sum of the 2 combined almost) and treats it as any other drive...

mcdonald09

12 Posts

December 8th, 2004 03:00

OK, so purchased 2 (yes two) SATA raid controllers - one PCI-X from Addonics that shipped without drivers documentation or software - and a megaraid Sata-4 from LSI. The latter works flawlessly - now have 400 Gb Raid 1 and 15k SCSI system disk. Evidently you cannot use both SCSI and SATA controllers on the motherboard to configure Sata-Raid 1 and boot from SCSI.

goodrichm

5 Posts

December 8th, 2004 20:00

Cool! Glad to hear everything is working just like you want...Mark 

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