# Asus P4P800-P4C800 Series: Promise RAID Mode



## clintfan (Sep 4, 2003)

Here is a Promise Controller-specific followon to my Intel RAID and Intel "RAID-Ready" articles. 

This is my version of a step-by-step procedure to create a RAID system using a motherboard (mobo) having a Promise PDC20378 chip, such as the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe and many other models. It may be useful for PDC20375 and PDC20376 too-- I'm not sure. Those familar with my Intel articles may notice I leveraged text heavily from those. This is probably overcomplicated --many times I've cited much more concise versions of these procedures-- but hopefully it won't miss anything crucial, and will answer more questions than it adds. :1angel: 

If you need the IDE Mode article, please see Asus P4P800-P4C800 Series: Promise IDE mode instead.

*A WORD OF WARNING: I do not recommend running your O/S on the Promise chip, RAID or not!* However, the PCI controllers on these mobos are a great place to keep your long-term data storage, so consider that if you are planning a multi-drive system.

Intel ICH5R RAID (i.e. RAID built into your Southbridge chipset) is more generally preferable for an OS install, than RAID on ANY add-on controller such as Promise 2037x, SiliconImage 311x, ITE8212F, SiS180, etc.. This is because ports on Southbridge chipsets do not reside on the PCI bus, but the other controllers do. The PCI expansion bus on these mobos has a throughput limit of no more than about 110MB/s, while the limit of a modern Southbridge CPU pipeline begins at over twice that. More importantly, by placing OS traffic onto PCI, you limit the available bandwidth for other PCI devices, such as Firewire, LAN, or add-on expansion cards. This can result in dropped frames and other performance problems. 


*LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM*


For setting up data-only drives, or when the OS is being freshly installed onto a Promise array, the procedure is relatively straightforward. But it is still fairly complicated, and I don't want you to miss anything, hence the need for this long thread. 
Start with the "Common Steps" and then proceed to whichever 
of the 2 sequences best fits your intended setup.


Mostly the procedure is not motherboard-specific, and except for BIOS-fieldname differences it should apply to any mobo using a Promise chip. Note that the Promise chip operates in either RAID mode or IDE mode, and there is a separate driver for each. All Promise ports have to operate in the same mode. For RAID mode we want the FastTrak RAID driver.

The procedure is identical for either RAID0 (stripe), RAID1 (mirror), or RAID0+1 (mirror/stripe, required 4 drives); the only differences are in the use of the offline array-creation utility, and the number of disk drives.

Warning: although the procedure here is based on other tested procedures, not all specific sequences given here have not been personally tested by me. I simply don’t have the resources to set up a RAID system without major disruption to my equipment. Any corrections to this procedure will be gladly considered; just post a reply or send a PM.


_I would prefer to use this thread only for process description, not for problem-solving. If you are having RAID trouble, please post your own separate thread. Thank you._

The remainder of this article describes the Promise RAID setup process. 
Hope this works, and helps...

-clintfan





*ADVANCED CHEAT-SHEETS*

The following lists summarize, in brief, the steps required for various setup situations. These are intended for advanced users. Refer to the detailed discussion in the body of the article below.

INSTALL Setup. 
RAID OS is desired, OS is not yet installed.

Get FastTrak378 RAID driver.
Make Promise RAID driver floppy (requires WinZip).
Power down.
Attach SATA and/or IDE drives to Promise, disconnect all other drives.
Enable Promise RAID in BIOS (usually the default).
Create RAID array using CTRL+F.
Boot XP Setup CD.
Press F6 (or F5 then F6).
Load Promise RAID driver files from floppy.
Finish install and boot to Windows.
Install Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility (or other chipset driver package appropriate to your mobo model).
Install remaining drivers, antivirus, firewall.

---------------

DATA Setup. 
RAID _data_ is desired, OS is on a different drive.

Get FastTrak378 RAID driver.
Make Promise RAID driver floppy (requires WinZip).
Power down.
Attach SATA and/or IDE drives to Promise.
Enable Promise RAID in BIOS (usually the default).
Create RAID array using CTRL+F.
Boot to Windows.
Use hardware wizard and floppy to install or update Promise RAID driver.


