[Ham-Computers] RAID installation Failed (probably due to my ignorance), and a QUESTION.

[Philip]

Hi All,

Well, yesterday I took the computer down so that I could set it up for RAID. 
I insalled the 2nd 80GB drive, intending to use the two 80GB drives in a 
RAID-1 setup, with the 320GB drive strictly as a data disk.  First I wiped 
BOTH 80GB drives CLEAN so that I'd be starting with a fresh set-up.  On 
boot-up I went into the BIOS and set the MoBo (an Intel MoBo with Intel 
chipset) for RAID, which entailed designating the SATA drive ports as a RAID 
set-up (the choice was to emulate EIDE or SATA).  Unfortunately, this 
designated ALL SATA ports as RAID 8^(

FIRST:  I must say, when I ordered this machine I wanted one that could 
provide for any future expansion that I might anticipate, and ordered 
accordingly.  Even with all the add-on Premium cards I had added when it was 
built (MoBo has almost everything like Sound etc onboard but those features 
are dis-abled),  the MoBo STILL has some empty PCI slots AND a couple empty 
PCIE slots, MORE unused USB outputs (I'm only porting 6 out of the machine) 
and other stuff I'd need to read the manual to figure out.

Anyway, I decided to continue on with the install.  Of course, the first 
thing that the XP install disk did was to ask me if I wanted to install 3rd 
party RAID drivers (F6 if I recall).  I said yes.  Duh!  All my MoBo drivers 
resided on the 320GB SATA drive AN/OR  external external 250GB USB drive, 
neither of which I could access!  I didn't have the forethought to put them 
on a CD or floppy and I'm not sure I'd have known how to load the RAID 
driver from one anyway.

So I re-started the Win XP-Pro install process, and this time bypassed the 
3rd party RAID drivers to see if it would find them in the Windows set-up 
routine.  Well, it didn't!  Instead, what I got was a "can't find mass 
storage device"  error and the install again bombed out.  So I went back 
into the BIOS and reset the SATA drives to emulate EIDE and did a routine 
fresh  install of XP-Pro, along with all my programs and files. This was 
made easy by the fact that I had FIRST put all my Documents, Radio Logs, 
Email files (*.DBX), "Old Time Radio" MP3's etc on the 320 GB Internal AND 
250 GB External drives before taking the system down (I wasn't taking any 
chances).

So now, the machine contains an 80GB Drive C: (operating system), 80GB Drive 
E: and a 320GB Drive D: (files).  I guess that I'll Clone the two 80GB 
drives for backup and then disconnect Drive E: to reduce the hous on it.

QUESTION:  Is there a way to "power down" a single installed hard drive 
(SATA) from  SOFTWARE without physically removing the cables?  I know that 
windows can power down the drives from the power saving aspect, but how 
about powering down a single drive until you want to power it up?

73 de Phil,  KO6BB
DX begins at the noise floor!

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