Win2k versus the RAID

[sechs]

I picked up an LSI MegaRAID 1600 Elite for pretty cheap a few weeks ago. Since household income has become a question mark, I'm not going to be able to invest in an enclosure and new drives as I had planned.

In the mean time, the want to put my two existing 15k.3s into a RAID 0 for a little boost in performance (and justification for keeping the card). However, every time I install Windows 2000 onto the array, the operating system eventually becomes corrupt.

I've tried jimmying with the options in the controller and using the latest drivers, but nothing seems to be jiving. Is there some magical settings that I might be missing, or does this controller just not like my OS?

 

[Buck]

Do you install the RAID card drivers during the Windows 2000 installation, or does it find the drives on its own?

 

[sechs]

I use F6 and a floppy.

The Win2k installer doesn't recognise the array if I don't give it drivers. I was under the impression that it came with drivers for this card, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[Buck]

Have you tested both drives?

 

[P5-133XL]

What does the event log say - Are you getting delayed write errors, timeouts, or errors regarding the device drivers or the SCSI subsystem. Have you done a full chkdsk on the array to check for bad sectors.

 

[sechs]

Both of the drives are fine. Since the failure of my RAID escapades, I've had to revert the drives back to my Adaptec 29160, where they are working perfectly.

The installation seems fine until it yaks. I can usually get to the first time you can actually login and do something; nothing in the logs. After I install additional drivers or updates, it goes kaput.

Several times I got an error on reboot after installing something that Windows could not access a file in the system folder and to run repair.

Once I got a could not read your profile message after rebooting.

Several times I got blue screens before GUI start, but could read them because of the automatic reboot.