REQUIRED MATERIALS


The main software required is the Promise FastTrak 378 RAID Driver for Windows XP. Note this is only one version; get the latest from your mobo's Asus download page. If your PC is 64-bit or isn't WinXP, this is especially important.

You will also need WinZip in Step 1 to complete this installation.

You will need 1 blank formatted floppy disk in Step 2. You do not need to make this floppy bootable.


============================================


*DETAILED RAID SYSTEM SETUP FOR PROMISE PDC20378*

A detailed step-by-step Promise setup procedure follows.
The first 2 main steps are common to all setups, then after that the sequence of steps will vary depending on your planned usage.



*COMMON STEPS*


*1. Get Promise FastTrak378 driver.*

1.1. Download the Promise FastTrak 378 RAID driver for your mobo. Note the name "FastTrak 378" is a brand name Promise uses to describe the RAID driver for the PDC20378 chip. If you have a PDC20376 chip, your driver may be called FastTrak 376, but the process should be the same.

The Promise chip relies on 2 copies of BIOS embedded in a portion of your main mobo BIOS: one for RAID and one for IDE. So far, Promise BIOS has not been revised in years, so it should not be necessary to update your system BIOS before starting this procedure, unless you used EZFlash to do your last update, in which case your Promise chip may not be working; use AFUDOS instead.


1.2. Open the .ZIP file using WinZip and extract all files to a folder you will be able to find later for Steps 7-9. This will create a subfolder (eg. "378RAID") containing, among other things, MakeDisk.exe.

Continue to Step 2.


*2. Make Promise RAID driver floppy.*
Create a floppy containing portions of the Promise driver for use later:

2.1. Insert a blank formatted floppy in the A: drive.

2.2. Navigate to MakeDisk.exe and double-click it, or 
choose Start Menu- Run. In the "Open:" window type
F:\Pc\Promise\378RAID\MakeDisk.exe

where F:\Pc\Promise is where you extracted the downloaded Promise FastTrak driver content in Step 1.2.

2.3. The Asus File Image Extractor runs. The "Drive" defaults to A: . 

2.4. Click Extract. The floppy is written as a progress display moves. When complete, the progress display disappears and floppy LED goes out. 

2.5. Click Quit.

2.6. Eject and label the floppy "Promise RAID driver" for later use.


Continue to the *INSTALL* or *DATA* sequence below,
depending on your situation.




==============================================

*INSTALL Setup*

Use this sequence if you are in the INSTALL case, meaning a RAID OS is desired, but the OS is not yet installed. *WARNING: I do not recommend running your O/S on the Promise chip.*



First do the 2 COMMON STEPS:

*1. Get Promise FastTrak RAID driver.*
*2. Make Promise RAID driver floppy.*


*3. Power down.*
Shutdown the machine, pull the power cord, and wait 15 sec. to make sure all power is off, including standby power.


*4. Attach two (2) SATA drives or two IDE drives.*

4.1. Attach two OS target hard drives to Promise ports. These ports are often named SATA_RAID1, SATA_RAID2, or PRI_RAID. When attaching IDE drives to the PRI_RAID port, use an 80-conductor cable and strap as Master and Slave. If there is only one IDE drive (not recommended), strap it as Master and attach to the far end of the cable.

Mixing SATA and IDE drives within a RAID0 array is not recommended due to their different performance characteristics. It may be possible to mix SATA and IDE for RAID1, but this too is not recommended. Use of any type of IDE-SATA converter is not recommended; these tend not to work with RAID, and will not gain you any speed advantage over using an IDE port.

4.2. Disconnect all other hard drives.
_(Note that although I strongly recommend you disconnect all other HDDs prior to an OS install, this is only to avoid confusion and is not a technical requirement.)_


*5. Enable Promise RAID in BIOS.*
The following example is for Asus mobos using AMIBIOS (eg. P4C800-E Deluxe). If your mobo is different, take whatever action is necessary to enable Promise RAID.

