If you have a XPS Gen 2 it no problem at all.

1. Iinstall the second SATA drive.  
2. Boot up your system
3. Open Control Panel
4. Open Intel Application Accelerator
5. Right Click The Raid Volumes
6. Select Create from Existing or something like this
7. Existing Drive will be the one one port 0
8. Select Raid Level 0 or 1   (If you Select RAID Level 0 you have more options to choose)
9. Select Drive to Add to Array this would be SATA port 1 assuming if it was like mine XPS Gen 2
10. Start Migration process Takes about 1.25 hours on 120 GB System
11. Boot after migration
12. New Device installed message on Boot  says to reboot again
13. After this boot you should be operational in RAID Level 0 or 1

The Intel Manual assuming you have the XPS covers it fairly well.

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa_raid/manual.htm

 

 

 

thanks tom,,,think i have about  the same as you,,gen 2.,,WD74GB,,  sounds easy enough.

Not sure the 8300 have the ICH5R controller chip set but if they do then it should be similar to what I out lined may be a few more steps depending on how Dell configures the system initailly.

I have a setting for SATA RAID drive in the setup that is On or Off.   Need to turn it on for RAID.

On my XPS Gen 2 the Intel Application Accelerator for RAID was already installed.   It in the controll panel and where you setup your RAID volume.  If not you could download it off the XPS section of download or get it from Intel.   Install it and enable the SATA RAID to be On.

This link should get you the lastest driver from Intel for XP Prof.
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/filter_results.asp?strOSs=44&strTypes=DRV%2CUTL&ProductID=961&OSFullName=Windows*+XP+Professional&submit=Go%21

 

I'm confused about enabling RAID. Dell Support hasn't been any help at all. In fact, they don't seem to have any idea what I am talking about.
I have a Dim 8300 with an Intel Canterwood 875P: Memory Controller-82875P, I/O Controller-8280 1EB/ER, ICH5/ICH5R, SATA and PATA Enabled.
Can I add a second SATA Hard Drive, install Intel App Accelerator and have RAID?
Or, MUST I buy and install a separate controller to get RAID with this configuration?
I thought I was clear on this, but apparently I'm not.
Thanks

TomXPS,

I ran Intel's chip ID Utility and it say I have I/O Controller 8280 1EB/ER, ICH5/ICH5R, SATA and PATA Enabled.

Am I reading this right?

Do I have "ER" and ICH5"R", which is what the INTEL site says I need to install App. Raid Accelerator? If so, shouldn't this be an easy question for Dell Support to answer? They have sent me all kinds of strange replies and links to really strange places that don't have anything to do with RAID configuration. One link even sent me to the refurbished PC site.

Really frustrating.

Thanks.

Been lucky so far never had to call for support, but reading the board it seems like some people are given some bad advise by support. 

Does your system have the RAID SATA setting in the BIOS if so set it yes.   Try installing the Intell Application Accelerator for RAID and see what happened.   When I was messing with mine I setup the second SATA drive  as a regular drive and setup SATA to no.   I then could not get into the Intell Application Accelerator program, got some message like my stem could not support.  Turned the SATA setting back to Yes and then I was able to get into the program again.

 

I run the Intel Chip set Indentification Utility just just to show you what my XPS shows:

Chipset Intel 875 chipset family

Chipset components memory controller  8287SP

IO Controller  82801ER (1CH5R), RAID enabled

Integrated Graphics  Not detected or Disabled.

 

My next question was going to be:

Would it really mess things up, if I tried to install the App Accelerator? You already answered it. My 2nd drive should be here soon. I'll do some more research on the Intel site until then.

Thanks,

Spott

After quickly glancing at the intel installation manual,,am I right that when you migrate,,your gonna lose everything on hard drives,,,says you'll lose all data,,,does that include operating system.....

I have a 3-week old XPS Gen 2 and have tried getting a RAID (1 or 0) working.  My two new SATA drives installed great and I can use them from Explorer just like any other drives.  However...

When establishing a RAID volume, everything goes well and the Intel App tells me a RAID volume is there.  Re-booting confirms that a nice RAID volume is out there waiting.  The problem comes up when I move to "Disk Management" and try to partition the drive and start using it.  Each time I define the partition (doesn't seem to care about the size) and click for it to proceed I get an immediate blue screen of death.  I've tried updating the Intel drivers but i'm not confident that has done much.

Anybody have any ideas or similar experiences?

No maybe miss leading.  Any way I did not loose any data.   You have two disk the source and the target.   The source disk will be un-touched (Disk you Migrating).   The target disk (Disk that will join the array) will loose all the data.   

I did backup my what I needed to save before migration.  In my case the target disk was brand new.

 

Sounds like you booting of a EIDE drive ?  Raid volume is two SATA drives not part of boot drive.   Anyway what I would try is to break the RAID volume and then partition one of the drives the way you want it, and then Migrate the Partition disk to the other SATA drive.    The partitioning should work but in my case I just Migrated my boot disk SATA port 0 to SATA port 1 disk.    SATA port 1 disk was RAW no partitions.

I did the Migration from the Intel Application Accelerator in the control panel.

Good luck.

Thanks for the reply.

As you guessed, I am booting off the EIDE drive that came installed with the computer.  I've since added a pair of Seagate 160GB SATA drives.  I partioned both as primary and formatted with NTFS.  They are both recognized as drives by the system and I can use them both with no problems (non-RAID).

When I convert the Seagate pair to a RAID volume, everything works fine... until an attempt to partition (so I can get some good use out of them).  I'm not trying to boot from them, I'm going to be doing some heavy duty I/O from a set of text records and wanted the dataset on a RAID 0 set-up if possible.

Is the advice you provided meaningful given this goal?

 

 

 

Try the following:

1. Delete your Raid Volume.   May have to rebot at this point.
2. After reboot yous should find your two SATA drives in the Disk Manager
3. Deleting all the partitions off one of the SATA drives.  
4. Partition the other SATA drive the way you want the pair to be.  
   May want to format the new Partition. 
5. Go into Control Panel and run the Intel Application Accelerator
6. Right Click RAID Volumes and Create from existing Disk choosing the RAID disk port that you already have partitioned.
7. Choose the other SATA disk port that you wish to join the array
8. Start the Migration, let it complete
9. Reboot
10. May have to reboot may get a message about new device

Hopefully at this point your running RAID 0 or 1.   Good luck.

 

 

 

TomXPS,

Thanks for the detail.  This was a new approach and seemed to be giving good results.  It took about 2 hours 30 minutes to migrate but all went well.  Unfortunately, upon reboot I got a brief glimpse of the Windows XP start-up screen and then the dreaded blue screen froze me in my tracks.  The cryptic blue screen continues to complain about potential driver issues and what-not.  I haven't added much to the machine other than a DVD player/writer, a few programs, a Linksys wireless adapter (USB with driver) and the two SATA drives.  Could be any one of these I guess (except hard drives).

Out of curiosity, what driver version of the Intel RAID controller are you running?  I may need to hack the Dell box down to the way it was shipped and go from there if I've stuck an incompatible driver in there somewhere.

Thanks again for the help.