If you buy a bare drive, make sure you buy a data cable for it. The drive will come without one, and without screws, but the screws and rails should already be in the case.
You can download any software you need directly from Seagate.
After the new drive has been installed, it must be patitioned and formated. These are generic instructions for installing an additional hard drive using Windows XP Disk Management, they are by Seagate, but apply to all brands,
My 8400 came with 160 GB Seagate SATA hard drive ST3160023AS. This one supports NCQ - per Intel Application Accelerator Info (and Dell system spec says so as well), and I tend to believe it, even though per Seagate website this drive (ST3160023AS ) is the one without NCQ. I used to see the review somewhere on the net that said that SOME of ST3160023AS do have NCQ and some don't.
I couldn't find a matching drive with the same part number and NCQ anywhere.
So I ended up buying 2 of ST3160827AS (OEM) at the end from NewEgg. The only extra thing you need is SATA cable.
At the moment I have ST3160827AS and ST3160023AS in RAID 0 and one ST3160827AS installed under the floppy bay as non raid drive. My plan was to make a RAID of 2 ST3160827AS (because ST3160827AS and ST3160023AS have different firmware versions and (AFAIR) slightly different hpysical parameters per SeaTools, and I am a bit paranoid about it) and sell ST3160023AS, but right now I just might keep ST3160023AS as non-RAID drive. To put the third drive under the floppy you'll also need converter for the power cable from regular ATA to SATA, b/c there is only 2 available from the power supply.
I hope I explained it, the point was - keep an eye on those part numbers if you are as paranoid as I am.
To set up RAID you need:
1) connect 2 drives
2) set SATA to RAID ON in Dell bios (my non RAID drive works fine with this setting)
3) restart your system - you will need to go to RAID controller BIOS to tell which drives belong to RAID and setup RAID volumes
4) boot from Dell XP CD. YOU DON"T NEED ANY EXTRA DRIVERS (I think this is due to the fact that this is XP SP2). I tried to supply newer version of Intel RAID driver from Intel website and BSODed right after I did this in the install several times. XP said that it already used has such a driver, so I just used it.
5) From this point just proceed with XP install, nothing special about it.
Original Dell install incuded Intel Applcation Accelerator software - I didn't install it yet, not sure of the benefits. I will test it later.
I also plan to test upgrading the RAID driver to the Intel version (the newer one, that BSODed during the setup) from XP.
Also, I did full format b/c these drives were new, but you don't really have to.
Just to make sure - you will lose all information on both drives when you set them up for RAID.
I didn't quite understand what you meant by "Also, this is going to be strictly a data drive for photos, video, music and the like". Where do you intend to install OS (unless you plan to have 3 drives config as I do and install OS on NON-RAID drive) ?
ejn63
9 Legend
•
87.5K Posts
0
December 29th, 2004 14:00
You can download any software you need directly from Seagate.
shesagordie
10 Elder
•
46K Posts
0
December 29th, 2004 19:00
Bev.
JoeSchmoe007
54 Posts
0
December 29th, 2004 21:00
I just did what you are trying to do.
My 8400 came with 160 GB Seagate SATA hard drive ST3160023AS. This one supports NCQ - per Intel Application Accelerator Info (and Dell system spec says so as well), and I tend to believe it, even though per Seagate website this drive (ST3160023AS ) is the one without NCQ. I used to see the review somewhere on the net that said that SOME of ST3160023AS do have NCQ and some don't.
I couldn't find a matching drive with the same part number and NCQ anywhere.
So I ended up buying 2 of ST3160827AS (OEM) at the end from NewEgg. The only extra thing you need is SATA cable.
At the moment I have ST3160827AS and ST3160023AS in RAID 0 and one ST3160827AS installed under the floppy bay as non raid drive. My plan was to make a RAID of 2 ST3160827AS (because ST3160827AS and ST3160023AS have different firmware versions and (AFAIR) slightly different hpysical parameters per SeaTools, and I am a bit paranoid about it) and sell ST3160023AS, but right now I just might keep ST3160023AS as non-RAID drive. To put the third drive under the floppy you'll also need converter for the power cable from regular ATA to SATA, b/c there is only 2 available from the power supply.
I hope I explained it, the point was - keep an eye on those part numbers if you are as paranoid as I am.
To set up RAID you need:
1) connect 2 drives
2) set SATA to RAID ON in Dell bios (my non RAID drive works fine with this setting)
3) restart your system - you will need to go to RAID controller BIOS to tell which drives belong to RAID and setup RAID volumes
4) boot from Dell XP CD. YOU DON"T NEED ANY EXTRA DRIVERS (I think this is due to the fact that this is XP SP2). I tried to supply newer version of Intel RAID driver from Intel website and BSODed right after I did this in the install several times. XP said that it already used has such a driver, so I just used it.
5) From this point just proceed with XP install, nothing special about it.
Original Dell install incuded Intel Applcation Accelerator software - I didn't install it yet, not sure of the benefits. I will test it later.
I also plan to test upgrading the RAID driver to the Intel version (the newer one, that BSODed during the setup) from XP.
Also, I did full format b/c these drives were new, but you don't really have to.
Just to make sure - you will lose all information on both drives when you set them up for RAID.
I didn't quite understand what you meant by "Also, this is going to be strictly a data drive for photos, video, music and the like". Where do you intend to install OS (unless you plan to have 3 drives config as I do and install OS on NON-RAID drive) ?
JoeSchmoe007
54 Posts
0
December 29th, 2004 21:00
Also see the thread
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_harddrive&message.id=79698#M79698
where I documented some test results for my RAID setup.
To sum it up you will get some benefits when moving LARGE files
JoeSchmoe007
54 Posts
0
December 29th, 2004 21:00