5.1. Reattach power, power up the mobo, wait 2 seconds, press DELETE, and enter the BIOS setup.

5.2. Arrow-right to the Advanced, then down to Onboard Devices Configuration and hit Enter.

5.3. On the screen which appears, use arrow and +/- keys to set the fields like this:

*Onboard Promise Controller= Enabled
Operating Mode= RAID*

5.4 ESC back to Advanced, then arrow-right to the Boot screen.

5.5 If you disconnected all other hard disks as recommended in Step 4.2, no “Hard Disk Drives” item should appear here; Skip this step. 

Otherwise, arrow-down to this item and hit Enter. On the screen which opens, use +/-, arrow, and Enter keys to adjust the screen so the "FT TX Ary 1" Promise RAID appears as “1st Drive”. Hit ESC to return.

5.6. Now arrow up or down to the “Boot Device Priority” item and hit Enter. On the screen which opens, use +/-, arrow, and Enter keys to adjust the devices so “1st Drive” is CD, “2nd Drive” is Floppy, and “3rd Drive” is the "FT TX Ary 1" Promise RAID.

5.7. Stop and go read Steps 7.1-7.2: you need to be ready to press F6 (or F5 and F6) when prompted, because there is a timeout.

5.8. Then insert the Windows XP Install CD now; it will be booted automatically after you save BIOS settings (next).

5.9. Hit F10 to save the BIOS settings, confirm OK and exit.

5.10. The PC will reboot.


*6. Create the array.*

6.1. During the reboot, the POST should stall momentarily after the Promise scan and ask for CTRL+F. You have about 5 seconds to answer, before it continues.

6.2. Hit CTRL+F as soon as you see the message that says you can do that. If you miss it, do CTRL+ALT+DELETE to reboot, and keep trying until you get into the "FastBuild" offline Promise RAID Configuration Utility.

6.3. Use the FastBuild utility to create a RAID array. It takes a few minutes. 11. Hit 1 to choose Auto Setup. Arrow up to the "Optimize Array for" field at the top, and hit spacebar until it says 

"Performance" if you want RAID0 (stripe)
"Security" if you want RAID1 (mirror) 

Choose "Create Only". The operation should complete in just a couple of seconds, with the message, "Array has been created." 

6.4. Once the array is built, Press ESC to reboot the PC again.


*7. Install OS: details.*

7.1. The CD will begin booting. The screen will say "Windows is inspecting your hardware configuration."

7.2. Next there will be a screen which says "Windows Setup" at the top.
At the bottom it will say "*Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver...*" Though usually just a _reminder_, this is IMPORTANT in your situation. NOTE: there is a short timeout on this.

If you just want RAID and don't need to change your Computer Type, press F6 now. The message will change to something about F2 but the F6 effect will not occur until later. *It will seem as if your F6 key was ignored, but it wasn't.*
If you want to change your Computer Type, press F5 followed by F6. Because of F5, after a delay a screen will appear, "Windows Setup: Windows could not determine the type of computer you have, or you have chosen to manually specify the computer type." Use the up-arrow key to scroll to and highlight the desired computer type (e.g. "Standard PC"), then select by pressing Enter.
7.3. The message at the bottom of the screen changes to "Setup is loading files (type of file)..." for about 30 seconds.

7.4. Because you pressed F6, the screen finally changes to "Windows Setup: Setup could not determine the type of one or more mass storage devices installed in your system, or you have chosen to manually specify an adapter. Currently, Setup will load support for the following mass storage devices(s): <None>"

Press S to "Specify Additional Device".

7.5. The screen changes to "Windows Setup: Please insert the disk labeled Manufacturer-supplied hardware support disk into drive A:, Press ENTER when ready."

Insert the Promise RAID driver floppy disk you made in Step 2.
Press Enter.

7.6. The screen changes to "Windows Setup: You have chosen to configure a SCSI Adapter for use with Windows, using a device support disk provided by the adapter manufacturer. Select the SCSI Adapter you want from the following list, or press ESC to return to the previous screen." There will be one choice on the screen, "WinXP Promise FastTrak 378 (tm) Controller" (or 376 if that is your chip) and it should already be highlighted. This is the Promise RAID boot driver.

Hit Enter to select the RAID Controller choice.

(Note: if you did not enable Promise RAID in Step 5, Setup will still load the floppy files here, however they will not actually get built into Windows, and later the O/S will not install. The Promise _must_ be in RAID mode for success.)


7.7. The bottom of the screen changes to "Setup is loading files (fasttx2k.sys)..." Files from the floppy are brought in by Setup.

NOTE: DO NOT EJECT the floppy; 
it will be used again (but somehow it will not confuse the boot process).

7.8. We return to the same screen as (7.4), but now the RAID Controller should be listed in place of <None>. 

Press Enter to Continue.


7.9. The screen changes back to "Setup is loading files (type of file)..." for a few more seconds.

The screen "Windows XP Professional Setup: Welcome to Setup." finally appears. Press Enter to "Continue". 

7.10. From this point on, you are doing normal XP Setup. Proceed through the licensing agreement, partition dialog, NTFS formatting, and the rest of Setup. This takes about 30-40 minutes. Remember to LEAVE the floppy installed; it will be accessed again during Setup.

7.11. When XP install is fully complete and you are logged into the Windows desktop, install the Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility, or other chipset driver package appropriate to your mobo model.



*8. Complete the OS setup.*

8.1 Install the rest of your drivers, the sound driver last.
Install your firewall and antivirus.


*9. Party on!*




=================================================


*DATA Setup*

Use this sequence if you are in the DATA case, meaning RAID data (not OS) is desired, and your OS is on another drive not already prepped for Promise RAID (i.e. no Promise driver is yet already installed, or the SATA378 driver is installed).


First do the 2 COMMON STEPS:

*1. Get Promise FastTrak RAID driver.*
*2. Make Promise RAID driver floppy.*


*3. Power down.*
Shutdown the machine, pull the power cord, and wait 15 sec. to make sure all power is off, including standby power.


*4. Attach two (2) SATA drives or two IDE drives.*

4.1. Attach two hard drives to Promise ports. These ports are often named SATA_RAID1, SATA_RAID2, or PRI_RAID. When attaching IDE drives to the PRI_RAID port, use an 80-conductor cable and strap as Master and Slave. If there is only one IDE drive (not recommended), strap it as Master and attach to the far end of the cable.

Mixing SATA and IDE drives within a RAID0 array is not recommended due to their different performance characteristics. It may be possible to mix SATA and IDE for RAID1, but this too is not recommended. Use of any type of IDE-SATA converter is not recommended; these tend not to work with RAID, and will not gain you any speed advantage over using an IDE port.

It is assumed an OS is already installed on a different drive not connected to any Promise port.


*5. Enable Promise RAID in BIOS.*
The following example is for Asus mobos using AMIBIOS (eg. P4C800-E Deluxe). If your mobo is different, take whatever action is necessary to enable Promise RAID.

5.1. Reattach power, power up the mobo, wait 2 seconds, press DELETE, and enter the BIOS setup.

5.2. Arrow-right to the Advanced, then down to Onboard Devices Configuration and hit Enter.

5.3. On the screen which appears, use arrow and +/- keys to set the fields like this:

*Onboard Promise Controller= Enabled
Operating Mode= RAID*

5.4. Hit F10 to save the BIOS settings, confirm OK and exit.

5.5. The PC will reboot.


*6. Create the array.*

6.1. During the reboot, the POST should stall momentarily after the Promise scan and ask for CTRL+F. You have about 5 seconds to answer, before it continues.

6.2. Hit CTRL+F as soon as you see the message that says you can do that. If you miss it, do CTRL+ALT+DELETE to reboot, and keep trying until you get into the "FastBuild" offline Promise RAID Configuration Utility.

6.3. Use the FastBuild utility to create a RAID array. It takes a few minutes. 11. Hit 1 to choose Auto Setup. Arrow up to the "Optimize Array for" field at the top, and hit spacebar until it says 

"Performance" if you want RAID0 (stripe)
"Security" if you want RAID1 (mirror) 

Choose "Create Only". The operation should complete in just a couple of seconds, with the message, "Array has been created." 

6.4. Once the array is built, Press ESC to reboot the PC again.



*7. Hardware discovery.*

7.1. Boot the system to Windows. Your existing O/S should boot normally.

7.2. We think Windows XP already has a copy of the Promise FastTrak RAID driver built-in. As a result, if Windows loads drivers "automatically", it always applies the RAID driver, which is wrong for IDE mode, but works for RAID. But the driver version may be old.

Therefore as the OS boots, one of two things may occur when the Promise RAID controller is discovered:
(A) The system may boot all the way to the desktop, then simply say "New hardware detected: Windows has finished installing your new hardware". In this case, skip to Step 9 to reinstall the correct driver, or to update to the correct version.
OR
(B) The "Hardware Wizard" window may appear. Continue to Step 8.


*8. New Hardware Wizard appears on discovery.*

Windows discovered the new hardware but did not have a "known" driver for it; a "New Hardware Wizard" window appears.

8.1. On the first screen of the Hardware Wizard, 
Choose "Install from a specific location".
Click Next.

8.2. On the second screen, 
Choose only "Include this location" (uncheck any other choices).
In the window, type only "A:"
Insert the Promise RAID driver floppy disk you made in Step 2.
Click Next.

8.3. The floppy disk files are read.

8.4. Click Finish.
Skip to Step 10.


*9. Windows automatically installs the driver.*

After bootup, Windows reported it installed your new hardware, but did not give you a chance to make any choices. Usually Windows has installed the RAID driver. To be sure you have the correct version, you should now replace what Windows did, using the Asus driver.

9.1. Open Start- Settings- Control Panel- System- Hardware tab- Device Manager.

9.2. Choose View- devices by connection. Expand the "PC" and "PCI bus" items. Find the first "Standard PCI Bridge" or "Intel(R) 82801BA/CA PCI Bridge". 

9.3. Under that should be a "RAID Controller" or "WinXP Promise FastTrak" device. Right-click the controller device and choose Update Driver. This launches the "Hardware Update Wizard".

9.4. On the first screen, 
Choose "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)".
Click Next.

9.5. On the second screen, 
Choose "Don't search, I will choose the driver to install".
Click Next.

9.6 On the third screen, click the "Have Disk" button.
Insert the Promise RAID driver floppy disk you made in Step 2.
Under "Copy manufacturer's files from", choose A:. "Browse" and navigate to the folder where you put the driver. Go down the tree into the "378RAID\WinXP" subfolder and highlight the fasttx2k.INF file. Click Open. Then click OK to confirm the selection.

9.7. Click Next.
The floppy disk files are read.

9.8. Click Finish.

9.9. Reboot the system to make sure the new driver is running. Continue to Step 10.


10. *Partition and Format the drive*

After system reboot, if the array used brand-new drives, use Start- Settings- Control Panel- Administrative Tools- Computer Management- Disk Management to partition and format the new drive. Until then, it won't appear in MyComputer.


*11. Party on!*



====================================================

_13Mar2005 - Initial rev. from 05Aug2004 Intel RAID thread & others.
25Jun2005 - Various corrections to the DATA Setup drive attachment and BIOS texts.
_


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## Tazzi (Mar 31, 2005)

*Is there a View Utility?*

I have a setup that is identical to this article. My OS is on the Intel ICH5R as RAID-1 and I have a storage RAID-1 setup on the onboard Promise controller. I had a failure about a month ago on the Intel RAID-1 and the software notified me to replace the bad drive, awesome. I would like the same kind of notification software for the Promise instead of having to watch boot-up diagnostics, IS THERE ONE?


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## BobbyB72 (Mar 12, 2008)

Currently I have a four disk RAID0 data array in my machine and a dedicated OS drive. I'd like to wipe the OS disk and re-install windows (the machine is running too slowly and a good clean would do wonders for it's performance). My question is, can I do this without destroying the currently setup RAID0 array? Is there anything special I'd have to do to recover the RAID once the Os is re-installed?


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